Harry’s New York Bar, a cocktail bar on rue Daunou since 1911

Harry’s New York Bar, a cocktail bar on rue Daunou, opened on 26 November 1911, Thanksgiving Day. The American jockey Tod Sloan had a mahogany bar dismantled in New York and rebuilt here, and named it the New York Bar.

Sloan hired Harry MacElhone, a Scottish barman trained at Ciro’s in London, who bought the bar in 1923 and gave it his name. The French 75, the White Lady, the Bloody Mary and the Side Car were born behind his counter. In 1924 a notice in the Herald Tribune taught Americans to tell their driver Sank Roo Doe Noo. Hemingway, Coco Chanel, Humphrey Bogart and the Duke of Windsor drank here.

Since 1924 the bar has held a straw vote before every American presidential election. Harry passed the house to Andrew, who passed it to Duncan; Franz-Arthur MacElhone, Harry’s great-grandson, runs it today and opened a bar in Cannes in 2020.

Between avenue de l’Opéra and rue de la Paix, it pours more than 400 cocktails and keeps over 350 whiskies. In the evening the piano bar plays jazz; George Gershwin is said to have composed An American in Paris on its piano.