Oyster Paddy's Tavern was a Pittsburgh landmark for a short time, notorious for its sketchy clientele. Opened sometime around 1875, the bar thrived until liquor licenses were required, which owner Hugh O'Donnell (also known as Oyster Paddy) would never get. So he retired, the building was eventually torn down, and O'Donnell fell ill with cancer.
On the morning of Friday, June 22, 1906, workmen employed by Howard Bros. Contractors were excavating a foundation for a new skyscraper when they uncovered a pair of human skeletons two feet beneath the kitchen of a derelict building which had once been Oyster Paddy's Tavern. The initial supposition was that the workers had uncovered the remains of two Indians, but anyone who was old enough to remember the saloon-- and its infamous patrons-- during its heyday prior to the passage of the Brooks License Law of 1887 were highly skeptical of this explanation.
Back then, when taverns were largely unregulated, Paddy's regulars included some of the hardest, meanest men to ever haunt the Steel City waterfront.
Oyster Paddy's Tavern was only open a little more than ten years, but during that time, a number of plausible perpetrators and victims hung out there. While the bodies were never identified, you can read about the investigation and some of the many crimes linked to the tavern at Pennsylvania Oddities. -via Strange Company
