Taste o’ Ireland in New Castle

Lanigan’s is the image of an authentic Victorian-era Irish pub.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

NEW CASTLE — If you’re sitting in a snug and enjoying a glass of Guinness while basking in the sunlit colors of a vintage stained-glass window, where are you?

If you said Ireland, you’re right.

If you said downtown New Castle, Pa., you’re right again — and you’ve likely been to Lanigan’s Irish Pub.

You also know enough about Irish history to know what a snug is. But for those of you who’ve never been to Lanigan’s and are not up on Irish culture, pub owner Rick Russo is proud to fill you in.

He and his wife, Maureen Lanigan Russo, opened the pub’s doors seven months ago. They’re passionate about giving their patrons a real Irish experience, with authentic decor, period antiques and traditional Irish dishes that mingle on the menu with standard American hamburgers and wings.

Of course, you’re going to go to a restaurant for the food. You might be brave and try something different at Lanigan’s — a boxty, which is a potato pancake the restaurant wraps around fillings such as chicken chunks and cheese, for example; or the shepherd’s pie.

But don’t get so lost in your food and your Guinness that you don’t glance up once in awhile and enjoy your surroundings. You would be cheating yourself.

Irish and New Castle history meet in the cavernous old building on Washington Street that Rick Russo fell in love with before he retired from his 21-year career of patrolling the streets as an officer on the city’s police force. And for the Russos, that combination is a natural.

Maureen’s family is from Kilkenny, Ireland, and the pub honors her heritage. Though the Russos thought about opening their pub in other locations, they ultimately rejected the idea.

New Castle is their hometown where they reared two children — a son, Richard Lutz, 26, who’s now in Iraq, and a daughter, Stephanie Russo, 22, who’s a junior partner in the pub.

The Scotch-Irish settled New Castle in the 1790s, Rick points out, even though not much of the old Irish culture is evident in the city today.

You don’t have to look far to find an Italian or Middle Eastern restaurant in New Castle.

But Rick said the Russos are proud to introduce what’s still a prominently Irish population to its roots.

“That’s why it’s a good fit,” he said.

From the time you step through the door, start looking around. You’ll pass under a gas lantern at the Washington Street entrance and step onto a polished hardwood floor that’s relatively young for the old Stritmater Bros. building, built in 1881.

The Russos figure the floor dates to the 1920s. It was hidden under two layers of linoleum — they removed 15 tons of the stuff after they bought and began renovating the building in December 2006 — and, Rick estimates, they pulled out about “8,000 little nails.”

But many true original features of the building remain. It had been a dry goods business and millinery — it was the place to come in the region for hats and cloaks, Maureen explained.

The ceiling still has pipe fixtures for gaslights protruding from it. An elevator shaft, blocked now by a glass case near the pub’s party room, once housed the first elevator in the city.

It was powered by water, Rick said, and though it doesn’t exist anymore, the Russos may install another elevator if they add a banquet hall on the building’s second floor.

Down a hallway toward the back entrance of the pub, parts of the old plaster are still left on the walls, though much of the brick underneath is exposed.

The Russos left the plaster, Rick explained, so people could check out the hair of long-gone horses still embedded in it.

Horse hair was a common bonding agent used with plaster when the Stritmater Building was built.

In the back hall, visitors can find pictures of the New Castle Police Department from the 1890s. A police hat from 1890 is also displayed there, as well as antique firefighter helmets.

The hallway will eventually be a memorial to safety forces, he said. The pub has definitely become a cop bar because of his background in law enforcement, said Rick, a lieutenant by the time he retired.

Many of his old friends on the force are now his patrons. Some of them even work at the bar.

Against the backdrop of old New Castle that is the Stritmater Building, the Russos have arranged their tribute to Irish culture.

They did so with the help of a consultant they found through the Guinness Corp. Donal Ballance, based in Toronto, consults in setting up Irish pubs all over the world, they said.

Customers can sit in one of two snugs at the front of the restaurant. Tradition dictated that women, police and clergy would go to drink in private in these separated areas because it was unseemly to find them at the bar.

Lanigan’s’ snugs, two areas on either side of the front door, are not walled off completely — the Russos used half-walls.

Stained-glass windows in the front of the building and on partition walls along the pub rail across from the bar are not from Ireland, but they are 130 years old.

Maureen found them through an antique dealer near Ellwood City— they’re from an area church, though she’s not sure which one.

Pictures on the walls are of Maureen’s family and of sights she and Rick saw in Ireland three years ago when they visited there to do research for the pub.

Dart boards, an Irish pub tradition, hang near an area where customers can sit on leather sofas in front of a fireplace while they wait for a table.

The Russos considered having a bar sent over from Ireland but decided that would be too expensive. The bar is new, but the taps protrude from a traditional Irish coffin box.

The pub rail has a wainscot that is original beadboard from the building, and the Tiffany-style lights above the bar and sconces on the wall near the rail feature Celtic knot work, an ancient form of art.

Different styles of knot work have different meanings, Russo said — some of it was protectionist, and some of it was just decorative.

Near the ceiling, a form called the Trinity knot is stenciled along the wall, representing Christianity’s Holy Trinity.

Stencils of clovers in the party room also represent the Trinity, Rick said. The three-leaf clover is Irish, he explained.

The four-leaf clover, with its legendary ability to bring good luck, is actually an American icon, he said.

The pub offers traditional Irish music for the most part, except for the bar crowd on Friday and Saturday nights — those patrons prefer rock.

The pub is a nod to New Castle’s past, but the Russos opened it with faith in the city’s future.

They point to a revitalization that is going on downtown, with many buildings restoring their facades with state grants.

Outside the pub’s back door to the left is the Riverplex complex. The complex is trying to attract other businesses, including a comedy club and a jazz club, the Russos said.

Rick said that when a planned harness racing track and casino complex opens in Mahoning Township, it will draw people to the area as well.

Meanwhile, they’ve been doing well since the pub opened, they said, with patrons coming from Youngstown and Pittsburgh as well as from the New Castle area.

A couple from Niles, originally from Galway, Ireland, made the trip over to Lanigan’s to check it out, and they were impressed, Rick said.

“That’s the best,” he said: “When people from Ireland come in here and say, ‘Yeah, you got it right.’”