A spotlight on the Capp Bar
Who at UD hasn’t been to the Capp Bar at least a thousand times? Before even attending UD, students experience the Capp Bar on a tour with the admissions advisors. It only takes one drink to get hooked and then it is hard not to go every day.
One thing students may not know about the Capp Bar is that its address is 103 Via del Pescaccio. The Capp Bar received this unique address from the original University of Dallas Rome campus, which was on Via del Pescaccio in Italy. There were even stones brought over from the campus to help decorate the Capp Bar, which inspires Rome-sickness in all its students,
But how did the Capp Bar begin? Dr. Gregory Roper, Dean of Students, said that “By the early 1980s, students were lamenting that they would go over to Rome and have this great coffee called ‘cappuccino’ that no one had heard of in the US at the time.” Students couldn’t even buy a cappuccino machine in the United States at the time to satisfy their craving for Italian coffee.
However, one of UD’s great alumni, Pat Daly, heard the laments of the UD students deprived of the amazing Italian cappuccinos and decided to act. He flew to Italy, bought a cappuccino machine, packed it away in his suitcase and brought it back to UD.
Now UD students owe their late-night Lit-Trad-I coffees and their six shots on ice to Pat Daly. Back when it first began, cappuccinos were only 0.50 cents, which is roughly $1.60 now, so the Capp Bar wasn’t an expensive addiction to have.
Now that the history of the Capp Bar has been covered, what makes it amazing, aside from the fact that it literally came from a suitcase?
Senior Andrew Kelly, who has been working at the Capp Bar since his first semester at UD, said that aside from allowing to feed his caffeine addiction, his favorite part of working at the Capp bar is “the worker culture there, which is very bubbly and vibrant. Especially as someone who’s a senior and working off campus now it is a good way to stay in touch with the campus culture.
People talk so much about the UD off-campus drinking culture, but the best drinking culture is the one on campus. It’s all coffee. It’s all the Capp Bar and it has been that way ever since it’s been around.”
Nine times out of ten, when people meet up to study or hang out, it is going to be at the Capp Bar. Every student is familiar with the joys of sitting in or around the Capp Bar and being constantly distracted from work by talking to their friends and professors who are getting a drink. The Capp Bar truly is the hub of community and friendship on campus and it is all thanks to determined alumni and a suitcase.
Aine O’Brien is a senior English major. She is the president of the swing dance club, co-president of League of Her Own and a leader in Blessed is She.