This Brunswick LaSalle is an Oak 14′ foot back bar with its original matching 16’ front bar.
LaSalle model – Quarter-sawed Golden Oak and Curly Birch.
The hard part of dealing in Bars is that 90 percent that surface don’t have their original front bar. They were often extended, altered and most commonly exchanged. Those I don’t inventory, without the front bar you have less than half.
I purchased this bar on the south side of Chicago from a building on Avenue M near the Indiana border about ten years ago from a man in his seventies. He said it was his grandmothers Bar and he remembered spending time there as a kid.
Top of the line Brunswick Bars are scarce. High profile elaborate design bars are relatively few and far scarcer in short lengths. Most of their classic designs were produced in 20 plus foot models which required 12-14’ ceilings. Few were produced in shorter lengths.
Restoration Process
This Bar spent its life as a local neighborhood bar in a small building with a kitchen in back, a couple of side tables in front as well as a pool table. The bar room was just under 700 square feet. The front bar was extended at some point in time. Ten feet was added to the right and it was further extended to the left with a 90 degree radius wrapping the front bar to the wall left of the back bar. The bar top ,like most, was cut for beer taps, the lines ran up from the basement.
So we removed the extensions from the front bar leaving us a 16’ front bar top which we repaired the drink rail and filled where the taps were. We made a new front edge molding exact to factory specs and we made a new end panel, see image. We then milled the moldings for the end panel and rebuilt the kick plate before installing the new the foot rail. I’ve never had a bar with a good original foot rail. Like mirrors they are regularly replaced.
The back bar was extended two feet by splitting the middle of three cabinets, as well as the back bar top, to provide a spot for a dropped cash register shelf. It’s center cabinet was gutted and bottle shelves were installed with its original cabinet doors missing, Back bar cabinet doors are often missing.
We shortened the back bar to its original 14 foot length salvaging its original back bar top then we rebuilt the center cabinet removing the bottle shelves and milling new doors out of quartered Oak to match the originals doors on each side of the lower back bar. The columns, crown and Mirror frame were unmolested.
The Bar was stripped to its original white quartered Oak grain filled, sanded to 220 grit, then dyed with an aniline dye based stain that we mix here. It is an exact color match to what Brunswick used. We then lacquer it with numerous coats of nitro cellulous lacquer then it’s rubbed out by hand.
This bar was right at 500 hours of restoration.
What this leaves my customers are bars and pool tables that leave here the way they left the factory. No incorrect, or absent, trim moldings or finish. I’ve seen a lifetime worth of incorrect antiques ,they can be very ugly. So what makes our restorations exceptional? The answer is pride.”
