Waiting

This summer, I did not think I would get to do any of my letter trips. With my arm injury, driving any distance is difficult. I tried to keep thinking about what I could do without having to travel. I did an inventory of all the places I have traveled and their status – is the building still standing?  Knocked down? Repurposed? I went through all my boxes of letters and pulled out other memorabilia to try to see if I could string a story out of that. And then I thought about writing an essay about some of the more difficult things I learned about my grandfather by doing this project. They were interesting but they didn’t captivate me like the road trips do.

So when my brother David suggested that we get together for dinner for him and his wife Debbie to meet the new person in my life, we agreed on meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire. While thinking about where we could meet, I remembered that at one point I had found a letter that had come from Nashua. Excitedly, I went up into the closet where all my boxes are stored, and I started going through them one by one until finally I found the one from Nashua where he had stayed at the Tavern Hotel. I remembered looking into this several years back and I had found out it was a restaurant, but it didn’t open until late in the day. Usually, I like to start out a road trip on the early side, and as this wasn’t opening until later, I for some reason, set this one aside. But in this case that’s exactly what I was looking for was something with the later opening. Excitedly, I googled it to find out if it was still a restaurant and indeed it was:Fody’s Tavern.

I had some trouble finding some research online about the origin of the Tavern Hotel. However, Fody’s website contained quite a bit about the history of the building. Interestingly, this building is the oldest brick building in Nashua being built in 1833 by the Greeley Brothers and it was called the Greeley Building. It was originally used as the town hall, a meeting place and also a church.  Originally, it was located on the west side of Clinton Street. Keep this in mind. 

In the 1880s, a wealthy Nashua family donated money to build a library building. They wanted to build it exactly where the Greeley building was located. It seems like it became a legal battle and in the end the city of Nashua bought the lot and then had the Greeley building moved across Clinton Street to the East side.  Considering there were no motorized vehicles back then, this was a pretty incredible feat. The building was then used as a combination of retail and housing until the 1920s. 

In the late 1920s, the Nashua police commissioner J. Howard Giles, who was also a caterer and owned other hotels, purchased the property and completely renovated it. This new upscale hotel, conveniently located right near the train station, became the place to be in Nashua. Anyone stopping over in Nashua would often stay there and the hotel was full of politicians, shoppers, and traveling business men staying at this location. You could count my Grandfather among one of them. The restaurant was also the place to be in Nashua. After work, you could find the shop owners, shoppers, and other business people gathering there after a hard day at work. I found on the Nashua library site, some newspaper clippings, celebrating the opening of the Tavern Hotel.  

However, in the 1960s, with the addition of many main highways that bypassed cities in towns, and of shopping malls that further diverted people away from downtowns, people no longer flocked to downtown Nashua to shop. In the late 1960s, according to Fody’s website, it turned into a brothel for almost the next 30 years. Fody’s has been a restaurant there on the main floor for the past 20 years.  Interestingly, the main library is no longer across the street as a new library was built and now this site is used for events.

My grandfather stayed at the Tavern in July 1931. The letter he sent to my grandmother was postmarked July 14, 1931 and the stamp cost two cents.  As I have found with many of the letters he wrote, the stationary had a beautiful pen and ink drawing of The Tavern Hotel. This showed the lettering of the hotel on the front and side of the building, and awnings over the windows. There were also cars and people shown in this drawing.  J. Howard Giles was listed as a caterer and the proprietor. The slogan for this hotel was.” The best of rooms and food at moderate rates.”  

In my Grandfather’s letter, he states, “ I at least have one consolation, I’m not up into Vermont where I would have to spend three weeks but close to home and I will be with you for the weeks end.” He also talks about the monotony of traveling. “ He realizes that he hast to pack his bag and start all over again. Well, dear, I certainly am not looking forward to traveling all my life, I am fed up with the so-called wanderlust to travel and see things. I have seen all I want already and in the future if there is a trip in view, it will be a pleasure to travel with you because you shall accompany me and we will both enjoy a change of surroundings.”

On the evening that we were going to meet there, I called to make a reservation for four at 6 PM. The person that I spoke to said that wasn’t a problem. I told him about the letter I had for my grandfather who stayed there in 1931.  So, a road trip was now set in motion. While I did not technically drive, the distance via back roads from Maynard to 9 Clinton St. in Nashua would be 26 miles one way. As we drove through downtown Nashua, it was bustling with all sorts of restaurants that had outdoor dining as well as breweries along Main Street.  Clinton Street was a very small street. There was only really one building on the right side which I surmised to be the library. On the side of where the restaurant was, there was a church, then the restaurant, and then another brick building that had a coffee shop on the bottom floor. There was parking along the one-way street as well as a small lot at the bottom of that hill.

The one main difference from the picture on the envelope and today’s building was that it is now mainly covered in Ivy. The upper floors don’t look to be occupied. Still it had that grand old appearance of a once stately building. You can still see the lettering for The Tavern on the front of the building. On the side of the building, there is now an outdoor seating area as part of the restaurant.  When I entered the restaurant, I would imagine that the woodwork was the same as it had been when my grandfather was there in 1931. It was the dark mahogany looking wood that stuck out to me as probably being the same woodwork that was there almost 100 years ago.

When the waiter came over, he asked who was the one that called and talked about the letter. I said it was me and I pulled out the letter to show him. He was so thrilled to see that and he talked about how they used to let people go look upstairs, but people ended up abusing that and so it is locked off to people. But he suggested that I call the general manager who was out of the country for another couple of months and she would probably arrange for me to be able to go up there.  He was really informative about how things had changed and how they were the same. There was a table that was up against where the former elevator was for the building. They had moved the door that had once separated the hotel lobby from the restaurant.  On the menu were some items that they had back in the original days at that restaurant, such as probably Chicken Pot Pie and Cottage Pie.  Just like in the 1930s, people gathered to eat and drink at the end of their workday.

While the only other place in retrospect that I have visited that had the opportunity to actually eat there was the Spa at the Norwich Inn, this was such a surreal and special trip for several reasons. If you have followed along on my journeys, you know that most of them are done solo. When I first started to think about these trips, I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and drive for longer periods of time. I certainly succeeded driving back roads to Presque Isle Maine, a mere 11.5 hour drive in a day. In 2019, two of my close friends accompanied me to Fitchburg  and Gardner.  I remembered I enjoyed sharing this experience with them. But in this case I was able to share this experience with my sibling David. Not only is his middle name Joseph, named after my grandfather, my grandfather’s nickname seemed to be Davy. We never knew our Grandfather because he died 10 years before I was born and therefore 15 years before David was born. It was an incredible shared  experience sitting with my brother in this restaurant where undoubtedly my grandfather ate when he stayed here.   This trip to the former Tavern Hotel was perhaps one of the most meaningful trips I have made during this journey to know my grandfather.  It was certainly no consolation prize whatsoever.