Atlantic City's Irish Pub, the century-old tavern and inn on St. James Place that once hosted Joe DiMaggio and inspired the red hotel pieces on the Monopoly board, has sat dark since the end of 2025 — and the reason isn't a lack of customers. It's a fire-code standoff over how to fit modern sprinkler piping into a dining room lined with Tiffany lamps and irreplaceable memorabilia without tearing the historic building apart.
The closure has stretched long enough that the pub missed its entire summer tourist season, according to New Jersey 101.5, whose reporter Eric “EJ” Johnson has been a regular at the bar since he turned 18 — the state's legal drinking age. Owner Cathy Burke, who bought the building with her late husband Richard Burke in 1972, has installed sprinklers throughout most of the structure and paid for the bulk of that work herself, the station reports. The holdout is the first-floor dining room, where a contractor reportedly abandoned the sprinkler project after proposing to tear up the street outside just to run the necessary lines.
At the center of the dispute is whether the building should be classified as a high-rise, a designation that would trigger stricter fire-safety upgrades under New Jersey's fire code. Under the state's Uniform Fire Code, high-rise structures — generally those with occupied floors more than 75 feet above fire department access — must undergo complete automatic sprinkler retrofits, a threshold laid out by Downbeach BUZZ. The Irish Pub sits at the heart of that classification fight.
No Official Order, But a Business in Limbo
Despite widespread local assumptions that the state forced the doors shut, a New Jersey Department of Community Affairs spokesperson told NJ.com in September 2026 that the Division of Fire Safety never issued a formal closing notice for the building. That leaves the ongoing shutdown unresolved. A Division of Community Affairs spokesperson said Burke may keep operating while she works to resolve the violations, or she could pursue a variance — but per New Jersey 101.5, Burke has said reopening now would force staff layoffs once repairs and construction actually begin, and the pub continues to accrue daily fines in the meantime.
Burke isn't ready to give up on the place. “The Irish Pub is not ready to write its final chapter,” she said, according to New Jersey 101.5, adding that she believes there's still a way forward. The pub traces its roots to the 19th century; Cathy and Richard Burke are identified as its founders in 1972. The only other time it's gone dark in more than a century, according to the station, was during Prohibition.
A Radio Career That Started at the Bar
For Johnson, the closure carries a personal weight beyond the business story. He was born in Atlantic City and raised 18 miles away in Mays Landing, and he says he was introduced to the Irish Pub by Michael “Spyder” McGuire, an Atlantic City radio personality who worked alongside him at two stations and taught him the basics of broadcasting inside those walls. Johnson recounts one especially memorable night at the bar when he had his car towed and impounded after parking in a lot next door — only for an Atlantic City police officer to recover the car without issuing a fine or ticket and personally drive him to the impound lot to get it back.
That kind of story is part of why the pub's history reads like a scrapbook of Atlantic City itself. Baseball legend Joe DiMaggio was reportedly a regular long-term guest at the upstairs inn, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Budd Schulberg once said he'd like to spend his last hours on earth at the Irish Pub, according to The Irish Pub Atlantic City. The building's distinctive design is also said to have served as the original model for the red hotel pieces used in the Monopoly board game — a fitting bit of trivia given the pub's address on St. James Place, one of the board's three orange properties.
A Community Fixture Beyond the Bar Stool
Burke's civic footprint in Atlantic City extends well past the pub itself. The city co-designated St. James Place as “Cathy Burke Way” in August 2016 to honor her contributions, including her catalyst role in building the Boardwalk's First Responders and 9/11 Memorial. Since the 1980s, the pub has also hosted an annual tradition called Bag Day every March 18 — a morning-after gathering created by Burke for casino staff, hospitality workers, and first responders who worked through St. Patrick's Day, complete with participants wearing decorated paper takeout bags over their heads, as previously detailed by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The pub also remains a focus of local concern. Michael Suleiman, a representative of the South Jersey forward public policy nonprofit, said the prolonged closure has devastated both the business and the city around it, and he's encouraged people who care about the pub to contact the state directly. Johnson and co-host Kyle Forcini, joined by Dennis Malloy, took up that cause during a live broadcast of the Judi & EJ Show from Atlantic City's Steel Pier in late June, after Johnson took a walk around town ahead of the show.
The surrounding discussion also mentions the Orange Loop and Pacific Avenue.
Old Buildings, New Scrutiny
The state's rigid stance on high-rise fire-safety requirements isn't happening in a vacuum. Scrutiny over fire code enforcement in Atlantic City's older buildings intensified after a January 2026 fire at the 13-story Brighton Towers apartment building, where the absence of automatic sprinklers forced firefighters to stage rescues from balconies, according to Downbeach BUZZ. The incident involved fire-safety concerns at the apartment building.
Fire-code compliance is also part of the discussion of sprinkler installations in residential community homes.
Hoodline previously named it AC's top pub based on Yelp data and customer reviews, a reminder of just how central the tavern has been to the city's nightlife scene. The dining room's Tiffany lamps, DiMaggio-related memorabilia, and the rest of the pub's fixtures reflect its history as Burke and state regulators seek a fire-code fix without gutting the history that made the place a landmark in the first place.
