Civic-minded Manhattan restaurateur for 60 years

MICHAEL O’NEAL | Oct. 28, 1936 - Nov. 12, 2018

Michael O’Neal, a civicminded New York restaurateur who, with his actor brother, Patrick, upgraded the emblematic Irish bar into an American bistro that beckoned singles and celebrities, died on Nov. 12 in Manhattan, where he was an owner of a number of its well-known eating establishments. He was 82.

His wife, Christine Covey O’Neal, said the cause was multiple myeloma.

The O’Neal brothers owned two destination restaurants near Lincoln Center: the Ginger Man, whose name was inspired by J.P. Donleavy’s lusty novel and play about a roguish barfly, being portrayed Off Broadway at the time by Patrick; and O’Neal’s Baloon, distinguished by its enclosed sidewalk cafe and its enigmatic name (an imaginative spelling to comply with an obscure State Liquor Authority ban on the word saloon). It was immortalized as the place where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton meet for their last lunch in the 1977 movie “Annie Hall.”

The brothers also owned the Landmark Tavern, which bills itself as one of the oldest continually operating establishments in New York City, on 11th Avenue and West 46th Street in Midtown.

In a 60-year career, Michael O’Neal ran a dozen more Manhattan restaurants as well, among them the Boat Basin Cafe, along the Hudson River on the western end of 79th Street, and the Ballfields Cafe, a popular spot south of the Sheep Meadow in Central Park.

The O’Neal brothers were in the vanguard of an Upper West Side revival sparked by the construction of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the early 1960s. Melding the ambience of P. J. Clarke’s, an authentic 19th-century Irish saloon on the East Side, with that of the original Friday’s, the prototypical Upper East Side singles bar, they opened the Ginger Man during those years in a former garage on West 64th Street. (It was renting at the time for $465 a month, about $3,800 in today’s dollars.)

Michael O’Neal closed the Ginger Man in 1992, filing for bankruptcy protection. He reopened it three months later under the name O’Neal’s, which continued to operate until 2010.

More than a businessman, Michael O’Neal was also an independent-minded leader of state and national restaurant owners’ associations. In one episode he bucked his fellow restaurateurs to support New York City’s ban on smoking in restaurants and bars, imposed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2003.

Mr. O’Neal was a beloved neighborhood figure. He cooked Thanksgiving meals for the elderly through Project Find at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on West 59th Street; served on the boards of the Riverside Park Conservancy, the concert venue Symphony Space and the Westside Crime Prevention Program; and accommodated his employees with flexible shifts so that they could also work as performers or attend school.

William Michael O’Neal was born on Oct. 28, 1936, in Ocala, Fla., to Martha (Hearn) O’Neal, a homemaker, and Coke Wisdom O’Neal, a car dealer, banker and orange-grove owner.

After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in business, he was a food service officer in the Air Force for five years before joining his brother in New York.