Celebrating green beer in Iowa
by Lindsay Hoeppner · March 17, 2010

Although the majority of Ken Donnelly’s ancestors hail from Ireland, he was given another reason to celebrate this St. Patrick’s Day.

Yesterday (Wednesday, March 17) marked the 75th anniversary of the first green beer served in Iowa.

What’s more, the occasion occurred at Donnelly’s Tavern in Iowa City, an establishment that was operated by Ken’s father, Harold.

Ken, however, isn’t exactly sure what drove his father to begin serving green beer.

“I think it was just inspiration,” he said. “He never said that he read it anywhere or that someone told him. I never heard the story, I just knew as a little kid, there was green beer once a year.”

According to Ken, after kegs full of green Pabst Blue Ribbon began circulating around Donnelly’s Tavern in 1935, business started booming.

“It was one week of beer sales in one day,” he said. “We had a rope in front of the door, and you couldn’t go in until someone else came out.”

The bar, located at 119 S. Dubuque St., wasn’t very large, said Ken, but it was certainly the place to celebrate each St. Patrick’s Day. The juke box continually played Irish standards by Bing Crosby and Dennis Day — “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” “Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder?” and “Galway Bay.”

“They would be playing from opening time to closing time,” Ken said. “You had to have Irish tunes in the background. People would be singing along if they knew the lyrics.”

The kegs would be injected with green food coloring the day before, so as not to interrupt with the festivities.

Before long, the newfound trend began catching on and various bars throughout the area, and eventually the state, began serving the colored beverage each year.

“Guy Wieneke used to come in for green beer. When he opened his own bar in West Liberty, he brought green beer to West Liberty,” Ken said. “Ted Mahoney was a bartender for my dad, and when he opened his own bar, Ted’s Happitime in Cedar Rapids, he took green beer up there.”

Harold opened Donnelly’s Tavern on Oct. 28, 1934 when he was only 21 years old. Prior to its opening, Harold made a living waiting tables at restaurants in Iowa City and delivering “near beer” to Monroe, WI, Dubuque and Iowa City.

“Pabst Blue Ribbon was looking for an outlet in a college town, and kind of helped him get started,” Ken said. “For all 40 years, that was the only beer he had on tap.”

Donnelly’s opening day fell on the same day as the 1934 University of Iowa homecoming match against the University of Minnesota. The Hawkeyes lost, but many college students still ventured to the new establishment.

That wasn’t what made Donnelly’s successful, though. Rather, it was the Iowa City centennial in 1939 and the 1942 U.S. Navy preflight that made the tavern become well-known.

Over the years, tens of thousands of people ventured into Donnelly’s. Some of the most notable include John Glenn, the Harlem Globetrotters, Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams, Peter, Paul and Mary, Irving Webber, Kurt Vonnegut, James Van Allen and Paul Engel, among others. It was artist Grant Wood that left quite possible the largest impression, however.

“Grant Wood came into the bar all the time,” Ken said.

Supposedly, one night he offered to trade a painting for a case of beer. Harold instead advised Wood to sell the painting and bring back the money he received to buy the beer.

“Of course the joke is, there could have been some Grant Wood painting worth tens of thousands of dollars and we’d have it sitting in one of our family homes,” Ken said. “Dad would always laugh about that story, but he’d never say if it was true or not. It’s a well told story in Iowa City, though, that he turned down a Grant Wood painting because he wanted a case of beer. He said, ‘Hell, I didn’t know anything about art.’”

Harold, who never officially owned Donnelly’s, but rather rented it Kenneth Belle and Laurence Short, Iowa City’s first black business owners, tried to buy the bar, but the half-brothers wouldn’t sell it, even though Harold had technically bought it several times over.

During his 40th year in business, Harold closed the door to Donnelly’s Tavern. The bar, regarded as the best saloon in town, was a victim of urban renewal. The city had offered Harold money to relocate, but he didn’t want to go anywhere else. A group of regular customers even circulated a petition to get the building registered as a historic site, but their effort failed. Harold, who later became a Johnson County supervisor, closed the tavern on Dec. 9. 1974.

“The last beer served as a small keg of green beer,” Ken said. “When that was all gone, my dad shut the lights off and went out the door.”