But it had to be done.

A couple of weeks ago, another city health inspector paid another visit to McSorley’s, a drinking establishment that has been around since the 1850s, and looks it.

For many, this is the charm of the place: you sip your beer, take in that portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or that wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth, or those firefighter helmets, and you can almost feel your long-dead relations beside you, waiting for a free round.

But the charm is lost upon the occasional few. They might not understand, for example, what those dust-covered wishbones above the bar have come to mean.

Joseph Mitchell, the inimitable chronicler of old New York, once wrote that the founder, John McSorley, simply liked to save things, including the wishbones of holiday turkeys. But Mr. Maher, who has worked at McSorley’s since 1964 — he predates some of the memorabilia — insists that the bones were hung by doughboys as wishful symbols of a safe return from the Great War. The bones left dangling came to represent those who never came back.