Green Beer Turns 75

It was 75 years ago today that green beer first made its appearance in Iowa City and p0ssibly Iowa.

Heck, maybe it was the first appearance in the United States.

Ken Donnelly doesn't know for sure, but he'd like to find out anything anybody might know about it. He did an Internet search and came up empty. But the reasoning behind his claim sure makes sense. (See today's Ramblin' column in The Gazette.)

Ken's father, Harold, opened Donnelly's tavern at 119 South Dubuque Street in Iowa City on Oct. 28, 1934. Prohibition had ended the December before that.

In Harold's handwriting, when recalling the history of his tavern, he jotted down that Donnelly's was the first tavern to sell green beer on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1935. That was 75 years ago.

Harold figures that nobody would have come out with green beer in 1934 because it would have been only three months after Prohibition ended.

Then again, he's not sure. And someone could have sold it before Prohibition began. Food coloring, after all, has been around for centuries. And a great old bar in Iowa City -- McInnerney Tavern owned by Frank McInnerney -- was the Irish bar of choice before Prohibition took effect in 1920 and it closed.

Until Ken hears different, he'll lay claim to his father pouring the first green beer in Iowa. He has printed up about 100 posters which he has distributed in Johnson and Benton counties (Harold was born in Garrison.) as well as some T-shirts to commemorate the occassion.

Unfortunately the anniversary can't be celebrated at the original Donnelly's tavern. It closed Dec. 9, 1974, a victim of urban renewal. And Harold died in 1988.

But Ken will make the best of it. He'll hold a mass for his father at St. Patrick's church in Iowa City this morning, join County Johnson in the annual parade in Cedar Rapids, then host some friends for a gathering this evening in West Liberty where he lives.

In the meantime, if anyone has any information about the first time green beer -- the kind that is turned green with food coloring -- was poured on St. Patrick's Day, let me know.

I'll tip a green beer in your honor. In fact, I'll tip a green beer anyway.