Patrick Gavin Duffy: America’s Bartender

Profiles in History of those who shaped our world

Patrick Gavin Duffy invented the scotch and soda. gresei/Shutterstock

Patrick Gavin Duffy (1868–circa 1955) was born on a farm across the Atlantic in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon, Ireland. When he turned 16, he decided to leave the family farm and move to America. He arrived in Jersey City where he worked for his uncle who was a stonemason. After a few weeks of work in New Jersey, Duffy decided to move again. Instead of crossing an ocean, he simply crossed a river―the Hudson River.

Drinks for the Stars

He found a job as a busboy at the Ashland House hotel located on Fourth Avenue. A year later, he was promoted to barback, an assistant to the bartender. While behind the bar, Duffy learned the trade of bartending and mixing drinks. Soon he became the head bartender of the prestigious hotel, making drinks for and friendships with some of the most famous and important people in the country. His clientele included the likes of novelists Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde, champion boxer John L. Sullivan, big game hunter Jim Corbett, actors E.H. Sothern and Edwin Booth, film director Cecile B. DeMille, and financier J.P. Morgan.

He was the bartender of the rich and famous. When a location became available across the street from the Ashland Hotel, he decided to lease it. He opened his new bar called the Lyceum Café in 1894. With his new location so near the hotel, there was very little to keep his established clientele from following him―aside from a street. And follow him, they did.

America Meets the Highball

It was a British actor by the name of E.J. Ratcliffe who would help Duffy leave his mark in the world of mixology. Ratcliffe consistently ordered Scotch whiskey, something Duffy rarely served. He decided to experiment with the spirit and mixed it with club soda and a large cube of ice. The Scotch and soda (also known as the Scotch highball) had now, much like Duffy himself, come to America’s shores. It became one of the primary drinks he made moving forward and its popularity spread across the country.

"The Bartender's Guide" by Patrick Gavin Duffy. Pocket Books

“It is one of my fondest hopes that the highball will again take its place as the leading American drink. I admit to being prejudiced about this—it was I who first brought the highball to America, in 1895. Although the distinction is claimed by the Parker House in Boston, I was finally given due credit for this innovation in the ‘New York Times’ of not many years ago,” Duffy wrote in his “The Official Mixer’s Manual,” which was published in 1934, the year after Prohibition ended.

The purpose behind writing the book was to collect and present all the cocktail recipes available at that time. The work has become an industry classic and was thoroughly embraced by James Beard, one of the most successful and influential chefs in American history. In 1956, Beard published an expanded and revised edition. Duffy enjoyed being one of America’s most popular and influential bartenders and mixologists. Along with “The Official Mixer’s Manual,” he also wrote “The Bartender’s Guide.”