City: St. Johns, OR

Category: Restaurants

Telephone: (503) 283-8520

Address: 8203 North Ivanhoe St.

Description: This historic building with its distinctive dome was part of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition held in Northwest Portland. After the festivities commemorating the centennial of that famous journey, the structure was barged across the Multnomah Channel of the Willamette River to St. Johns, a small burg now tied to the mainland by a lovely bridge with cathedral arches. After a long history as a church, fraternal lodge, and a watering hole called Duffy’s, the place was purchased by the McMenamin brothers, who turned it into a roadhouse with lots of old-time signs and enough horns on the wall to hang half the hats in the West. It has the usual drinks and menu loaded with the same tasty sandwiches and burgers found in the other historic theaters, schools, and hotels turned into emporiums of suds and grub by these omnipresent entrepreneurs. With the long elegant wood bar, wood-burning stove, and a 7-foot-tall bird of paradise standing sentinel, it is truly like stepping into a time machine. St. Johns, like most of the McMenamin brothers’ brainstorms, is full of treasures, including stained-glass windows, a bizarre assortment of hanging lights, Second Empire chairs, and an old-time piano that patrons sometimes play.