Looking for the most historic bars in Georgia? These 13 spots, from an 18th-century Savannah tavern to Macon’s home of Southern rock, deliver.
Georgia has a demolition problem. If it’s old and sitting on valuable land, odds are someone’s already sketched out a parking deck or multimillion-dollar condo complex. Few of our buildings predate the Civil War (Sherman saw to that), which is why the bars on this list deserve a toast. Between them, they’ve weathered wars, booms, busts, and at least one stretch when drinking was flat-out illegal.
Some are proper dives where the floors stick and the jukebox hasn’t been touched since the Carter administration. Others house cabinets of curiosities. All of them have stories, and a few have ghosts, if you believe the bartenders.
So grab a beer and put on your comfiest sneakers. We’re touring Georgia’s most historic bars from oldest to youngest, and it’s a long way from colonial Savannah to the birthplace of Southern rock.
1. The Pirates’ House
Location: 20 E. Broad St., Savannah
Established in 1753, The Pirates’ House claims to be the oldest bar in Georgia. In fact, one section of the building dates back even further—the Herb House was built in 1734 as a community garden for the fledgling colony.
Sailors and dockworkers have been drinking here since the colonial era, and legend has it that a few unlucky patrons were shanghaied through underground tunnels to the Savannah River. In the novel “Treasure Island,” Captain Flint dies in a Savannah tavern, and the Pirates’ House likes to claim it happened upstairs.
Today, it’s a full-service restaurant but still saves room at the bar for casual visitors dropping by for a tipple. Order a rum cocktail and ask your server for the tunnel story—just take it with a grain of salt.
2. Abe’s on Lincoln
Location: 17 Lincoln St., Savannah
Squeeze into Abe’s on a busy night and the first thing you’ll notice is the ceiling—low, wood-beamed, and centuries old—followed immediately by the second thing: it’s completely papered in amateur portraits of Abraham Lincoln. Hundreds of them, in ink and marker, ranging from earnest to unhinged; zombie Lincoln is a particular highlight.
The tradition started with somebody who couldn’t pay their tab. As the story goes, a customer came up short one night and offered the bartender a hand-drawn portrait of the 16th president instead of cash. The bartender pinned it up, other regulars started adding their own, and the wall just kept growing from there.
The building has served alcohol continuously since 1852, through the Civil War, Prohibition, and everything after, making it one of the longest unbroken bar runs in the entire Southeast. Abe’s, the current occupant since 2010, couldn’t care less about the accolade. The bar doesn’t even promote itself on social media; instead, it prefers to share memes and let people discover it the old-fashioned way: by wandering in off the street.
3. Atkins Park
Location: 794 N. Highland Ave. NE, Atlanta
The ceiling at Atkins Park is original to the building, and owner Sandra Spoon has a theory about why it’s never needed replacing: decades of cigarette smoke, back when smoking was still allowed inside, basically glued it in place. It’s those classy little details that make this Virginia-Highland spot the perfect dive.
It opened as a deli in 1922, picked up a beer and wine license the second Prohibition lifted, and never let it go, making Atkins Park Atlanta’s oldest continuously licensed tavern. Spoon has tended bar here since 1985, and she’ll tell you about regulars who met at that very bar decades ago and still come back to celebrate their anniversary.
The menu’s gone upscale—duck-fat-fried wings, gourmet burgers, and a surprisingly decent wine list—but the hours haven’t. Atkins Park is open until at least midnight Tuesday through Sunday, and until 3 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
4. Crystal Beer Parlor
Location: 301 W. Jones St., Savannah
Crystal Beer Parlor has technically died twice. It started life in the early 1900s as a family grocery store, got sold to William “Blocko” and Connie Manning in the ‘30s—who, as the story goes, ran it as a quiet speakeasy right up until Prohibition ended—and became Crystal Beer Parlor in 1933. It’s opened and closed a few times over the years, but current owner John Nichols has kept the lights on since 2009.
