Rosie O'Grady's Inc history

In 1918, the former showboat was unmoored and transformed into a summer houseboat for steaming down the tree-lined waterways of Central Florida.

LILLY PLAZA 1922 Originally a turnaround for the limousines of guests visiting the Pleasure family houseboat.

Chandlery and Tool Crib 1924 One of the many support facilities for the cornerstone of Island founder Merriweather Pleasure’s commercial empire, Pleasure Canvas and Sailmakers, Ltd.

On July 3, 1927, a stray spark from Pleasure’s pipe set off an explosion that was heard in Tampa, 82 miles away.

After the assembly of the last sail on June 4, 1931, perfectionist Merriweather Pleasure insisted that the factory be preserved intact.

In 1934, the shop was responsible for stuffing the head of a rare Mongolian Yakoose for the Adventurers Club.

Hoping to discover and patent a cheap, clean, abundant, renewable source of power, Pleasure had the building refitted in 1938 as a laboratory for testing “thermomagnetics”—a process designed to harness the earth’s magnetic force.

1, 1940—with Pleasure himself at the controls.

When Hurricane Charlotte damaged the building in 1944, only three years after his patron’s demise, the graphic artist was too dispirited to rebuild.

Doodles, closed the shop in 1954 to join the Air Force as a test pilot for the only customized X-1 ever built.

Their mismanagement led to bankruptcy in 1955; Hurricane Connie hit that same year, and Pleasure Island was abandoned.

He had traveled alone and, like so many other immigrants before and after him, carried little more than his ambitions to make something of himself in New York. It was 1963 and Austin Delaney was in his early 20s, the son of farmers from County Mayo in western Ireland.

New York’s Legendary Steak & Seafood Restaurant was Established 1973, it is centrally located near Times Square, Rockefeller Center, the Jacob Javits Convention Center, Central Park and a short distance from several major museums and renowned hotels.

Oke performed at that opening show in 1974, and he'll perform at Rosie's last show Saturday. "Millions of people have come through those doors," he said recently in the dark hush between shows under Rosie's high, pressed-tin ceiling. "It's sad to see a legend close."

In those early days, "you could practically see tumbleweeds rolling down the empty streets." It was "like Tombstone territory," agrees Spatz Donovan, who walked into Rosie's in 1975 and stayed to become a headliner there for 14 years.

But when the building was reopened in 1987, the automaton was alive and thriving.

As she often said, “If you don’t have something nice to say, come sit next to me!” Restored in 1989 as a joint effort of the Walt Disney Company and the Levy Restaurants.

"Oh, to be at Rosie O'Grady's," read the 1991 Sentinel headline for a soldier's letter, sent back home from the Gulf War.