New downtown tavern pays homage to Rockford’s history

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — A new tavern coming to the city’s downtown is a nostalgia-inducing throwback to the neighborhood pubs of yesteryear.

Wood & Brick Tavern is a project from a pair of tradesmen who used their woodworking and brick masonry skills to rejuvenate a decades old neighborhood bar while keeping its historic character intact.

Take for example the original mahogany bar that serves as the nucleus of the tavern, 315 S. Main St.

“A bar from the 40s has got a lot of battle scars: cigarette burns, all kinds of nicks,” co-owner Jeff Lindquist said. “I didn’t want to lose all that character. So I just augmented that finish, cleaned it up, and it can go for another 60 years.”

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Lindquist, who has spent more than 42 years as a woodworker, and Kelly Fosberg, a brick mason for nearly 30 years, have partnered to revamp the former J-Bears Place for their new business.

J-Bears closed in August and they’ve been busy cleaning, painting, installing new flooring, equipment, signage and lighting ever since. They’re targeting a late-February opening.

“It’s going to be an old-time neighborhood tavern,” Fosberg said. “We like to call it tavern because the word tavern itself goes back to the 1300s.”

East High School history

The footrest of the bar and the soft maple wood tables that line the south wall also incorporate a piece of local history. They were made by hand from wood from the East High School locker room benches circa 1940. Both Lindquist (Class of 1982) and Fosberg (Class of 1986) are East High graduates.

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Fosberg got the wood about eight years ago while visiting East to talk with a local contractor about a concrete project. He spotted the soft maple planks with cast-iron bases on the site, asked if he could salvage them and has been saving them ever since.

“I held on to these things for seven, eight, nine years before I had a purpose for them,” Fosberg said.

East, at the time, was building its field house. Lindquist worked on that project building the showcases. The two East graduates didn’t know each other at the time. They met about five or six years ago and became fast friends and now business partners.

Lindquist, who owns the building and runs Display Link on the back half of the property, said he had to decide whether to look for a new tenant or go into the bar business himself after J-Bears closed. He and Fosberg, who provided much of the vision for the vintage look, opted for the latter. Both men were looking for a career switch that would be easier on their bodies after decades of working as one-man wood and masonry shops.

“We’re getting to the age where your body starts failing you, and you’ve got to think about how long can I do this,” Lindquist said.

The tavern’s name pays homage to the owners’ history as tradesmen, and inside will be photographs of historic buildings in the area, vintage neon signs and other nostalgia.

“We want to honor Rockford’s old buildings. We want to honor trades,” Fosberg said. “You need to honor the past, especially since things made in the past were so much better.”

‘Middle of all that action’

The space has been home to a pub since at least 1960, when it was called Center Tap, Lindquist said. It was also home to The Tuxedo Club and Tom’s Tap, and Lindquist and Fosberg hope to revive the atmosphere of a neighborhood bar where people stop for a drink and conversation after work.

“This place used to have that,” Lindquist said. “Back in the day when it was Tom’s Tap it was a very popular hangout for all the local people that work downtown. We hope to bring them back.”

Historic photos: Barber-Colman complex in Rockford then and now

The tavern is also in the city’s historic Water Power District, the birthplace of Rockford’s industrial heritage. It’s across the street from the historic Embassy Suites by Hilton Rockford Riverfront Hotel, a 13-story former factory built in 1912. It’s also less than a mile north of the historic Barber-Colman factory complex, which developers plan to transform into a mix of apartments and businesses. And it’s between Urban Equity Properties’ planned Water Power Lofts and 301 Lofts, and nearby the BMO Center.

“We’re in the middle of all that action,” Lindquist said. “We have the location. I think we have a very cool bar. It’s going to take care of itself.”

The tavern will serve beer, wine and cocktails, with eight beers on tap. The drink menu, they said, will evolve based on customers’ feedback.

“Most bars, if not all, if they offer wine, you’re going to get the little plastic bottle that everybody hates,” Lindquist said. “We’re going to have real wine. Magpie is helping us pick the wines for the tavern.”

There will also be darts, a jukebox and video gambling machines. There’s no kitchen, but they plan to serve all the traditional packaged snacks you would see at a tavern, “except the pickled eggs,” Linquist said.

Those are all choices meant to blend the bar with the historic feel of the district.

“It just meshes beautifully,” Linquist said. “What better place to have nostalgia than a good, old-fashioned tavern.”

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas.