Why one of San Francisco's oldest bars is legally frozen in time

Open since 1908, House of Shields bartender Shanti DeLuca, shares some of the bar's unique history. Open since 1908, House of Shields bartender Shanti DeLuca, shares some of the bar's unique history. Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate Buy photo Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Why one of San Francisco's oldest bars is legally frozen in time 1 / 24 Back to Gallery

Shanti DeLuca’s got a theory about the death of President Warren G. Harding: It could have been a murder, and he might have died here at the House of Shields. It’s not exclusively his hypothesis — in fact, there’s a whole book presenting a variation of the story — but as he stands behind the bar at this anachronistic, resplendent mahogany-lined relic, it’s not hard to believe DeLuca’s got an inside scoop on one of San Francisco's most prominent conspiracy theories.

People talk, especially here; bartenders listen.

That’s how it’s always been.

DeLuca’s been at House of Shields almost 10 years, slinging early 20th-century cocktails and highballs for a mix of neighborhood locals, commuters, and tourists lodging across the street at the Palace Hotel. These days, the vacationers can just cross the street for a nightcap. But in a bygone era — like during Prohibition, when a booth might have been occupied by a president clandestinely sipping spirits — House of Shields patrons needed to abscond under cover of darkness through an underground tunnel connecting it to the neighboring hotel. It was through that speakeasy passageway, local lore dictates, that Harding was whisked back up to his suite after the poison hit him, and he suffered cardiac arrest and died at the bar. Officially though, Harding fell ill in Seattle on July 27, 1923 and died days later in San Francisco of a heart attack. An autopsy was not performed.

Other than that tunnel, which DeLuca says is now sealed up, things are remarkably similar to then, for better and worse. There are still no clocks, per eponymous owner Eddie Shields’ mandate, and mahogany walls and vintage chandeliers continue to warm the room. Regulars remain their best customers, and they still shuffle into the bar to sneak a lunchtime pint. Under their feet are the same hand-laid white mosaic tiles, timeworn by more than a century of brogue and boot scuffs.

Also unchanged is the bar itself. It's part of the lore of a bar this old — you can't change much of anything without triggering an avalanche of changes from the city. That status, ultimately, could leave the bar in a relative state of unactable fixes — frozen in time for as long as the bar can maintain the status quo. Here, DeLuca’s got about three feet of space between the spirit shelves and the inner edge of the bar. It’s not a lot of room for one’s elbows, not that he really minds.

“It's nice that when you're back here, everything you need is within your arm’s reach and you never take more than one step in the direction to get anything you need,” he says. “The only part that gets to be a real tango is in the middle, since we have the dishwasher — which of course there never would have been a dishwasher here [originally] — and you have the computer which, there would have been an old cash register here. So there's a little bottleneck. You have to get good at being very spatially aware.”

Other features of the bar are less agreeable. The cold boxes, which store kegs, cans and bottles, are original, and “beautiful” as DeLuca says, but difficult to maintain. The handles occasionally break, and the glass falls out.

There’s also the fact that in order to exit from behind the bar, DeLuca and other bartenders have to duck under it. Because of how old it is, there’s no way to prop the bar top up.

“The tightness back here doesn’t bother me; we're used to it. But that,” he says, pointing to where staff crouch under the bar to leave when they clock off, “is really annoying, nine-and-a-half years later. It doesn't get any easier, and it’s kind of hard on the back and the knees. You get good at it.”

Many bartenders like DeLuca have become adept at navigating the eccentricities of the bar over its storied history, sacrificing conveniences to enjoy the setting.

“[They’re] not a big deal,” he says. “These are just small little quirks that you put up with to work in such a beautiful place. I just love to think about all the history here, all the amazing bartenders that worked here over the years, all the amazing guests that came in over the years. If only these walls could talk.”

Coupled with the beauty of the space itself, the people-watching opportunities are a big reason so many of Shields’ customers are regulars. In fact, at any given time, DeLuca says he knows about 60% of the guests.

For years, local legends like the Chronicle's Herb Caen and columnist Charles McCabe were such frequent visitors. Caen often wrote about overheard exchanges at the House of Shields, and McCabe occasionally found editorial inspiration while bellied up at the bar. Sometimes he wrote prose about its lack of clocks — “This endears it to me above all its other merits,” he once wrote — and in other columns he took to print to expound its many charms.

“The finest saloon in town, bar none, is the House of Shields on New Montgomery,” McCabe wrote in 1959. “It is a place for career drinkers. The drinks are liberal, women are not encouraged, and the ambiance is an analgesic dark brown. (All good saloons are dark brown, to match the taste in one’s mouth on unfortunate mornings.)”

The room then looked a lot like it does now, with booths DeLuca says were “perfect for hatching all different kinds of plots.” Journalists gossiped and the movers and shakers of the city made lucrative deals over Old Fashioneds.

By 1959, Eddie Shields had owned the bar for more than 20 years. It was a “high-brow gentlemen’s club,” and women wouldn’t be warmly received inside for another couple decades. When women resolved to enter anyway, “they had to drink upstairs so they weren't privy to the men's conversations,” DeLuca says. By 1972, the bar added a women’s restroom by “just divid[ing] the men’s room into two.”

For better or worse, the House of Shields has always resisted time and all its revolutions, to the point of brusquely spelling out the message with a sign in the ‘60s reading, “Enter these portals and forget time and care.”

Ten years ago, Dennis Leary (not the actor) bought the House of Shields. He owned the sandwich shop next door, giving him an in to buy the space. Once he took over, he carefully preserved its decor. He kept the lamps and the metal figurines (one of which features a model of Alma Spreckels) perched around the room, and he added a portrait of President Harding — a cheeky nod to its most famous rumored patron.

It’s a rare privilege to drink in a real speakeasy, DeLuca adds, not like those trendy bars needlessly requiring passwords for entry through a secret door.

“I get it, you can dress up,” he says, “but I love this because it's a regulars’ bar. It's here for the people and it's a pillar of the community here.”

When you leave the bar, into a downtown San Francisco of work hours and deadlines, things move on a schedule. Life can be laborious. But at the House of Shields, home to no clocks, time stands still.

“Things have been changing in particularly the last five years so rapidly and so many of these landmark businesses are going under,” DeLuca adds. “Little by little the city's losing its identity and having a place like this that doesn't have Wi-Fi on top of not having clocks or TVs, it kind of makes it a nice meeting ground for people from all over San Francisco to get together and hopefully have a conversation … You can't find a better location than this.”

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE Digital Editor. Email: apereira@sfchronicle.com | Twitter: @alyspereira

