Before she learned it in school, Andi Bartels knew how to count change.
“This used to be the checkout,” she explains, opening the drawer of a desk inside the Nashville House and running her hand over the smooth, hollowed-out coves where the coins would be. “We never had a cash register. We always had a cash drawer, and since I was, like, 7, I liked to come in here and help.”
Her mother, Fran Rogers, even had a miniature staff uniform made for her.
Later on, Bartels worked as a server, and in the kitchen as well. She remembers when they’d dry sassafras roots in the loft, strip the bark, steep it, wring it out in cheesecloth and make sassafras tea.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Her children, ages 9 and 13, are with her here, now. They play games upstairs next to the office where Bartels’ father, Andy Rogers, used to oversee the workings of the Nashville House — the same office that was once his father’s, too.
Every so often, 9-year-old Ella runs downstairs to deliver a phone call from her dad, Lance, to Andi, asking for measurements or other details on one of the many projects the family has in progress.
Reopening the 93-year-old Nashville House restaurant in the heart of Nashville next month is only one of those ventures. The restaurant closed in October 2018.
At the October 2019 estate auction conducted after her father’s death, Lance and Andi bought three other family properties, including the Antique Alley shops a block away. Those, too, have been undergoing some reconstruction which, for the most part, has been done by the family.
The Nashville House was what Bartels chose to inherit from her father’s estate, which was split among five siblings. She hadn’t exactly planned to buy that much — or anything — at the auction.
But now, standing amid piles of antiques and furniture in a building where she grew up, she’s glad they took the leap.
“I didn’t want to sell anything off. If I could have kept everything, I would have,” she said.
Andi works full-time as the art teacher at Brown County High School, her “dream job.” Lance works, too, as a pilot for UPS. They’re not planning on dropping either of those commitments as they add these others. That’s why they’re assembling a dream team to help them, people to add to the Nashville House family.
“It scares me a little, but at the same time, I don’t expect to get rich doing this,” Bartels said. “… It’s more, to me, about keeping the tradition going and keeping the stuff in the family and keeping this beautiful building the way it is, because I know other people talked about doing other things with it before we bought it, and there’s just so much history here that I just really didn’t want that.”
Country and community
The Nashville House is probably best known for three things: fried chicken, fried biscuits and homemade apple butter.
Newly hired manager John Peters has 30-plus years of experience in the restaurant management business, while Bartels claims none. However, she has 30-plus years of experience at the Nashville House.
“I keep pushing on him, ‘You understand, we have to make lots of apple butter. You understand, we have to make lots of apple butter,’” she said with a smile. “I finally got through to him.”
The menu — like all things at the reopened Nashville House — will be familiar, but refreshed.
Six appetizers and six salads will be added, as well as a kids’ menu and more sandwiches. Chef’s specials, like steaks, may be available from time to time, and special seasonal menus are planned as well. But the time-tested items will remain — fried chicken, Hoosier ham, the signature coleslaw, the fluffy Nashville House biscuits — all from the old recipes.
Some former Nashville House employees are coming back as well.
“Our kitchen is going to be a scratch kitchen. Everything’s going to be made fresh — mashed potatoes, all the green beans, corn, all the stuff is going to be made fresh daily. We’re going to roast our own turkeys, and then, of course, we’ll have the fried chicken,” Peters says.
“And apple butter,” Bartels adds.
“And apple butter, all made here,” Peters repeats. “Lots of it, evidently.”
He estimates that entrees will range between $8 and $18. “We want to appeal to everybody,” he said.
The target opening date is in mid-July.
Projects like refinishing the main dining room’s floors, coupled with the coronavirus pandemic, have nudged opening day back from mid-April when Bartels had thought it might be.
She’s also waiting for the state to approve a liquor license permit which local boards have already approved.
“Beer and wine is not something we had before, and I don’t think my dad intended to have before, but I want to make it a place that I like to hang out, too. So I’m thinking about my demographic as well,” Bartels said.
Beer taps and a bar area will take up a portion of the counter just inside the door. Visitors can order a drink — Brown County Coffee being an option as well — and relax in the Old Country Store area, or take a seat on a porch stool to watch the town amble by.
