By James A. Peterson
I’m at Albany’s New Scotland Spirits Tasting Room, which just celebrated its grand opening with a ribbon cutting a couple weeks ago. With me is Mark Brogna, the venue’s landlord and already its preeminent regular, along with his partner John McLeland and friend Julianne Burnham. Even though the Tasting Room is brand new, Mark declares that he’s been “a regular at this very bar” for years.
“See?” he says, showing a photograph of his younger self. “The bar in this picture is the same one we’re sitting at right now.”
That quarter-century old photo usually lives in a drawer at the back of Mark’s “Capital Wine & Spirits,” a shop directly across Lark Street in Center Square. In it, Mark is perched at the far end of the oak-and-mahogany bar for which the former Larkin Restaurant was once famous, sporting what he describes as the “bored smirk” befitting his early 30s.
“Behold the young man at the height of his wisdom,” Mark says, chuckling as he runs his finger over the photo’s glossy surface. “This was even before 9/11, before I even met John. What I love about this picture is that even though the Larkin is gone, all these people are still around.”
“Now, that after all this time, we can all finally sit at this bar again,” says John. “What New Scotland Spirits called a ‘grand opening’ was actually, for us, more of a ‘homecoming’.”
The Living Room
Old signage suggests that the Larkin Restaurant—or some version of it—operated at 199 Lark Street as far back as 1939. For decades, it’d been a “revered political watering hole” and performance lounge, booking jazz and other music acts until it closed for good in 2004. The space then sat vacant for the next twenty years.
“Seeing it dark and desolate, rotting there year after year… it was just gut-wrenching,” says Mark, whose shop has a direct line of sight to the Larkin’s exterior. “That was where I’d had my first date with John, the night we met. It’s where so many people in this neighborhood met. The Larkin wasn’t just a bar to us.”
“We called it ‘the Living Room’,” says Julianne, another former Larkin patron. “It’s where our family of freaks and misfits hung out pretty much every day till close. You knew when you went to the Living Room that your friends would eventually stop by.” Pointing to the picture, she adds: “And everyone had their spot.”
In early June 2022, Mark noticed movement on the other side of the Larkin’s darkened windows. “I walked over and discovered a new owner had bought the building. He was gutting it and throwing everything right in the dumpster.”
Mark said he would’ve paid him $10,000 or begged him on bended knee not to destroy his beloved oak-and-mahogany bar, but the new owner didn’t ask for anything that extreme. “He said, ‘you can have it, but only if you get it out in the next 24 hours’,” Mark remembers. “So, I sent up the Bat signal.”
Mark wasted no time reassembling the motley crew which had once fashioned a second home out of that oak-and-mahogany bar. The next morning, Mark and John were joined by Dan Fitzgerald, Andy Burkett, Jeffrey Gordon, John Carson, Ken Ragsdale, Jeff Dembowski, Chris Burke, and Bill Brandow, all of whom descended on the space with crowbars and hammers.
“Everyone was walking around the bar, reminiscing about where they used to sit,” Julianne says. “That bar meant so much to so many people; it’s why so many of us showed up that morning. We’ve been friends for over two decades, and this was where it all started—all of these friendships were forged over this very bar.”
There wasn’t much of a game plan as the group set about disassembling the bar, Mark notes. “I owned a condo just across State Street, and the tenant business had just moved out. So, I said ‘let’s just walk it over there and figure it out later.’ I had no idea that’d be one of the most fortuitous decisions of my adult life.”
New Scotland Spirits
Mark, now saddled with a condo empty but for a historic oak-and-mahogany bar, wasn’t entirely sure of his next move. Yet just a few days later he happened upon the vendor booth of a local whiskey company at the Washington Park Farmers Market.
“I’m not a connoisseur by any stretch of the word,” says Mark, “but spirits are my business. So, I was really surprised by the quality of what I was sampling. I thought ‘what’s to lose in asking?’”
Mark introduced himself to the guy behind the table, and asked if the company had a brick-and-mortar location yet. “The guy said ‘no’,” Mark recalls. “My gears started turning.”
That initial meeting between Mark Brogna and New Scotland Spirits founder Jesse Sommer precipitated what would become a two-year journey towards the renovation of what is now the New Scotland Spirits Tasting Room, painstakingly constructed around Mark’s beloved oak-and-mahogany bar. Located at the corners of State and Lark Street, the bar is barely two hundred feet from where it once occupied the Larkin.
“It’s a lot of pressure being a steward of so many memories and so much symbolism,” Jesse says. “But it’s an honor to give this bar a second life here. Doesn’t it look like it’s right at home?”
It does. Thanks to business partner Rosemary McHugh’s eye for design, the company’s Tasting Room has achieved a look and feel that’s at once familiar and unique: a Prohibition Era speakeasy, complete with tin ceilings, warm amber lighting, and oak trim and crown moldings that perfectly accentuate the tones of the old Larkin bar.
A 1940s jazz playlist softly emanates from the speakers at each corner, fittingly reuniting the bar with the music it once enjoyed back at the Larkin. Company co-owner Jim Muscato succeeded in equipping the space with modern accoutrements (like a flat screen television) that are nonetheless hidden (behind the classical etched mirror) to ensure that nothing distracts from an ambience that would’ve been period appropriate when the old Larkin first opened in 1939.
The New Scotland Spirits Tasting Room is just the latest corridor installation suggesting that Lark Street is in the throes of an undeniable renaissance, kick-started by the opening of The Eleven at Lark Hall last fall.
And though the Larkin Restaurant is no more, from its ashes has arisen a fascinating new venue with a name that pays it due homage: the Larkin Hi-Fi, a vinyl listening lounge featuring records played on open turntables and an array of craft cocktails fashioned from whiskies and vodka supplied by neighboring New Scotland Spirits. Both the Hi-Fi and the Tasting Room—which officially opened their doors the same day—are defined by a relaxed and intimate elegance that’s drawing patrons from around the neighborhood and throughout the Capital District.
“I like seeing all the new faces stopping in,” Julianne says. “But there’s a lot of people who have to learn that this seat”—she points to the stool at the bar’s corner—“belongs to Mark. It always has.”
Mark laughs, and says Julianne is right. But he’s ready to contemplate the Tasting Room patrons of tomorrow.
“This bar is ancient,” Mark says, palming the intricately carved surface of a bar he’s known since young adulthood. “Years ago, I would sit right here and wonder about all the things this bar had seen, through the 40s, the 70s, the 90s. But now, I find myself more curious about what this bar has yet to see, what new relationships are going to be forged around it. I wonder about the lives who’ll develop a love affair with this seat long after I’ve given it up.”
He pauses for a second. “Because a hometown bar isn’t really about the bar,” Mark says. “It’s about the people.”
“Well, yeah,” John says. “But you still need the bar.”
Indeed, you do. And the bar is at the New Scotland Spirits Tasting Room, where it finally belongs.
