CARTERVILLE, Mo. — A Thursday morning fire significantly damaged Shirley’s Tavern, a Main Street fixture for many years, but the owners of the business vow to return.
“It’s been a bar for over 100 years, and it will continue to be a bar,” said owner Ashley Wise.
Law enforcement personnel were dispatched by the smoke alarm that detected the fire about 6:30 a.m. Thursday at the tavern, 321 W. Main St., said Cory Chatfield, Carterville assistant chief of police. The fire has been ruled as accidental, and no injuries were reported, he said.
“It has been determined that the fire originated in a closet in the south section of the structure that contained two natural gas furnaces and a natural gas water heater,” said Mike O'Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri Division of Fire Safety. “They couldn’t eliminate a malfunction of either the furnaces or the water heater as being the cause of the fire.” Randy Sweet, a state fire investigator, made the determination at the scene.
O’Connell said the estimated damage to Shirley's is listed at $100,000. The outside structure remains intact, but the interior was scorched, leaving only a few items salvageable.
The current owners, Wise and Mike Spicer, said they plan to demolish the structure and start anew. The two acquired the tavern in May.
Shirley Almandinger had operated the tavern beginning in the early 1980s. Her granddaughter, Bailey Hulsey, on Thursday said that her uncle was driving by the tavern earlier that morning and noticed smoke before authorities had arrived.
“We basically got here the same time the trucks did,” Hulsey said. “My grandma opened the bar in 1983, and I believe it was a bar before then. We have an old picture from the '50s or '60s. It used to be a bar back then, and it was an all-male bar.”
Hulsey said the tavern was a popular attraction in town and was a major part of her life.
“My childhood photos were probably in there,” Hulsey said. “Halloween photos, me playing with my grandpa, who used to sing in here. Everybody came here.”
Almandinger’s daughter, Monica Hulsey, said that her mother poured her heart and soul into the tavern. The large sign that reads “Shirley’s Tavern” in the front of the building remained intact Thursday.
“She wanted it to be a place where a woman could come in there, sit and have a drink and not be bothered by anyone,” she said. “People would bring their kids in to play pool, and in the evening, of course, they had to leave. It was just a place for family.”
For now, the owners hope to operate temporarily out of a building across the street until they can rebuild, Wise said. Their plans are to demolish what's left of the burned building and construct a steel structure that’s two times the size of the original.
“We’re going to see if we can’t fix it up temporarily, and we already have four people willing to invest to build,” Wise said. “We’re saving what we can. The bar stools, we’re going to make sure that those go in the new structure as well.”
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