Nichols will also tell you the place might not be entirely empty after hours. He’s described hearing footsteps running through the upstairs apartment where Connie Manning herself used to live—on a night the building was completely empty.
Today, homestyle details like a hand-written specials menu on butcher paper have replaced the secretive speakeasy, but the long wooden bar remains the same. The crab stew is a highlight, alongside a 25-plus-draft beer list, and the bar’s Oktoberfest celebration each fall.
5. Moe’s & Joe’s Tavern
Location: 1033 N. Highland Ave. NE, Atlanta
After coming home from fighting in World War II, Moe and Joe Krinsky did what any pair of brothers might do: they opened a bar. Longtime regular Horace McKennie used to claim it was the best place in town to meet your future spouse, and enough couples have proven him right that it’s become neighborhood lore.
The real superlative, though, is liquid: PBR named Moe’s & Joe’s the top seller of Pabst by volume in the country, and the Virginia-Highland bar has the receipts (literally)—in 2020, the bar poured through roughly two full kegs each day, about 330 12-ounce pours. That devotion shows up everywhere, from the PBR-stocked claw machine to the wall murals to the $2 tallboys every Wednesday.
Even some of the pub grub hasn’t changed in nearly 80 years—the $7.50 Mojo Burger and $8 goose liver sandwich are both Moe’s & Joe’s staples. Show up Wednesday at 8:30 for trivia night, and claim a spot on the dog-friendly patio if you can get one.
6. The Original Pinkie Masters
Location: 318 Drayton St., Savannah
Luis “Pinkie” Masterpolis, son of Greek immigrants, opened this cash-only dive in 1953, and while it’s lived many lives, it’s remained a mainstay of Savannah’s dive bar scene. Jimmy Carter was a regular over the years and stopped by in 1978 to pay tribute after Pinkie’s death. The popular version of the tale—that he stood on the bar to announce his run for president—is more legend than fact, but it adds to the bar’s larger-than-life reputation.
The original bar closed in 2016 following a legal and lease dispute. It reopened almost immediately under new owners as The Original Pinkie Masters with the same jukebox, the same regulars, and the same three-dollar PBRs in coozies people bring from home. Bring cash and leave your phone in your pocket—someone is bound to tell you to put it away.
7. Manuel’s Tavern
Location: 602 N. Highland Ave. NE, Atlanta
Manuel’s Tavern refuses to be what it terms “a brass and fern” bar. Instead of trendy decor, you’ll find decades of clutter—Polaroids of old employees, 1950s Atlanta Crackers lineups, a nude portrait one regular left behind to settle a bar tab—filling a maze of small rooms that most first-timers get a little lost in.
The mess isn’t an accident. When the tavern closed for renovation in 2015, regulars panicked that it would come back looking like an Applebee’s. Owner Brian Maloof’s fix was to strip the interior down, then put every photograph and tchotchke back exactly where it had been. As with any dive bar worth its salt, Manuel’s is unapologetically itself. There’s even a “clergy only” parking spot out back that’s still respected by patrons.
Order the McCloskey Burger and something on tap, and argue with a stranger about the Braves.
8. Clermont Lounge
Location: 789 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta
No tour of Atlanta is complete without at least a passing mention of the Clermont Lounge. Housed below what is now a boutique hotel with a Michelin-recognized restaurant, this basement strip club hasn’t changed a thing in its roughly 70-year existence: No cameras, no draft beer, cash preferred, and Blondie—one of the club’s first Black dancers—still crushing PBR cans between her breasts most weeks, a trick she’s been doing since the late 1970s, alongside reading her own poetry between sets.
The endearingly grungy space has been a nightclub since 1955, under one name or another, and became the notorious Clermont Lounge—Atlanta’s oldest strip club, arguably its best dive bar—in 1965. While the neighborhood has become more trendy, the Clermont keeps doing karaoke on Tuesdays and doesn’t much care who’s watching from upstairs.
