CHESTERFIELD — For more than 300 years, the trim, clapboard Crosswicks Inn had been a tavern, a Prohibition-era speakeasy and a restaurant.
Then one day in 1997, the last iteration, the Upper Crust Pub, closed its doors. Local resident Tom Leyden felt a sudden hole in the village.
“They closed the place down overnight. We all kind of freaked out,” Leyden said. “This was a community watering hole for us.”
He and other members of the community watched helplessly as the old wooden structure began to succumb to time and weather.
Today, though, the building has a new life, following a $1 million restoration. A new business, an Italian restaurant, has taken root there, along with a genuine Old World pizza oven from Modena, Italy.
“The building sat idle for five years before we decided to buy it and restore it back to its old brilliance,” Leyden said.
He and three partners — Karl Braun, Kathy Heptinstall and Greg Romano — purchased the inn for about $280,000 in 2005 and undertook the massive renovation project, restoring the building as place to eat, drink and socialize.
From the outside, the Crosswicks Inn immediately resembles faded old pictures taken of the building in the 1850s, with rows of windows overlooking Crosswicks-Chesterfield Road and Main Street.
But the makeover didn't happen overnight, Leyden said. The entire renovation took years, including repairing significant structural damage and re-siding the whole building. "It was in really bad shape," Romano said. Pointing to one side of the structure, he said, "That wall was ready to fall into Main Street."
Had the building suffered any further decay, something irreplaceable would have been lost, he said.
“It really is significant from a historical perspective, and the place was basically ready to fall down.”
The building opened as a tavern in 1681, a respite for travelers headed between New York and Philadelphia, but lost its liquor license in 1689 when owner John Bainbridge sold alcohol to neighboring Lenape Indians, Braun said.
The building saw new life in the 1700s, when Thomas Douglas took over management of the building and renamed it the “Douglas Tavern,” as it would remain throughout the Revolutionary War and 1800s, Braun said.
Legend has it that the owner of the Douglas Tavern sent a bill to King George III for damages caused by Hessian soldiers.
“We really liked the history and tradition here. It’s an important building, and we want it to continue,” Braun said.
Last month, after a 17-year hiatus, the inn opened to the public as a restaurant, welcoming customers into the third location of Osteria Procaccini, an artisanal pizzeria that serves “pizza the way it’s eaten in Italy.”
“The building is very conducive to our concept because, in Italy, a lot of these osterias are in taverns that look just like this. That’s something we could have here,” Procaccini said.
And in the rear yard of the property is a fully functioning vegetable garden, where Osteria staff picks vegetables and then works them into the day’s menu.
“We wanted to think about the way our ancestors made food, from the garden in the back,” Osteria Procaccini owner John Proccacini said. “You pick it and bring it to the table. That’s how we were brought up and that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
But even with all completely modernized restaurant — and three apartments above it — the partners made sure to keep the historical nature of the building in the spotlight.
The entire building was re-sided with “beam siding” of the time, and copper pipes and gutters are easily visible from the street and in the backyard of the Crosswicks Inn.
And around the building and homes nearby, which the neighbors purchased and renovated, people walk around on brick sidewalks that emphasize the village’s historical flair.
“It was a labor of love, but we wanted to see this building restored to its old purpose. There’s not much here in the Crosswicks village, just 100 little historic homes,” Leyden said. “We wanted the inn to fit in with the historical village. That’s why we moved here.”
Contact Mike Davis at (609) 989-5708 or [email protected].
CONNECT WITH US:
On mobile or desktop: