Mt. Pleasant Club Whiskey History

Our original Mt. Pleasant Club Whiskey bottle, found in the roof of a Mt. Pleasant row house on 19th Street, was sold by William D. Barry in the early 1900's for its medicinal properties. He owned the "Reliable Family Liquor Store", which was located at 2024 14th St NW (where the DC Government Reeves Building currently sits at 14th & U Streets) between 1909 and 1914. (In the early 1900’s, Mt. Pleasant was much larger, extending further east into what is currently Columbia Heights.) Both Barry’s name and the store address are embossed on the back of the bottle (see picture below).

Barry bought the store from the previous owner, a P.F. Neligan, who also sold Mt. Pleasant Club Whiskey. Bottles with Neligan's name embossed on the back have been found, but none with a label intact, like our bottle. After 1914, Barry moved his store but continued to sell the Mt. Pleasant Club Whiskey until Prohibition (January 1920).

After the ratification of the 21st Amendment (December 1933), Barry was back in the liquor business, but it appears that the brand, like so many other pre-Prohibition whiskeys, was a casualty of the "noble experiment".

What did the original taste like?

There has been a long history of people entering the whiskey business by selling whiskey purchased on the bulk whiskey market. These Non-Distilling Producers were called rectifiers – because they purchased whiskey from local distilleries and then “rectified” it to create a taste profile that would meet their customers standards.

Mr. Barry likely either: (1) bought barrels of whiskey from local distilleries and married two or more whiskeys together to create the flavor profile he wanted, or (2) blended the whiskey from Grain Neutral Spirits and flavorings such as caramel, tobacco juice, and prune juice to create his whiskey. Sadly, we can’t find a trace of what he did to create Mt. Pleasant Club Whiskey (MPCW) as rectifiers did not often disclose where they acquired their spirits or what they did to create their whiskey.

What does the “vatted and blended” on the original label mean?

In modern parlance, vatted means combining barrels from the same distillery. Blended means mixing barrels from different distilleries. Back in the day, the two words were interchangeable and Mr. Barry likely did a bit of both to make his original whiskey.

Why does the label say “Recommended by Physicians”?

Pre-Prohibition (January 1920) whiskeys were often prescribed by doctors to their patients for a range of health issues. In fact, Mr. Barry’s MPCW used a bottle shape that was primarily used by druggists of the era - the “Blake “ style bottle. (This site is run by historic alcohol bottle experts with the intention of helping archaeologists identify, date and classify historic bottles. The site contains everything you could ever want to know about old bottles. Our MPCW bottle is now displayed there as an example of a liquor put in a druggist style bottle in the years prior to Prohibition). It was common for such Blake style druggist bottles to be embossed vertically to identify the proprietor and their store address.

Who was William D. Barry?

Barry was a prominent liquor merchant turned banker in Washington, DC. Besides being the owner of the store where our original bottle was purchased in 1911, he was also an ardent voice of the local liquor retailers on the issue of proposed regulations that Congress was seeking to impose in DC. As the President of the Federation of Retail Liquor Dealers of the District of Columbia, Barry in 1909 pushed for self-regulation of the industry with a letter to the DC Excise Board that provided a declaration of principles for retailers to follow:

The duties of the retail liquor dealers are:

To obey all ordinances.
To obey all orders of the excise board.
To faithfully obey the letter and spirit of the Sunday closing law.
To refuse to sell liquor to any intoxicated person, or to any known inebriate or minor.
To limit the giving of free lunch to crackers, cheese, and pretzels, and nothing else.
To prohibit the serving of drinks to any female to be drank at any public bar.
To oppose the employment of any female for the purpose of dispensing liquor.
To prevent gambling in any and all forms upon the premise.
To conduct your place of business that your neighbors will feel that it is a necessity to the neighborhood.

To look to the deportment of your employees, in or about your place of business, and see that at all times they conduct themselves properly and never appear under the influence of liquor.

To stop the sale of 5-cent growlers and limit the sale of beer in buckets to residents of the immediate neighborhood; and not sell or give beer in a bucket to drivers of teams and vehicles to be drank upon the street.

To prevent disorderly conduct and indecent language in or about your place of business, as well as loafing of disorderly persons in or about the place.

To exclude from all saloons and public bars all indecent pictures and cards, and to discourage the use of indecent pictures, or labels for advertising purposes by the makers of or dealers in liquors, or cigars, or cigarettes, or other goods handled by saloons.

To regard and treat all fellow liquor dealers who violate these rules of conduct as detrimental to the best interests of the liquor trade.

With the onset of Prohibition, Barry was affiliated with the United Savings Bank, where he rose to the post of first vice president until the bank closed in 1932. After prohibition was lifted, he opened up another liquor store, eponymously named “Barry’s Liquor Store” at 2016 14th Street. It was here that he filed a trademark application for five labels that he sold at that store. (Sadly, we’ve only been able to find a copy of one label in the filing for Meridian Hill.) Barry died on August 28, 1936 and is buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery here in DC.