Seating for 80 or 90 guests has been added on a new patio fronting Van Buren Street.
“It’s going to be the perfect place to sit and watch people. That’s what I plan on doing most of the time,” Bartels said.
Inside, guests — whether they’re there to dine or just to browse — will find a more open and brighter Old Country Store space.
Bartels and store manager Darlene McDonald are curating a room full of products made by local people. It’s a cause that’s dear to both of them, and an idea that’s rooted in history.
When Jack Rogers, Bartels’ grandfather, and Fred Bates Johnson bought and reopened the Nashville House in 1927 as a hotel serving meals, it contained a gift shop, the Brown County Folks Shop, selling local goods.
“We’re trying to find people that maybe don’t necessarily have a shop, but would still like to maybe showcase their stuff somewhere,” Bartels said. “… That’s something that’s super close to my heart. I love the community, I love working with people in the community, and so it makes a lot of sense that we would work locally to find our vendors.”
McDonald will be one of those local artisans. She’s the “super baker” who’ll be running the Old Country Store’s kitchen.
“It’s literally my dream. Andi’s letting me live my dream,” McDonald said in the midst of sanding and painting things behind the counters last week.
She’s always wanted to have a shop, particularly a bakery, in Nashville. Her plan is to offer at least three kinds of cookies, brownies, and quick breads like zucchini and banana behind the Old Country Store counter, as well as to make all the desserts and bread for the restaurant.
The store will not have as much candy as it used to. But it will be partnering with the candy shop in the Heritage Mall next door — Ella’s favorite — to have fudge and other treats.
The loft upstairs, which was mostly used for storage before, is being remade into dining space to seat up to 40 people. It’ll also contain a small bar area, and people can rent the loft for private parties if they wish.
‘So many memories’
Slowly, Bartels has been decluttering, cleaning and rethinking the use of every tool, crock, banner and painting that covered the walls and hung from the rafters. She wants people to see the twisted beams, the pegwork, the gigantic stone fireplaces, the rough-hewn logs that show through the nearly 75-year-old structure.
“Somebody asked me the other day if we had blueprints for this place from back when it was built, and I was like, ‘I don’t think they made blueprints.’ I think they kind of just built stuff as they went along. I mean, look at this guy,” she said, patting a beam. “This beam cracks me up because it’s so turned. I love that.”
Around the corner are a framed collage containing Civil War-era wallpaper from the original Nashville House — the building that burned in 1943 — and a photo of Jack Rogers playing checkers near a potbelly stove that probably stood a few feet from that spot.
The Frank Hohenberger portraits of Brown County people — her grandfather and Johnson included — have had their frames repaired and new lighting installed above them, and Bartels will create a guide to hang next to the display so that people can find the faces better.
“It will feel very much the same,” she said, “and that’s one of the things we’re going for is I want people to come in and be like, ‘Oh yeah, this is The Nashville House; I have so many memories here. But I want new people to find it, too, and I want to offer some different options. But I definitely want it to feel like home, because that’s what it feels like to me. It wouldn’t make sense to change it too much.”
She often thinks about how her dad would feel about all of this. She wishes she could have known, as an adult, “the Andy Rogers of 30 years ago who was really into growth and innovations.
“When I was in college, my dad bought a brewpub in Indianapolis. … My dad loved beer. This was before microbreweries took off. … He liked taking risks and trying things. … Later on, though, he didn’t really like change a lot. But I honestly think my dad 30 years ago would have been all about this.”
She’s standing by that cash-drawer desk now, looking around at the iron oddities, the hand-lettered sign advertising “dining room, air-conditioned,” and talking about the PA system that used to call families through the crowded lobby for dinner.
Her children are excited about working there and helping out. They’re bonding with John and Darlene, just as she did with Geraldine, that manager who taught her how to count change 30-some years ago.
“I always liked to be here,” she says. “That was one of the reasons we ended up taking this place was that I grew up here, and it’s just got so many memories.
“Some people, the downstairs people (at Our Sandwich Place), talk sometimes about it being haunted, about there being people in here. And I thought I would be, like, creeped out being here alone at night. But I’m not at all. It’s almost like I’m at home.”
