Lincoln Park's 'Babymaker' Bar Soon To Close

It was a place of intense encounters, loudmouthed arguments and intimate confessions taken by a bartender wiping glasses of fronting bottles behind the bar. After 50 years as one of Lincoln Park’s preeminent watering holes, John Barleycorn will have its last call on May 17.

Sam Sanchez, the third in a line of convivial owners, called the closing of Barleycorn’s in Lincoln Park -- the original location -- a tough decision.

“It was time. We’re moving forward,” Sanchez, 50, said. “It’s been such a great experience at John Barleycorn, the people we’ve met, the friends we made throughout the years. You become part of a big family with the neighbors.”

The Lincoln Park location -- Sanchez opened three others named after the British folk hero -- holds a sentimental spot in his heart.

It was his first restaurant, which he bought off his uncle, Frank Mendoza, in 1992, who bought John Barleycorn from the original owner, Eric J. Van Gelder, in 1985.

“My uncle was a great man,” Sanchez laughs, when asked if it was hard working for a family member. “He gave me a great opportunity. He made it possible for me to buy my first restaurant.”

Sanchez was 25 when he went to work for Mendoza as a cook, a job for which he had little expeirence. He said more is expected when family members work together.

“It’s not true when they say you can’t fire a family member. My uncle fired a lot of my cousins,” Sanchez said. “I love cooking now. I learned how to cook. It was real educational working for him, a lot of hours and a lot of time, but it was a great experience.”

Sanchez is almost as old as Barleycorn, the bar and restaurant, itself, founded in 1963 or 1965, according to local pub lore. Van Gelder was a Dutchman with a nautical bent, hence the pub’s unique decor -- sailing ships and ship wheels, and English paintings with powder wigged gents lifting pints of ale. 

For many decades a massive moosehead hung on the wall, until it fell off a few years ago and broke into pieces, Sanchez lamented. (He doesn’t know who shot the moose.)

The building at 658 W. Belden Ave. dates back to the 1890, and has mostly been a saloon, “opened by an Irish immigrant moonlighting as a Chicago cop,” according to the Chicago Bar Project.

During Prohibition, the building was a full blown speakeasy, boarded up so cops couldn’t peer inside the windows, fronted by a Chinese laundry, where gangsters hid booze inside the piles of dirty laundry.

The gangster John Dillinger was said to frequent the joint during the Depression, buying the house a round with his ill gotten gains from robbing banks, the Chicago Bar Project said.

The physical landscape of Lincoln Park hasn’t changed much. Sanchez says that residents have done a pretty good job of landmarking the neighborhood’s historical buildings.

What has changed are the residents: trendy young renters who fell in love with Lincoln Park in the 1980s and 1990s, now pushing prams through the neighborhood and converting  former apartment buildings and flats into single-family homes.

Sanchez says there are now three generations of “Barleycorn babies,” the children of couples who first hooked up at Barleycorn's and eventually married, or were conceived after their parents spent an evening at the bar.

“Now their kids, and their kids’ kids are coming in here,” Sanchez said.

Since the closing of Children’s Memorial Hospital two years ago, which offered free parking to Lincoln Park revelers, sales have dipped by 15 percent, Sanchez told Crain’s Chicago Business. Many of the neighborhoods shops and restaurants have since pulled up stake, reports said.

Sanchez doesn’t feel like sticking around for the 760-unit planned development to be completed across the street on the former children’s hospital site.

“I would have preferred a hotel,” he said. “It’s too modern for Lincoln Park. It doesn’t look like Lincoln Park. I don’t know what is going to happen.”

The sale on the historic building, which he owns, is final. Sanchez says he’s scouting for another John Barleycorn site in the Loop. His three other Barleycorns -- Wrigleyville, River North and Schaumburg -- will remain open, as will his other restaurant holdings.

Part of the Lincoln Park Barleycorn’s longevity was due to its ability to change with the times, doing away with classical music and adding TVs where patrons could watch the Cubs and Hawks. (A Yelp reviewer complained that the televisions “were kind of small.”)

“It’s always remained John Barleycorn,” Sanchez said. “It isn’t hard to say goodbye because we’re not really saying goodbye. We’re just saying goodbye to the building.”