18-04-2025
The happiest room in Des Moines? It might be Drake's Peggy's — again
DES MOINES, Iowa — In 1935, the little place on Forest Avenue got tossed onto its ear.
'It was a café owned by a woman named Peggy Fleming,' says current owner, Annie Baldwin. 'When she died, her husband Harlan 'Boots' Fleming turned it into a bar and named it after his wife.
Peggy's Tavern was born that day on the Drake campus and it's seen only minor changes in the 90 years since.
'People don't want it to change,' says manager John Han. 'They want it to look the way they remember it looking when they were at Drake.'
Peggy's added mixed drinks and expanded into the former Dick Pharmacy in the late 1990s, but has mostly kept the rest of its weathered, storied interior intact.
'The mural was painted in 1959,' says Baldwin, who purchased the bar from Mark Graziano in the last decade. 'The beer steins, booths, and bar go back nearly that far. We'd never want to change those.'
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Next week, the tiny bar will erect a giant tent and spill into is rear parking lot. Thousands of Drake students and alums will pack every inch to buy 30-50 kegs worth of beer over five days.
'It pretty much pays the bills for the whole year,' Han says of Relays week.
Baldwin says the traditional Peggy's Relays cup will get a special twist for this year's 90th birthday celebration.
'We've ordered 12,000 of them,' she says. 'We'll break them out on Thursday, and by Saturday at 9pm they'll be gone. Every one of them.'
Baldwin says for many Drake alums, Peggy's has been a part of their story.
'They tell me how they met their husband or wife, here,' she says. 'And nearly every year, someone gets down on a knee and proposes here. We've actually had a wedding in a tent out back.'
Those returning to Peggy's this year will certainly relive some of their happy stories of college. They certainly won't find any reason to fear it won't continue to be a part of those stories for another 90 years.
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