9. Grant’s Lounge
Location: 576 Poplar St., Macon
Grant’s has always looked like a dive bar and sounded like a music hall of fame. The photo-crammed walls do most of the talking, but the bones underneath are pure dive: cheap covers, sticky floors, a stage barely big enough for a full band.
Ed Grant Sr. opened it on Feb. 16, 1971, hoping to give Macon’s “long hair hippies” somewhere to play—and, at a time when Macon’s schools weren’t yet integrated, somewhere Black and white musicians could play together, too. A dollar got you five or six bands a night, and because Capricorn Records was down the street, Grant’s doubled as an unofficial audition room. The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd both played here before anyone knew their names.
Today, under new ownership but with the Grant family still very much in the mix, live music still runs several nights a week for a $10-$15 cover.
10. Northside Tavern
Location: 1058 Howell Mill Rd. NW, Atlanta
Bars on the windows, walls painted black, a pool table crammed in next to the stage—one longtime patron described the scene at Northside Tavern as a cross between the juke joint in “The Color Purple” and the Mos Eisley Cantina. He meant it as a compliment, and once you’ve been, you’ll understand why.
The building started as a 1940s grocery store and gas station, then became a package store and bar in the early ‘70s. It stayed that way until 1992, when a young musician named Danny “Mudcat” Dudeck convinced owner Ellyn Webb to start booking live blues. That decision reshaped both the bar and Atlanta’s blues scene.
The bar still offers live blues seven nights a week—no cover on weeknights, $10 on weekends—the only bar in Atlanta that can make the claim.
11. The Fox’s Lair
Location: 349 Telfair St., Augusta
Billed as “the coolest place you’ll never find,” The Fox’s Lair operates somewhere in the grey space between speakeasy and dive bar. There’s no sign at street level, just a staircase leading down into the basement of the Olde Town Inn, an 1870s building nestled in Augusta’s oldest neighborhood.
While The Lair isn’t quite that old—it’s been pouring since 1976—it is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, plenty of time to become one of the city’s favorite haunts. Downstairs is all exposed brick, low light, and a small stage that gets used almost every night: live music on Tuesday through Saturday, comedy on Mondays, and an open mic on Thursdays.
Unlike the average dive, the bar leans into craft cocktails and a Georgia-focused beer list. Dessert martinis and spiked coffee concoctions are a highlight as is the extensive selection of mules. Thursday through Saturday, it stays open until 2 a.m.
12. Euclid Avenue Yacht Club
Location: 1136 Euclid Ave. NE, Atlanta
There’s no water for miles around Little Five Points, but that hasn’t stopped the mounted marlins, the skulls, and the biker photos from taking over the wood-paneled walls of Euclid Avenue Yacht Club since 1987—founder Donald “Hippie” Hinamon’s own description of the place is “Cheers on LSD.” Regulars have even named a cluster of barstools at one end of the bar “the Bullshit Corner,” dedicated to talking smack.
Hinamon ran the place himself until COVID forced a long closure. Rather than let it fold, he sold it in 2021 to Manny Maloof, owner of Manny’s in Grant Park, on one condition: keep it exactly as weird as it’s always been. Maloof held up his end. The mermaid bust still keeps vigil over the patrons, there’s still no cover for live music, and “Membership not required” still hangs over the door.
13. Magnolia’s Bar of Athens
Location: 312 E. Broad St., Athens
When the final whistle blows at a UGA home game, plenty of fans wander down East Broad Street to “Mags,” where two bars, free pool, a patio, and eight TVs (backed up by four projectors) wait for anyone not ready to stop watching football.
The building has outlasted every business that’s occupied it. Built in 1889, it spent decades as an appliance store before it became Tasty World in the late ‘90s, a multi-story music venue that launched bands like The Whigs and Modern Skirts.
Magnolia’s took over in 2009, making it the youngest bar on this list by a wide margin. But the wooden floors, exposed brick walls, and the “Frigidaire” moniker still painted on the exterior showcase the bar’s place in the story of Athens.
