The Bank Of Bacchus On Main St.

[kylejack]

It wasn't the focus of this dormant thread (dormant in part because I've been lazy with my research), but I think I have a contender for the first "bar" in Houston.

In 1885, the Galveston paper wrote: "Colonel Lem G. Clepper, a planter from Grimes county, is in the city. Colonel Clepper first came to Houston when there was but one house, and that a tent, known as Kessler's Round Tent, where whisky was sold."

An even earlier - 1884 - article states: "Houston has not been much in tents since the days of the republic, when the famous Round Tent was the rendezvous for the founders of the government."

Dick Dowling's bar Bank of Bacchus was operating in 1865. He had an even earlier bar named Shades that I don't have a year for.