ROCK
CREEK -- The McMenamin brothers tried to imagine re-creating the
history of the popular Rock Creek Tavern, which burned to the ground
last fall.
They decided it couldn't be done.
Instead,
Brian and Mike McMenamin are trying to recapture the spirit of the
place, right down to vintage wood boards on the outside and a beautiful
antique bar inside.
"We
can't re-create its history," said Mike McMenamin, who, with his
brother, owns about 50 brew pubs in the Northwest. "But we can honor
it."
The
charred debris of the tavern had barely been cleared before the
brothers began making plans to rebuild. Last week, a construction crew
began working at the site. Contractors huddled around plans on the
ground, and turned them, page by page, to see how everything would fit
together. On the earth, a square of fresh chalk outlined the walls of
what, by the end of the year, will become the new tavern.
The
Rock Creek Tavern, at 10000 N.W. Old Cornelius Pass Road, literally
burned to the ground Sept 30. There was no foundation under it, just a
few large rocks and some age-worn timbers. All that remained of the
charming neighborhood watering hole was charred lumber and the rock
chimney, standing like a sentinel over the smoldering rubble.
Later, the chimney came down rock by rock.
"I
think we're missing a few of them," said Brian McMenamin, standing last
week in the weed-filled lot where the popular tavern once stood. "I
think a bunch of them went to the neighbors who wanted to preserve
something of the old place."
The building that burned last year began as Adolph Fuegy's blacksmith shop. It was built north of the current site around 1890.
Later,
the Fuegy family built a house on the current site, and in the 1920s
that house became the Rock Creek Store. At that time, Old Cornelius
Pass Road was a major north-south route in Washington County. Neighbors
would gather at the store to discuss everything from politics to the
price of peas. Following the repeal of Prohibition, the store started
selling beer and evolved into a tavern.
After
Prohibition, the brewery that supplied the tavern ran afoul of the
teamsters. The Rock Creek Tavern became a casualty in 1935, when
someone lobbed explosives that blew a crater under the big tree on one
side of the building and blew out every window in the place. The "bomb"
left a crater between the tavern and the highway.
The McMenamin brothers plan to preserve that crater.
"It's
back behind the orange tape," Brian McMenamin said, pointing to plastic
mesh surrounding the nearby hole. "That's sacred land. We don't want
the contractors messing it up."
In
1941 the place burned in a mysterious fire. The blacksmith shop was
jacked up onto log rollers and moved to where the house had been.
The
tavern grew and changed as farmers and loggers bent elbows with
software designers and Harley riders. It was a place for first dates,
wedding proposals, divorce parties, anniversary celebrations and a
comfortable spot to meet with friends to mourn loved ones.
His own memories Brian McMenamin has his own memories of the tavern.
"My
brother, Mike, first brought me to the place and I kept coming back to
it. I was . . . well, just say I was almost 21 . . . and just fell in
love with it. We both agreed that if it ever came up for sale, we'd
want to buy it and run it. There's just so much history here.
"The
night after the tavern burned down, a bunch of the neighbors got
together in the parking lot and held a vigil," he said. "You've got to
honor what this place means to the community."
The
McMenamins could have replaced the tavern with a modern building using
new materials and off-the-shelf plans. "It would have been cheaper,"
said Brian McMenamin. "A lot cheaper." But that's not their way of
doing things.
Building a new "old" building holds special challenges for the contractor.
"The
idea is to hide everything that's new, so it looks like the same old
place," said Joe Vondrak, whose Pacific Crest Construction has done
most of the McMenamins' projects and will tackle the Rock Creek Tavern
as well.
Plans
approved Washington County approved the plans about three weeks ago.
The brothers hope to be open in time to serve Christmas tree shoppers.
The
new tavern will be slightly larger and built to accommodate patrons in
wheelchairs. It will include an elevated outside dining area. The
kitchen will be modern, and the building will be armed with a fire
sprinkler system fed by a dedicated 12,000-gallon water reservoir.
The
outside will look nearly identical to the building that burned. To
attain a rustic appearance, outside walls will be covered with boards
from two barns dismantled from area farms. One barn sat along Northwest
185th Avenue just north of Baseline Road. The second barn was on a farm
south of Hillsboro and was built in the late 1800s by a German dairy
farmer.
One
of the most memorable items of the original tavern was the ornate back
bar, seen in the 1980s and 1990s in a popular nationwide TV commercial
for milk.
"We've found another back bar in Washington," Brian McMenamin said. "It's a beautiful piece."
Mike McMenamin said they also are negotiating for an old front bar.
They have studied old photos of the tavern to try to make the new one as close as possible to the original.
"There
was a moose head over the bar," Brian McMenamin said. "We decided we
just had to get another one. Then we looked in the really old photos
and realized that it started out as an elk head.
"The
tavern kept on changing," he added. "I feel there's some of the locals
here who have stuff from the original tavern that they might like to
see in the new one."
The brothers said they have a modest collection of items for the tavern.
"We don't have a huge warehouse full of stuff," Brian McMenamin said. "If we started doing that, we'd never know when to stop."
While the look and feel of the new tavern will be in keeping with the old, it will still be a new tavern.
"It
won't be the same place," Brian McMenamin said. "We can't rebuild
history. But we can build something that will reflect what was here and
give patrons the flavor of the past. That's as close as we can get."
"It's really the memories that make it special," added Mike McMenamin.
And those haven't changed. Jerry F. Boone: 503-294-5960; jfboone@aol.com or jerryboone@news.oregonian.com.
