The place at J and Erie had no name, just the word BAR hanging over the door. But for 53 years, the locals knew it as “The Church,” for its orthodox notions about man, work and liquor.
There were no mixed drinks. Just shots, or on the rocks. No light beer, no bottles. Just Bud and Schmidt’s on tap. No jukebox, no shuffleboard, no darts.
No stools. They only encouraged drunkenness.
Rotten language was not tolerated by the family men behind the bar in Juniata Park. Ladies had to use a separate entrance. They would be served, but only at tables.
And no one could buy a round for the house or for someone they didn’t know.
“We always figured everyone was working for a living,” said Wear Heinz, 74, the proprietor. “If you’re working, you can afford to buy your own drink. ”
Thursday night, 11:30, was last call for this Old World taproom, where, since 1938, brothers Wear and Bill Heinz kept order in crisp white shirts and black trousers, with tightly knotted ties tacked in place.
They inherited The Church and its house rules from their mother, Marian, and stepfather, Ralph S. Lutz, whose tintype portraits were featured prominently at the art deco bar.
The rules did not change over the years. But the rest of the world did.
Men stood three deep at the bar when the neighborhood bustled with textile and knitting mills, the Archibald Holmes & Son rug mill, the Boger & Crawford hosiery mill. Most of those places are gone, their bar trade disappearing with them.
Where Bill and Wear had always worked at The Church, interrupted briefly by World War II or a stint as a tool grinder, their children did not follow, instead choosing careers in insurance and trucking. There was no oneto pass the place on to.
So the brothers decided to sell the bar their stepfather built by hand. Settlement was Friday.
The buyer is young and has ideas, Wear says.
A full kitchen. Bar stools. Women on bar stools. He has talked of lining the back of the bar in neon.
Wear smiles at the thought of how long The Church stood its ground:
“It’s the last of the Mohicans.”
*
Ed Trask stepped through the doorway at his usual time one afternoon last week. Two coasters and a bad Phillies joke waited for him at the bar.
Al the bartender – Albert Taylor, 67, Wear’s brother-in-law – poured a shot of Calvert Extra Dry and a six-ounce glass of Budweiser and set them before Trask, a tool and die worker at a nearby factory.
Price: $1.40.
A PLACE TO RELAX
“A lot of guys will miss the place,” said Trask. “It’s a nice place to relax after work. It isn’t raucous. It isn’t noisy. You come in, talk to a couple of buddies, then go home and eat. ”
There were only a half-dozen others at the bar, cement workers talking in Spanish, except when complaining to Trask about their boss – the universal language.
The corner tappy had an austere charm. The bar, running the length of the rectangular room, was solid mahogany, built in 1938 by Friel Bernheim Co., then of East Ontario Street.
It was dark and well-burnished, save for the lip, which was worn like driftwood by a heavy tide of working men’s elbows.
The walls and metal ceiling were painted off-white, but years of smoke turned them the color of bad teeth. Under the brass foot rail lay a trough of sand that was raked each day. Ashtrays were a recent concession.
The heads of three deer, two of them bagged by Bill, 75, and a four-point jackalope lorded over the room.
For years, patrons had sent postcards to the bar picturing other jackalopes spotted in their travels – many of them in the Wyoming country where the rare beast – part jack rabbit, part antelope – was first sighted after its chronicler tipped a few too many Calverts.
DIFFERENT SHIFTS
Trask, a 20-year veteran, observed four distinct shifts at the bar, which was open from 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.
Mornings were for the retirees; lunch was for factory workers; early afternoons were for “the comedians,” and late afternoon was for those stopping off the Route 56 trolley before supper.
And the evenings? “It’s dead.”
*
But not Thursday night. Word traveled fast that The Church was closing.
By 10 p.m., it looked more like the old days, with more than a dozen men standing along the bar, and three tables filled.
Michael Lennon, a carpenter who came upon The Church six years ago, was snapping Polaroids. He had brought in his mother, Kathy, for this last night.
“Bars close every day,” he said. “Before my mother was born, this place opened up. They still buy what they do, the white shirts and tie.
“I just said goodbye to Al. I feel like crying. I’ll never see him again. ”
His stepfather, Eddie Keim, another six-year man, called it “a place to let the steam off. ”
“This is the kind of place the people will never know existed,” said Keim grimly.
LAST THREE PATRONS
At 11:15 p.m., just one more round till closing, all but three patrons had bid their goodbyes.
Jerry Leever, 43, a cabdriver who had been coming since his grandmother took him into the dining room at age 8, stood alone at the bar, drinking a beer.
“I want to go down as the last official customer,” Leever said.
Jack the SEPTA driver was still there with Joe Smith, a patron for 35 years.
“When you came in here, you always felt safe,” Jack said. “You never had a problem. You were in here to do what you had to do. Drink and bs. There were rules. If you overstepped your bounds, that was it.
“So where do we go from here? ”
Said Joe Smith: “You go home. ”
“Where is another place to go from here? ”
Wear raked the sand one last time, set his flat cap on his white hair and headed for the door, leaving his older brother to close.
“I must be off,” he told Smith.
“Wear, my pleasure,” Smith said from the bar.
“My pleasure, too. I’ll call you.”
*
At ten to midnight, Leever asked Bill when he’d sound last call.
“When I lock up the doors,” Bill replied, “everybody gets the information they need. ”
Fifteen minutes later, a good 45 minutes after the official closing, Bill locked the door along Erie Avenue and the side entrance along J Street. The ladies’ entrance had been secured a while before.
Jack the SEPTA driver and Joe Smith were still carrying on about old times. A fresh beer appeared before Jerry Leever.
Bill was in no hurry to call it an era.
By Daniel Rubin , Inquirer Staff Writer, May 05, 1991
Daniel Rubin 