Fire destroys Maxine’s
A Fayetteville landmark was destroyed by fire early Tuesday morning.
Fayetteville firefighters responded to Maxine’s Tap Room, 107 N. Block St., at about 3: 30 a. m. Tuesday. The blaze was reportedly under control within about 30 minutes, but it caused extensive interior damage.
“ It was ruled accidental, ” said Fayetteville Battalion Chief Terry Lawson. “ It started in a trash can beneath the bar. ”
Lawson said the cause of the fire has not been determined but is currently being investigated by the Fayetteville Fire Marshal’s Office.
“ The building’s exterior was made of brick and block, so it held up pretty well, ” he said. “ There wasn’t a fire alarm in the building, but a CO 2 bottle exploded, and that’s when [a neighbor ] called 911. ”
Firefighters were forced to cut their way through the building’s roof because of the steel gates on each side of the facility.
“ She had a huge steel gate in front and one in the back, ” said business owner Andrea Foren, great-niece of the business’s founder, Marjorie Maxine Miller. “ She made it burglarproof. ”
The fire is the second tragedy the Tap Room has endured in just two months. In late May, Miller, who started Maxine’s Tap Room in 1950, died.
“ I’m in shock, ” Foren said, as she picked through pieces of charred rubble. “ Our family hasn’t even gotten back on our feet since Maxine passed away almost two months ago. It’s hard to get swept off your feet again when you haven’t even had a chance to get back on them in the first place. ”
Foren said she plans to rebuild.
“ I know that’s what Maxine would want, ” she said. “ We hope to make it look as much like it did before this happened. ”
Foren said she hopes to restore the building as soon as possible.
“ If it takes more than three months, I think I’ll go crazy, ” she said.
The history of the bar goes back to 1950, but the current structure wasn’t built until 1963. Miller built the current bar to the minimum size allowed by city code at that time. To dissuade burglars, she installed only one small window at the front of the building.
The narrow building that stretched more than 50 feet deep, often compared to a shoe box, featured an old coin-operated cigarette machine, a juke box, and a deer head adorned with Mardi Gras beads, sunglasses and a tie. The “ ding-ding, ” an old-fashioned bowling game, still stands in the corner by the door as it has for almost all of the bar’s 56 years of business.
“ The bowling machine was already broken and we had already sent some parts off to get repaired, ” Foren said. “ But the body of the machine still seems to be OK. If it’s not, we’ll probably just get a new one. ”
Among the items damaged in the fire, Foren said, were two of Miller’s favorite stools.
“ The bar used to have a ’ 70 s-style theme, ” she said. “ But back in the early ’ 90 s, when everything was painted Razorback red, Maxine kept one of her stools green — it was the only original stool. She also had another stool that had her name on it. Those two stools were the only ones that were damaged in the explosion. ”
Foren said she plans to take the rebuilding process one step at a time.
“ We’ll probably just start by cleaning everything out and then hosing it all down with a pressure washer, ” she said. “ Then we’ll build from there. ”
Foren said Tap Room employees have shown tremendous support.
“ They all showed up this morning, ready to help clean up, ” she said. “ We’re like a close-knit family, and we’ve got a lot of community support.”
from the NW Arkansas Times