The Red Lion Pub is brand-new from the ground up, but the past is present in so many ways, and a flesh-and-blood example of that was standing there one night a couple of weeks ago. It was the nephew of John Dillinger. “This is a really nice bar,” said Mike Thompson, who lives near Indianapolis and was here for an event to commemorate his uncle’s being gunned down outside the Biograph Theater across Lincoln Avenue in 1934. “I feel at home here.”
Sitting nearby at the bar was a young man named Gabe Bowling, an actor, and his girlfriend, Michelle, both new to the place but about to leave town. “We just had to stop here,” he said, explaining that he had been starring as Carl Perkins for many months in the hit musical “Million Dollar Quartet” just up the street at the Apollo Theater. “All the time I was here I kept hearing about what a great place this was, and now, as I am leaving to move to New York, I get to see it. Probably doesn’t look much like the old place I heard about, but this is one great bar.”
And so it goes. Taverns come and go. Just walk a few blocks north and south from the Red Lion and you may remember the bygone Oxford Pub and Orphan’s, the 2350 Pub and Sterch’s, Lounge Ax and Jerry’s and so many others.
It’s a tough business running a tavern, and Colin Cordwell, standing behind the bar at the Red Lion and serving drinks, knows that better than most. But he also knows this is where he wants to be. “My soul,” he said, “is written all over this place.”
Nearly a year ago I wrote a story in these pages about the demolition of the old Red Lion Pub, at 2446 N. Lincoln Ave., that took place on a rainy day in mid-September. The folks doing the demolition were from Taylor Construction. It took them less than a day to take down the building that since 1882 had served, variously, as a fruit and vegetable store, a bookie joint, a head shop and a “Wild West saloon” named Durty Dan’s, until in 1984 it was taken over by a British-born architect named John Cordwell and transformed into the Red Lion. He gave it a menu with such items as Welsh rarebit and steak-and-kidney pie and offered then-rare refreshments such as Bass and Watneys. He filled it with all manner of items of British theme and texture.
John Cordwell, an amiable man, was filled with stories about being born in London; serving in the British Royal Air Force during WWII; being shot down over Belgium and spending more than three years in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he helped plan the famous but failed “Great Escape” by forging passports; his years as director of planning for the Chicago Plan Commission under Chicago Mayor Martin Kennelly; and forming the architectural firm that helped design Sandburg Village.
He died in 1999, and the Red Lion Pub was closed in 2008. It was falling apart: “One winter too many. One broken pipe too many,” said Colin Cordwell, John’s son. “The place was being held together by termites.”
There was some talk of relocating, a couple of lawsuits and much red tape, and Colin was consulting on other tavern operations. And then the plans for the new place sprouted, and the old place came down. As demolition project manager and former patron Dan O’Shea, his accent thick with his native County Kerry, said that September day, “It is always fun for an Irishman to tear down a British pub.”
The place has brought back a number of people who missed the old place. What they see here — the open-air dining room, three fireplaces on two levels, shelves filled with more than 1,000 books from Colin’s personal collection, vaulted ceilings, large windows, dozens of items lining the walls of the War Room (a tribute to his father and grandfather) and the Africa Room (dedicated to his mother, Justine) — is hard to absorb in one visit.
Some of the people who missed the old place were actors who talked to Colin about staging events there. Others were simply people who enjoy a good tavern. Dean Balice, who heads his own financial advisory firm, has known Colin and the Red Lion for 30 years.
“The place now looks like the University Club’s library with an English pub inside it,” Balice said. “I loved the old place, but now the drinks are more varied, the pub food quite good and the conversations livelier than ever. It is a loving homage to his parents (Colin’s mother died in 2011), to the past.
“Colin gave me a tour, and then I wandered around on my own. An old German line from an 18th-century mystic/romantic writer whose pen name was Lovalis came to mind,” and Balice wrote this on a piece of paper while saying it slowly: “‘Die Philosphie ist eigentlich Heimweh, Trieb, uberall zu Hause zu sein.’ In my own backwoods German, that translates as, ‘Philosophy is actually homesickness, the desire to be everywhere at home.’ Colin has created nothing less than a home for himself, for the spirit of the old place, for the memory of his parents and, perhaps, for the conviviality to come.”
As Balice said this, a woman sat down at the bar. Colin walked over to her. “I’ll have a white wine,” she said, adding, “They tell me this place is haunted.”
“Why, yes, it is,” Colin said. “So glad you asked.”
“After Hours With Rick Kogan” airs 9-11 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.