Old Town Bar, Flatiron.

The most preserved Manhattan saloon north of City Hall.

Old Town Bar opened in 1892 in a building that already had two decades of bar history. The mahogany bar itself is older than the building; it was salvaged from an 1880 saloon on Bowery and installed at Old Town when the room was first fitted out. The Meades family has owned the bar since 1952. Three generations later, the third Meade brother runs it from the small office above the dumbwaiter.

The room is a single long rectangle: the forty-five foot mahogany bar runs along the right wall, twenty wooden booths run along the left wall, and a dumbwaiter mounted on the back wall delivers food from a basement kitchen the staff calls "downstairs." The tin ceiling is original 1892. The tiled floor is original 1892. The cast iron fixtures over the bar are original 1892. Almost nothing in this room is younger than the Spanish-American War.

Why this matters. Old Town is the rare Manhattan room where everything you see was here when your great-grandfather drank in Manhattan. The Meades have refused two refurbishment offers worth eight figures combined. The reasoning: the room is the bar.

The dumbwaiter delivery.

The food at Old Town comes up from a basement kitchen via a hand-cranked dumbwaiter mounted on the back wall behind the bar. The dumbwaiter is original from 1892 and has been in continuous operation, with a single 1953 cable replacement, ever since. Order a burger and you watch the dumbwaiter rope tug for ninety seconds. The plate appears on a small wooden platform and is lifted onto the bar by the bartender.

The bartenders ring a small brass bell each time the dumbwaiter arrives. The bell has been there since 1892 and has been rung approximately ten million times. If you sit at the bar, the dumbwaiter and the bell are the centre of your sensory experience. No phone in the room is more interesting than the dumbwaiter cycle.

The Old Town burger and a Brooklyn Lager.

• The burger: nineteen dollars. Half pound, American cheese, soft sesame bun, served with a small dish of pickles and a paper cone of crinkle-cut fries. The standard New York old-school burger.
• Brooklyn Lager: nine dollars draft. The Old Town tap pour. The local lager that fits the room.
• Manhattan: fifteen dollars. The bar's house Manhattan is made with Bulleit rye and Carpano Antica Formula, stirred, served up. Old-school correct.
• Onion rings: nine dollars. Hand-battered, served in a stack the height of the IBM Selectric typewriter still on the bar's office desk.
• The thing nobody knows: the bar pours Smithwick's Irish Red on draft. It is not on the menu. The regulars order it. Ask for the "Smithy."

Wednesday at 5:30pm. The post-work, pre-dinner hour.

Old Town opens at 11:30am for lunch and closes at 1am. The Wednesday at 5:30pm hour is the sweet spot. The lunch crowd has cleared, the after-work crowd is filtering in, the booths are open, the dumbwaiter is busy enough to ring the bell every few minutes. Order a burger, take a booth on the left wall, watch the bartenders work the bar.

The peak is Friday and Saturday between 7pm and midnight, when Flatiron's after-work crowd packs the room. The booths fill in by 6pm and the bar is three deep by 8pm. Avoid Saturday night unless you specifically want to drink standing up.

Sunday afternoon at 2pm is the quietest scheduled hour. The bar opens at noon for brunch on Sundays. The 2pm to 4pm window has half-empty booths, full sun through the front windows, and bartenders who have time to talk about the room's history.

What David Letterman did here for ten years.

Old Town Bar served as the establishing exterior shot for David Letterman's Late Show from 1993 until 2015. The shot, which played at the start of every episode, showed the front of the building with the Old Town Bar sign visible. The bar received no compensation for the use; the Late Show production company simply filmed the building from a CBS van across the street.

The Meades regard the connection with mild amusement and zero promotion. There is no Letterman cocktail. There are no signed photographs. The only acknowledgement is a small framed photograph of the Late Show camera car parked across 18th Street, hung behind the bar, donated by a Letterman writer in 2015.

Sixty-five dollars per person, with the burger.

Plan for fifty-five to seventy-five dollars per person for a three-hour visit including the burger and onion rings. Two beers, one Manhattan, the burger, the rings, twenty percent tip. A pair: a hundred and twenty dollars. A four-top sharing the rings: a hundred and ninety.

The bar accepts cards. Tipping is twenty percent on the bill. The bartender pool includes the dumbwaiter operator downstairs. Three dollars per drink in cash on the bar is the local norm and ensures the bartender will bring your second burger up the dumbwaiter without a wait.

The Flatiron after-work crowd and the Letterman pilgrims.

Old Town's clientele is the rarest Flatiron mix. The lunch crowd is publishing-house editors from Penguin Random House, three blocks south. The post-lunch crowd is Brooklyn-bound writers stopping in for one beer. The after-work crowd is the Madison Square Park office contingent in their thirties and forties. The evening crowd is a mix of NYU graduate students, two reading-group rotations, and the occasional Letterman pilgrim.

The bar has a quiet age policy: the door staff at peak hours keep the room at a minimum age of 25 by polite enforcement. This is unusual and is the explicit policy of the Meades family, who do not want the bar overrun by NYU undergraduates.

How not to be the worst person at Old Town.

• Do not photograph the dumbwaiter cycle. The bartenders consider it intrusive. Watch instead.
• Do not ask the bartenders to ring the bell for a photograph. The bell rings when the dumbwaiter arrives, not for visitors.
• Do not order a craft cocktail off menu. The bartenders pour from the menu and the Manhattan is the cocktail.
• Do not lean against the mahogany bar at the back near the dumbwaiter. That is where the bartenders need to receive plates.
• Do not bring a stag party. The age policy applies more strictly to groups of men in matching shirts.
• Do not request a Letterman selfie spot. The Meades will polite-decline and the bartenders will note you.
• Do not, under any circumstances, ask for a bun substitute on the burger. The bun is the bun.

Old Town for the burger, Pete's Tavern for the second drink, Gramercy Park to walk home.

The classic Flatiron evening: arrive at Old Town at 6pm for the burger and a Brooklyn Lager, take a booth, watch the dumbwaiter for an hour. Walk three blocks east to Pete's Tavern at 8pm for a second pint in O Henry's writing room. End by walking through Gramercy Park at 9:30pm: the park is private but you can see in.

For more bars in the area, see our New York city guide, the Flatiron cocktail bars, and the after-work bars in NY.

Yes. The most preserved 19th century saloon in Manhattan.