Peter Walsh, Coogan’s bar owner and Water Mill resident, dies at 78
Peter was a poet, a playwright, a road race promoter, an Irish Tenor, an actor, a Marathoner, and Heavyweight Boxing Champ of Trinity College in Dublin Ireland.
Peter Walsh and his wife, Suzanne Clifton Walsh, made their Water Mill home their full-time residence in 2018. Credit: Courtesy of the Walsh Family
By Frank LoveceSpecial to NewsdayUpdated April 29, 2025 4:27 pm
As an owner of the legendary Washington Heights bar-restaurant Coogan’s, Water Mill’s Peter Walsh helped bring in the plethora of politicos that made it the “Uptown City Hall.”
“We had a lot of politicians who would frequent,” remembered David Hunt, who with Walsh and Tess O’Connor McDade made up the final and most long-lasting team of proprietors of the now-shuttered establishment. Coogan’s was where Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams met with influential U.S. congressman Charlie Rangel in 1996. New York State assemblyman Herman “Denny” Farrell was “a regular customer from Day One,” said Hunt, and “would have meetings here and say, ‘If The New York Times wants to sit at the next table and overhear the conversation, that’s fine with me.’ “
One of those reporters might have been fellow Coogan’s regular Jim Dwyer, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for Newsday before joining the Times. Other patrons included Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. Yet friends and regulars in the sports and arts communities also made it a place where Lin-Manuel Miranda might sing a patron an impromptu “Happy Birthday” and the likes of Ron Darling, Alicia Keys, John Turturro, Donnie Wahlberg and “Sesame Street” stalwart Bob McGrath would eat.
But mostly the clientele was families from the largely Dominican and Black neighborhood — a fact reflected in the name of the Coogan’s Salsa, Blues & Shamrocks 5K footrace.
No small portion of its appeal was Walsh.
“This guy was larger than life,” said his wife, retired art educator and administrator Suzanne Clifton Walsh, with whom he had three children. “This man really, really lived life to the fullest,” she said — from collecting rare books in his ancestral Ireland to running marathons. “He always was just so positive. He was positive until the end,” when he died of cancer at his home on April 18 at age 78.
“He was certainly a business partner, but he was a great, great friend,” said Hunt. “Peter and I talked bluntly about his passing, and the thing we agreed upon is that both of us were way beyond the breakeven point in life, because we could value what we did. We could judge how we succeeded by our families and our children.”
Army veteran
Born March 8, 1947, in Manhattan, Peter Mallon Walsh was the second youngest of five children of James J. Walsh, a manager for the distillery Seagram, and Eileen Joan Rown Walsh. Raised in the Yorkville neighborhood, he graduated from Mount Saint Michael Academy in the Bronx and earned a bachelor’s in history from Marist College, now Marist University, in upstate Poughkeepsie in 1969.
Walsh enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1970 because “he lived in a very small apartment with all these siblings,” explained his wife, “and he wanted to see life.” He achieved the rank of E-4 specialist, serving in the 7th Psychological Operations Group in Okinawa through his honorable discharge in 1973, when he entered the Army Reserve through 1975.
By then he was attending Trinity College Dublin on the G.I. Bill, earning a degree in Irish studies, his family said, and publishing a 1975 book of poetry, “12 Passports and a Stowaway.” Returning to the United States, he began bartending at the Upper East Side tavern Pudding’s, and eventually bought a stake in it. He later sold his interest and, with partners including Hunt and Peter’s brother Vincent Walsh, bought the existing bar Coogan’s in 1990. After some partners exited, O’Connor McDade bought in around 1996.
Walsh married Suzanne Clifton in 1986, and around 2000, she said, they bought their Water Mill house for summers away from their Upper East Side home. When she retired in 2018, their children grown, the couple made it their primary residence. Peter Walsh would commute to Coogan’s until the fabled establishment closed in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.
In his retirement, Walsh penned poems and songs and began writing his first novel. He became involved with the Bridgehampton Museum; the nonprofit group East End Jazz; and Jazz Night, held weekly at the Masonic Temple above the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, where he would sing, read poetry and emcee, his wife said.
In addition to his wife, he was survived by their children, son Conor Walsh, of Maine, and twin daughters Dana Walsh Holmes, also of Maine, and Alice Walsh Dempsey, of California; brother Vincent Walsh, of Garden City; sisters Elaine Walsh and Nancy Walsh, both of New York City; and four grandchildren.
A celebration of his life is set for 2 p.m. Saturday at the Nike Track & Field Center at The Armory in Washington Heights. Donations may be made to The Armory Foundation or to the Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center.