Chicago Fire fans know that Molly’s Bar is the go-to hangout for after-shift drinks for the crew at Firehouse 51. But what they might not realize is that it’s a real place – sort of. Many scenes from the three One Chicago dramas – Chicago Fire, P.D., and Med – are filmed in real Windy City neighborhoods, not on a set, including some of the action that takes place at Molly’s Bar in the show’s first two seasons.
A Chicago Fire scene set in Molly’s Bar. | Parrish Lewis/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
The real-life Molly’s Bar is a spot called Lottie’s Pub in the city’s Bucktown neighborhood that’s been around since 1934. The decades-old tavern at 1925 W. Cortlandt Street was exactly what producers were looking for when they were hunting for a place to film the bar scenes for the first season of Chicago Fire.
“The show was looking for a corner tavern in the middle of a neighborhood,” co-owner Mark Domitrovich, explains on the bar’s website. “That’s a dying breed. They said we were the No. 1 pick and that they didn’t have much of a backup.”
However, don’t show up at Lottie’s expecting to see the Fire cast in action. Midway through Season 2, production for scenes set at Molly’s shifted to a film studio in the city, where a replica of Lottie’s/Molly’s was constructed.
According to Domitrovich, the producers decided to go with the lookalike set because filming on location got too complicated. “With Chicago PD also filming at the bar, it got to be a bit much,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2013. “It’s just such a big part of the story. For them to have to pay to shut us down a day, set up, break everything down — it was a lot of work on their end.”
