While its existence was relatively brief in the 1980's in Chicago's long bar history, O'Sullivan's Tavern, which presently is Emmit's Irish Pub, left a legacy of good times and wild times, including two shooting deaths of would-be robbers and the City Hall intervention to stop dwarf tossing at the bar.

The first floor of Emmit's Irish Pub became a bank during the Prohibition and reportedly housed the cash of many Chicago gangsters.

"I've heard the gangsters kept cash in a safe deposit box so they wouldn't leave a cash trail," said former owner Mike Johnson. Also, during the period when the building was a bank, tunnels were dug from the building to various other buildings in the neighborhood. Johnson said one could go from the bank all the way to Field Museum several miles southeast of the building; making the tunnels a possible hideaway or route for 1920s gangsters on the run.

When Prohibition ended in the 1930s the site became a tavern. However, as the years went on, the neighborhood, once a flourishing Italian community declined, and in 1981, three partners purchased O'Sullivans.

Over the next couple of years, O'Sullivans became a place for cops to hang out, and became a very safe place to go. However, in 1985, two armed robbers, unaware that O'Sullivan's was filled with Chicago's finest, attempted to rob the place.