SADLY I have never visited Big Nose Kate’s, a saloon way out in Rossville, at 2484 Arthur Kill Road, tucked near the huge Old Bermuda catering hall next to the West Shore Expressway. Vincent Signorile, the last of the three owners the inn has had since opening in 1994, decided to close it at EOB on February 20, 2025, though he plans to reopen another tavern elsewhere. I am always saddened to hear of neighborhood joints closing, and Big Nose Kate’s location has had an unusual history.
“Big Nose Kate” was a real person, a prostitute who was an associate of Doc Holliday (himself the namesake of a “dive bar” on Avenue A in the East Village), a Hungarian immigrant named Mary Katherine Haroney; her aquiline nose gave her her nickname.
Among other things in a colorful life, Big Nose Kate herself is remembered for the aftermath of a card game and bar fight involving her boyfriend at the time, Doc Holliday. Doc knifed a man supposedly in self-defense. As a result, long story short, Holliday was held in a guarded hotel room and Kate “with a pistol in each hand, disarmed the guard and the two escaped,” as per Bignosekatetombstone.com. Kate died at 89 and is buried as “Mary K. Cummings” in Prescott, Ariz, in 1940. [SILive]
Kate herself isn’t the only Hungarian association with the building. According to urban chronicler Nathan Kensinger, “this simple wooden structure was built circa 1855, and was a chapel for St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church. In the 1930s, it became home to the Magyar Reformed Church of Rossville, with a Hungarian congregation that had split off from the Magyar church in nearby Kreischerville.” And, according to the SILive article, “A bell has remained in its rafters since those pre-bar days of prayer and worship.”
It’s a long journey from church to saloon, and reportedly the building’s next purpose will be as a dental office; hopefully the building is retained and not demolished.
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2/23/25