The walls of Bootleggers Tavern, on Washington Street in Old Town Auburn, hold a secret.
The ancient handmade brick walls can still be seen in the lovely old dining room. Bricked-up large windows can faintly be distinguished in the old mortar patterns. However, the building refuses to reveal its history to the average patron - a tale of cross-town rivalry, of lofty dreams and ignoble endings.
. . .May 29, 1891, local citizens held a meeting. They wanted to erect a new brick building at the site of the old Music Hall, a two-story edifice with a hall, theater or assembly room, and rental. The Music Hall was to be demolished. The site was no stranger to construction - by that date it had already seen three buildings. The first was the log-cabin Empire Hotel in 1849, owned by pioneer H. M. House and supported in part by mortgages of Elliza Elliot, one of Auburn’s earliest businesswomen.. . It burned down in 1855
. . .the Auburn Greys, a civil war military group resembling today’s National Guard, built a new wooden armory in it’s place in 1867. The group disbanded. . .in 1867. . . .the Auburn Band practices were held in the building and it was renamed “Music Hall”. . . it served as an opera house, skating rink, dance hall and convention center. But the citizens’ group had more ambitious goals. The plans of the Auburn City Hall, as it was named, showed two towers, a smaller one on the corner and a taller two-story bell tower raising four stories in all. Several large glass peaked skylights brought sunlight into the upper floor, and when cranked open in the summer, also brought in cool breezes and ventilation. Lincoln potters Gladding-McBean Co. Produced ceramic flowers, tiles and other architectural details. This included a large round tile arch and pillared entrance with “Auburn City Hall 1892 emblazoned above the entrance doors . . .the preceding year, in 1890 another group had made similar plans for uptown Auburn. The uptown leaders, Col. Davis, Gen. Jo Hamilton. . .had plans for an opera house in the exact center of the city’s residential area, where seven broad streets converged in a large central square in east Auburn. . . .on July 12, 1890 the brick foundations were begun.
The citizens group incorporated a year later, on July 15, 1891, as the Auburn City Hall Association. Local business leaders, S. M. Stevens, D. W. Lubeck, E. C. Snowden, John Fulweiler and George W. McCreedy signed the documents.
On April 29, 1892, the burning of 650,000 bricks on J. B. Chamberlin’s lot on temple St. in Auburn for the New City hall began. The race between these different groups. . . was on.
. . .With both buildings finished, the competition between them grew. City Hall was never as popular with Auburnites . . .as the Grand Opera House in Central Square.
Despite this, the lower Auburn City Hall, . . .financially supported itself for a few years. . . Then disaster struck . A fire broke out in the back of the City Hall on July 29, 1905.. . All th buildings from Park Street to the American block burned. . . .Many schemes were developed over the years to use the old city hall property. . .Finally, during the First World War, it was used as a metal junkyard. . .then the lot remained vacant for two more decades. When the lot was paved in the 1940's the back walls became part of an auto repair garage and gas station. Straw Hat Pizza built a new frame building incorporating the old brick walls about twenty years later, it became Bootleggers Tavern. . . . The old brick walls are now all that remains of the old City Hall.