Fire Guts Beloved Stan's Bar in Southampton, Owner Says He's Not Doing Good

A fire tore through Stan's Bar on Macklind Avenue around noon on Tuesday, gutting the interior of the longtime Southampton watering hole and leaving its five-person staff and a devoted neighborhood community reeling. The bar was unoccupied when the blaze broke out, according to bystanders, and firefighters who responded to the scene included some of the bar's own regular patrons.

Stan's Bar normally would have already been open by that hour, but staff had decided to open late that day because an employee had injured her shoulder, according to St. Louis Magazine. The bar, at 5007 Macklind Avenue, has for years opened in the late morning on many days and had sometimes forgone the first few hours of the day shift, a schedule that made it a fixture for third-shift workers and early risers alike. Owner Stan Courtway told the magazine he was not doing good in the aftermath, even as he received thousands of calls from people reaching out to check on him.

A Bar Built Around Early Hours and Low-Key Vibes

The 6 a.m. opening tradition at Stan's Bar was more than a quirk. A 2019 nightlife feature from the St. Louis Riverfront Times highlighted the bar for opening daily at that hour to serve third-shift workers and early-morning patrons, a niche made possible by Missouri's liquor rules. Under state regulations updated in August 2021, licensed establishments statewide are permitted to sell liquor by the drink starting at 6 a.m. seven days a week, a change from earlier law that had delayed Sunday openings until 9 a.m., according to Park Street Imports.

Jaclyn Thompson, who has tended bar at Stan's since 2019 per the magazine's reporting, said the fire's cause may have been an electrical problem, though the fire remained under official investigation. She described a mixed mood among the regulars in the fire's wake: some viewed the bar as a total loss, while others stayed optimistic, and she said Stan's Bar may be able to reopen. The bar was known for friendly vibes and a low-key atmosphere that drew a loyal crowd of neighbors and off-duty first responders alike.

A Pool Hall Identity Lost to the Flames

Beyond the bar stools, Stan's held a reputation as a serious pool hub. An April 2024 nightlife guide from the Riverfront Times spotlighted the bar's two $1-per-game pool tables, wall-mounted tournament trophies, and a dedicated neighborhood playing community that had built up around the tables over the years. That interior culture, along with the rest of the space, was gutted by the fire, according to the magazine's reporting.

The bar sits in the Macklind Business District, a three-block commercial corridor known for community events like the Macklind Days street festival and the Macklind Mile run, per the Macklind Business District. Southampton residents, in a neighborhood locally nicknamed “SoHa” that recorded 6,647 residents in the 2020 U.S. Census according to Wikipedia, mourned the devastation as word of the fire spread.

Why Off-Duty Firefighters Filled the Barstools

Public safety oversight in Southampton is split along Macklind Avenue between St. Louis Police Districts 1 and 2, and the neighborhood has long been home to a high concentration of resident firefighters and police officers, according to the Southampton Neighborhood Association. That local density helps explain why firefighters were among the regulars at Stan's Bar, and why some of those who responded to Tuesday's fire were putting out flames at a place they knew well.

The St. Louis Fire Department, established in 1857 as the second-oldest fully paid professional fire department in the nation, operates 30 active firehouses and responds to more than 110,000 calls annually across 62 square miles, per the Southampton Neighborhood Association. The fire at Stan's Bar comes less than a month after another St. Louis nightspot, Treasures Bar and Grill in the Central West End, suffered major interior damage from a two-alarm fire on July 28, according to KSDK-TV, adding to a string of recent commercial fires at beloved St. Louis gathering spots.

Community Rallies as Rebuilding Questions Loom

The Stan's Bar community has already planned to rally around the crew of about five people who worked there, and the bar has received an outpouring of support from the neighborhood in the days since the fire. Whether the bar reopens, and how quickly, remains uncertain, though Thompson expressed hope that it could come back.

Any rebuilding effort would unfold within a municipal liquor licensing system shaped by City of St. Louis Ordinance 71819, which governs municipal liquor licenses and maintains ward-level moratoriums restricting new late-night closing permits in designated wards, according to the City of St. Louis. For now, the official cause of the fire remains under investigation, and the fate of one of Southampton's most familiar barstools hangs in the balance.