Old Watering Hole Takes On New Look to Start a New Life

The thick ivy that draped the roof of the Ivy House Restaurant for 70 years is gone, replaced by new cedar shingles.

The inside is bare, except for a new oak and marble bar that awaits the old haunt’s return to life.

The Ivy House, which got its name from the 16-inch-thick ivy that covered several windows, was a Laguna Beach landmark, not only for its architecture but for its clientele. Since 1975, the Ivy House had been a second home for local artists, cartoonists, performers and writers. The old restaurant closed in September, 1987, because of financial and managerial difficulty.

Soon, however, the doors will reopen on the Cedar Creek Inn.

New owner Richard Ayres said flagstones that lined the outside have been replaced with bricks; French windows have taken the place of the building’s second entrance, and a fireplace has been installed to provide “a homier feeling.”

When renovations are done, some locals say, it will hardly resemble the old Ivy House.

Located on Forest Avenue, two doors from the city’s post office, the Ivy House was the gathering spot for performers from the Laguna Beach Playhouse and cartoonists such as the late Virgil Partch (VIP), creator of “Big George.”

After a stint at the drawing board, cartoonists would hustle to the post office, drop off their work and then head to the Ivy House “about noon everyday for lunch and a drink and to see who was there and what was going on,” said Phil Interlandi, a Playboy cartoonist and one of the restaurant’s regulars.

Actor George Woods said, “We’d just stroll down there from the Playhouse after a rehearsal or a show and stay the rest of the night.

“God, the characters that came out of that place,” he said. “It was like a constant feast of wit and wry. Someone was always poking fun at a passing customer or another member of the group.”

Woods, Interlandi and his twin brother, Frank, and about 25 other local artists composed the Street Gang of the Ivy House--as management jokingly called them--for about 12 years.

Members of their group rarely entered the restaurant from the front door, Interlandi said, “always through the side door from the parking lot. So you could come straight from the post office and go straight to the bar.”

Days often ran into nights “if things got out of hand,” he said. “You’d have a couple of meals, a couple of drinks, things got a little lively and you might not leave until 11 that night. The wives and girlfriends would get a little angry, but we still did it.”

Cartoons, newspaper articles and photographs of those who frequented the restaurant shared wall space along with paintings from local artists.

The Street Gang tended to position themselves at one corner of the L-shaped, leather-padded bar, Woods said. “The men would just sit at one end of the bar and remark on everyone who walked in from both entrances.”

Woods said Dick Oldden, a former cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, referred to the restaurant as Algonquin West, after New York’s Hotel Algonquin, a hangout for artists.

After Partch died in a car accident in 1984, gatherings of the Ivy House gang became less and less frequent. And after the restaurant closed, Woods said, the group dispersed to other bars and restaurants in the city.

“We kept expecting it to open and after a while we thought, ‘Where do we go from here?’ ” he said.

But Woods said he thinks the days of the old Street Gang are gone.

“I don’t think the new restaurant would want the old gang back. We were rowdy, sometimes,” he said. “Rowdy, but fun. Always fun.”