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In the historic downtown of York, Pennsylvania, near the courthouse where the Articles of Confederation were drafted and a farmers’ market built in the days of horse-drawn carts, you’ll find a curious building called the National House. Constructed in 1828 as a hotel, its porches and airy galleries recall antebellum New Orleans. In its days as a hotel, it hosted guests like Mark Twain and Martin van Buren. Now it’s the home of my favorite bar.
The Hound opened in 2012, in the early days of the craft beer boom. Its thirty rotating taps offer seasonal brews from local favorites like Tröegs and Victory, mixed in with ten-ounce pours of funky sour wheat goses or boozy imperial stouts. The Hound is comfortable like an old pair of slippers, with well-worn wooden floors and tables, warm orange tones and strings of Christmas lights year-round.
I moved into an apartment above the Holy Hound Taproom on the Feast of the Assumption, 2020, a refugee from Covid-era New York City. What a luxury, in that era of to-go cocktails, to sit at a bar. I could take the elevator to my door, a vertical subway train.
During my two-and-a-half-years as an upstairs neighbor, my meal-planning revolved around the Hound’s food specials: wings on Monday, burgers on Tuesday, tacos on Wednesday, happy hour 4 to 6. I came to expect a text from my younger brother on Sunday afternoons, aka half-price ramen noodle day: “I’m downstairs.”
Many of the bartenders were my neighbors, too. Ray, the long-haired, bespectacled hippie behind the bar, shared gossip about downtown characters. A few of the staff joined a family celebration at my brother’s Marine Corps commissioning. They stayed open late for us the night before my grandfather’s funeral, as we put the Dropkick Murphys on the jukebox and cleared out their supply of Guinness.
My time at the Hound is behind me now. I got married recently and have moved to San Antonio. The day after our wedding, we surfaced at the Hound for Bloody Marys, half-priced ramen and fond farewells. I’ve never been able to determine whether the Hound’s name is an allusion to Francis Thompson’s famous 1890 poem “The Hound of Heaven,” about a sinner desperately trying to escape the pull of the divine. I may be a sinner, but I’m not running from the Hound. I can’t wait to go back.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s August 2023 World edition.
