The ad reads: $20 gold piece to the gentleman putting in the largest number of balls from the break. Come on, you pool players, and see how many balls you can pocket.
An immigrant success story and one involving booze and billiards.
Michael G. McCormick seems to have gotten in early on the billiard-boom wave. Between 1880 and 1900, the number of billiard halls in the District of Columbia rose by a factor of 10.
A lot had happened to McCormick in the 60 intervening years. As a boy, the Irish-born McCormick sold newspapers. As a young man, he worked as a tailor. When he died, McCormick’s obituary made the front page of the Washington Evening Star.
McCormick’s establishment — at 216 Sixth St. NW, a block off Pennsylvania Avenue — was one of dozens of drinking dens that dotted downtown in the late 19th century. As a newspaper headline nostalgically noted in 1933: “Man Could Drink His Way from Capitol to White House Along the Avenue.”
What would McCormick’s have been like? The baize-topped tables would have sat within open rectangles of carpet, said billiards historian Michael Shamos . The rugs were for the players’ feet. The table legs would have rested directly on the floor so they wouldn’t settle and go out of true in the squishy carpet. Each table would have been lit from above by gas fixtures.
In the 1880s, gentlemen played billiards on a table with no pockets — a carom table. “The game is played with three balls,” Shamos said. “You make points by making your ball hit the other two. That was believed to be the more refined game.”
Read more here: An Old Metal Token Puts Answer Man on Trail of D.C. Tycoon [Retrieved 29 September 2017]
McCormick’s Wine & Billiard Palace, the building second from left below the red arrow, is shown in this 1889 photograph of Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street NW. It was taken after a flood that had filled the streets.
An immigrant success story and one involving booze and billiards.
Michael G. McCormick seems to have gotten in early on the billiard-boom wave. Between 1880 and 1900, the number of billiard halls in the District of Columbia rose by a factor of 10.
A lot had happened to McCormick in the 60 intervening years. As a boy, the Irish-born McCormick sold newspapers. As a young man, he worked as a tailor. When he died, McCormick’s obituary made the front page of the Washington Evening Star.
McCormick’s establishment — at 216 Sixth St. NW, a block off Pennsylvania Avenue — was one of dozens of drinking dens that dotted downtown in the late 19th century. As a newspaper headline nostalgically noted in 1933: “Man Could Drink His Way from Capitol to White House Along the Avenue.”
What would McCormick’s have been like? The baize-topped tables would have sat within open rectangles of carpet, said billiards historian Michael Shamos . The rugs were for the players’ feet. The table legs would have rested directly on the floor so they wouldn’t settle and go out of true in the squishy carpet. Each table would have been lit from above by gas fixtures.
In the 1880s, gentlemen played billiards on a table with no pockets — a carom table. “The game is played with three balls,” Shamos said. “You make points by making your ball hit the other two. That was believed to be the more refined game.”
Read more here: An Old Metal Token Puts Answer Man on Trail of D.C. Tycoon [Retrieved 29 September 2017]
McCormick’s Wine & Billiard Palace, the building second from left below the red arrow, is shown in this 1889 photograph of Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street NW. It was taken after a flood that had filled the streets.
