The crooked floor, the sagging shelves, the white-lettered menu board proclaiming $4 cheeseburgers and $2.50 clams — everything about Stevenson's Bar and Grille defied time. Until Sept. 14, when the dilapidated bar and grill and onetime grocery and bait shop sizzled its last patty. Stevenson's, a wood-paneled shack decorated with a traffic light and old Coke and Pepsi lamps, with bathrooms behind the bar labeled "Squaws" and "Indians," is relocating after 93 years on Euclid's Lake Shore Boulevard.
"It's a shame they can't take the shell of this and put it inside a brick building," says Doug Hryn, 47, of Willoughby, who visited on closing day for a final meal. He gestures toward the decades-old grill, its warped, still-smoking surface dotted with grease pearls. Stevenson's is to diners as Green Bay's Lambeau Field is to football, Hryn says: a classic.
But Euclid inspectors demanded repairs to Stevenson's primitive electrical wiring and "sagging and weak floors, ceiling and walls." Estimated cost: $50,000. So owner Bruce Cerine will reopen at 800 E. 200th St. around Oct. 1. He's taking only glassware, a few signs, an ancient cooler and the well-seasoned grill.
