Chapin and Gore were iconic Chicago liquor dealers and saloonkeepers from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. James J. Gore (1830–1891), a teamster, met the more established Gardner Spring Chapin (1833–1895), a broker in mining stocks, in the early 1850s in the gold fields of California. In 1866, the two met again in Chicago, and Chapin took in Gore, then dealing faro, as a partner in his grocery store at the corner of State and Monroe, in the heart of what is now the Loop. Gore convinced Chapin to add a retail and wholesale liquor department, which was an immediate success. They soon launched their own 1867 Sour Mash brand of whisky. The reputation of Chapin and Gore’s liquor brought a national audience to its brands that would include Old Reserve, launched in the early 1890s, and Old Jim Gore, trademarked in 1904; the latter survived until the late 1950s, and the former into the 1990s. The partners would eventually acquire their own distillery in Breckinridge County, Kentucky.
Legend has it that Jim Gore saved a good deal of the firm’s stock from the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871 by hiring a group of men to roll hundreds of barrels full of their bourbon and rye into Lake Michigan to keep them safe from both flames and looters. Whether that is true or not—the contemporary newspapers are silent, although they do report that John McDevitt, “at one time the champion billiard-player of America,” died at Chapin and Gore’s when his friends couldn’t rouse him to escape the flames—the firm did reopen its retail operation within a month, on Twenty-Second Street outside the burned zone.
The partners rebuilt at their original location as soon as possible. The new Chapin & Gore Café became the leading saloon in Chicago, and one of the most famous in America. According to Chicago historian Stephen Longstreet, this establishment had a reputation for being “high toned.” It was host to such illustrious patrons as William McKinley (later to be the doomed president), Mark Twain, and Wild West showman William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, and it was famous for its extensive collection of caricatures of all the celebrities of the day. At the same time, the partners turned their temporary post-fire store on Twenty-Second Street into a saloon as well. This was so successful that, before long, they had branches not only throughout Chicago but in several other midwestern cities.
After the deaths of its founders, the company continued to be successful and in 1905 built the Prairie School–style Nepeenauk Building, at 65 East Adams Street, in the bustling heart of the Loop, to house its offices and warehousing (it still stands, a National Historic and Chicago Landmark). On the street level was the large and ornate Nepeenauk Bar, which featured a long wooden bar and fine cut-glass spirit glasses stacked on the backbar, that continued to offer Chapin and Gore whiskys as well as the popular cocktails of the day, with a special focus on the Old-Fashioned cocktail.
The company was forced to shut down by Prohibition, but its whisky brands at least were resurrected in 1934 by the McKesson-Robbins corporation, using whisky produced by Schenley Distilleries. What was left of the brand was sold when McKesson went out of the spirits business in the late 1980s.
“The Dead of Chicago.” New York Times, November 17, 1871.
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Minnick, Fred. Bourbon Curious. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2015.
Proulx, Theodore. The Bartender’s Manual, rev. ed. Chicago: 1888.
Sullivan, Jack. “Chapin and Gore: Kings of the Chicago Saloon.” Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men, July 9, 2013. http://pre-prowhiskeymen.blogspot.com/2013/07/chapin-and-gore-kings-of-chicago-saloon.html (accessed February 23, 2021).
By: Martin Duffy