Brentwood Tavern (4550 Rhode Island Avenue)

While it was still standing, Brentwood Tavern (formerly located behind these homes, along Rhode Island Avenue) was regarded as one of the classier bars in North Brentwood. Ida Stewart owned and operated the tavern. She was said to be very strict about the conduct of her patrons: “Mrs. Stewart did not allow any foolishness in there, no loudness, no bawdiness.” She had a doorman, James E. Jackson, who would help keep out people who were drunk or dressed inappropriately. Florence Smith elaborated:

“A church person could go there and have dinner, or if they wanted a drink or a beer or something like that. But you had to be dressed. Now Sis’s beer garden, anybody could go there, but it was a different, how would you say, class of people… Anyway, you wouldn’t want to take your mother there. But Brentwood Tavern, you could take your mother there. Tell you the truth, when I was young, I tried to visit all of them, see, because I like to see what’s going on.”

Barbara Spriggs’s parents worked at the tavern when she was younger:

“My dad was a cook there and Mom used to help Dad in the kitchen if they needed her. And we would go around sometime and he would sneak us some goodies out the back door. But it was a very nice black club and nicer folks would go ‘round, you know, all [the] folks on Rhode Island Avenue would stop in. Because this out front here, Rhode Island Avenue, used to be going straight from here to Baltimore, New York. That was Route 1, so everything went by–buses, all kinds of transportation.”

Mrs. Stewart gave Lenora Wiggins her first real job at the tavern. “[Mrs. Stewart] lived upstairs over the building,” Ms. Wiggins remembered. “It was a nice red-brick building…There was a little red neon sign in the window, ‘Brentwood Tavern.’ And the door was lit up. It was very clean, very neat–red upholstered vinyl furniture.”

Sources

1977 Aerial map depicting the Brentwood Tavern (circled in blue). Derived from PGAtlas