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A good place to talk

The Quarryhouse

BY MARJORIE CLARKSON

Sixty-six years old, but getting stronger and more popular with time. Now that sounds like a Baby Boomer's fantasy of old age, but it can be the fantasy—and reality, too—of a business's mature years. Since 1937, customers have walked down 13 steps into Silver Spring's Quarry House Tavern, a space described by regular customer John Haslinger as "subterranean, dark, warm and with good beer."

Those features, along with being "a good place to talk," have kept this business at the corner of Bonifant Street & Georgia Avenue going for decades, through good and lean times.

No televisions and no hard liquor, and a sense of family among the staff and customers, are the reasons given by veteran waitresses Sara Noel and Mara Wasilik for the tavern's friendly and chatty atmosphere. "A talk bar" is what Sara calls it, where "everyone speaks to each other. " She points out that customers are from all walks of life—"bricklayers, lawyers, and architects."

On one Wednesday night, I counted 23 customers in the bar and 18 in the dining room, talking, eating and drinking. The bar area is darker, smokier and noisier than the dining room. The walls of the bathrooms display mirrored bar ads: some reproductions of antique beer advertisements using quite fetching women to sell the beers. George Catlin prints of19th- century Native Americans hang on one wall of the dining room, providing an interesting contrast to the beer ads.

On this evening, "lightly smoked turkey" with lettuce, mayonnaise and cranberry relish on multi-grain bread was the special of the evening. A preserved and framed tavern menu from the 1940s did not list any fancy sandwiches on multi-grain bread, but it did offer the hamburger, probably then (and certainly now) the most popular item on the menu. Back then it cost 25 cents. Today it cost $5.95. To wash down the burgers, the bar offers 40 different bottled beers and eight on tap, including Bitburger, Snow Goose, Paulaner and Coors Light.

In the non-smoking dining room, I saw a young couple with dark hair and, across from them, a couple with gray hair; at another table, a family with grandmother, two grandkids, and parents; and at yet another, a fellow staring at his laptop while he distractedly ate a large salad. Married couple Noreen and Jim Welch told me on their way out of the dining room, after a dinner of fish & chips for him and a pork chop sandwich for her, that they have been coming to the Quarry House once a week since1965. Noreen remembers the number of years so well because they first started coming when she was pregnant with their daughter, who is now 37. She also remembers a wonderful steak sandwich she used to order during her pregnancy, and the cook who prepared it. The Welchs say they keep coming back week after week, year after year, because of the "great place, great beer, good food, good company." They have become regulars in a tavern whose life has been saved by its regulars.

As in the long life of any business, there are good times and bad times. The Quarry House saw good times, undoubtedly when it opened back in the 1930s, after Prohibition and when there was a long pent-up desire for legal alcohol. Some say it was a rough place back then. And according to regular Matt Dillon, the official Quarry House historian, it was a lively time during the '40s, particularly during the World War II years, when dance bands and dancers filled what is now the dining room.

Another go-go time was the late 80s and early 90s, just before increased public awareness of the ills of over-drinking and the subsequent tightening of DWI laws enforcement took hold, and before home entertainment such as videos increased.

Bad times came to the bar in the late 1980's when its landlord, Chevy Chase Bank, decided to kick the bar out so, it was rumored, they could fill the space with safety deposit boxes. Some thought the reason might be a problem with the image of their bank being over a bar. Matt contacted local newspapers to protest, stating that this unjust action demonstrated to the community the bank's insensitivity to the historic value of the Quarry House. After a long, tough battle fought in the press, the bar prevailed.

Photo: Julie Wiatt

Quarryhouse proprietor Jim Brown has served Silver Spring for the past 27 years. The tavern has been an underground hit in for over 75 years.

Another bad time came in the mid-1990s, when business bottomed out. According to Quarry House owner Jim Brown, business was bad in general in Silver Spring. Matt and other regulars began a letter writing campaign directing the appeal to the folks who lived in neighborhoods within walking distance of the bar. The letter asked them to support the business. Matt humorously recalls one gentleman in his 80s who showed up after getting the letter. He had last been there in the thirties and hadn't been back since because he thought it was still a rough place.

The letter writing campaign produced some good results. Once again, the business pulled through because of the devotion of its regulars, and the idea expressed by owner Jim Brown when asked why he had kept the bar for 27 rough years: "I like the idea of a local tavern."

Today, business is good, according to its owner, and looks only to improve with the redevelopment of Silver Spring finally happening.

A new generation of regulars appears to be coming on, too, such as Dennis Avenue resident Michael Robbins.

"This place helped get through business school." he said. "[I would] sit at the bar, pull out my calculator and spread sheets, and work."

Michael graduated in December from the University of Maryland, and he and his wife plan a graduation party at—where else?—the Quarry House.

Richard Jaeggi provided assistance with this article.