One of the more popular attractions is Huntington village is a slice of life mural painted on the side of a local watering hole. The Finnegan’s Mural has charmed visitors to the village for almost 50 years. Perhaps unknown to many of those visitors is that the mural depicts real Huntingtonians who frequented the popular bar in the 1970s.
Soon after graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1978, local artist Philip Jordan asked his brother C.J., who tended bar at Finnegan’s, if the owner would let him paint a mural on the blank wall facing the alley. The owner, Rusty Pettit, agreed and even supplied the expensive high-quality enamel paint for the project. The first step was to take Polaroid photos of the bar’s regular customers, 140 of them. Then Jordan spent about six months transforming the blank concrete wall as if it were an X-ray into the bar.
The mural has been a cherished part of Huntington ever since. When Finnegan’s celebrated its centennial in 2012, Jordan returned to touch up the paint and return vibrancy to the picture. At that time a call went out to identify everyone on the mural, dozens of whom had died in the intervening years.
That effort has been brought almost to completion by Claudia Mingin, whose husband Greg was one of the bartenders depicted in the mural. Soliciting input through Facebook, which has a page devoted to the mural, word of mouth, and meet-ups at Finnegan’s over the past 18 months, Mingin has identified all but nine of the people shown in the mural.
If you have any insight into the identity of the people pictured below, please leave a comment below or email the Town Historian at RHughes@HuntingtonNY.gov.
The six patrons seated at the table above have either not been identified or have multiple, conflicting identifications. The patrons pictured may be based on the Polaroids below.
Below are three more Polaroids of unidentified patrons paired with their depiction on the mural.
Huntington History 
Leave a comment