McMenamin brothers aim to retain spirit of tavern

08/07/03

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.