Zoning

The 'World's Oldest' Bartender's Very Illegal Basement Bar

A recent profile of 103-year-old Irv Koch's basement bar highlights all the ways that modern zoning codes crush novel and fun third places.

Christian Britschgi | 10.6.2026 2:55 PM

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Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. In this week's issue, we have stories on: 

But first, our lead story on the zoning angle behind a feel-good story about the world's oldest bartender. 

Great-Grandfathering in Basement Bars 

The Washington Post yesterday profiled Irvin Koch, who, at the ripe old age of 103, is considered to be the world's oldest bartender. 

The centenarian's establishment, Irv's Basement Bar, is quite literally in the basement beneath his home in Anne Arundel County, on the outskirts of Baltimore. The bar came with the house when Koch purchased the property in 1963. The cash bar proved lucrative enough that he's kept operating it ever since. 

Rent Free Newsletter by Christian Britschgi. Get more of Christian's urban regulation, development, and zoning coverage.

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If running a bar out of your basement sounds like a fun idea, you are unfortunately out of luck. Koch's dive is Maryland's last true "basement bar": an establishment that has more or less been killed off by modern zoning codes. 

As a lawyer for the county's liquor board told Baltimore's The Sun in a 2014 profile of Koch, "You can't do it these days. No one could come in now and do the same thing." 

Koch's own establishment only survives because it was up and running long before the county's modern zoning and building codes were adopted. It's thus been grandfathered into the long list of county and state regulations adopted over the decades. 

It's almost comical to count all the ways that Koch's existing business would be illegal today. Going through the list is also educational. It sheds light on the pieces of red tape silently at work blocking interesting "third places" like Irv's Basement Bar. 

Per the Post's history, Koch's farmhouse was built as a private summerhouse in 1912, some four decades before the county adopted its first comprehensive zoning ordinance in 1952. 

That initial lack of zoning allowed the residential home to be converted into a commercial inn with the basement........

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