Riverboat memories

Bill Dunlap recalls nights when the Reuben E. Lee riverboat restaurant — where he was employed as a maitre d’ for two summers in the early 1970s — got so busy that busboys, facing overloaded dishwashers, simply tossed dinnerware overboard.

The paddle-wheeler replica does not have the 150-year history its exterior suggests and it has never sailed the Mississippi River, but after 43 years in the Newport Harbor, it is considered a local landmark by natives and vacationers alike.

“It was a really fun place to work because it was always beaming with activity,” said Dunlap, 58, of Newport Beach. “Five or six days out of the week, there was a two-hour wait for the restaurant and a wait just to get into the bar.”

The landmark became a lot less recognizable Friday, when a 190-ton hydraulic crane removed the decorative smokestacks and paddlewheel. It’s part of a dismantling process that began June 25 and should be done by the end of July.

The Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, the boat’s most recent occupant, lost its lease for the adjacent parking lot in 2006, and officials finally opted to scrap the boat after they couldn’t close a deal to sell it.

Designed and built in 1963 by Blurock and Associates, the riverboat opened as the Reuben E. Lee restaurant the following year. Ken Maas, who watched the demolition Friday, said he remembers his uncle helping build the boat.

A hull was made in Wilmington and towed in to Newport harbor, where the remainder was built to specifications

“It was a real challenge to build a boat because you can’t put a level on anything,” Maas said.

The restaurant was the brainchild of John McIntosh, who owned a steakhouse nearby with his wife and whose Corona del Mar restaurant, The Snack Shop, went on to become Coco’s Bakery Restaurant.

Playing off Robert E. Lee, a common paddle-wheeler name, the couple settled on the Reuben E. Lee, Reuben being McIntosh’s middle name.

The upstairs dining hall served primarily fresh fish and other seafood while customers feasted on prime rib and steak in the Sternwheeler restaurant downstairs, and cocktails were served in a lounge on the bow.

After docking his sailboat just a few spaces down from the Reuben E. Lee, Newport Beach council member Don Webb often stopped in for a beer and some amusement. Comic duo Skiles and Henderson got their start performing regularly on the boat.

“It was just a great place to go and have a beer and sit down and relax,” he said. “When you went in, you felt like you were in a Mississippi River paddler. You could almost feel the presence of the gamblers that would be on board boats like that.”

Keith Buy was first introduced to the boat as a child vacationing at a friend’s Balboa Island home. When he moved to the area as a teen, he was employed there as a line cook and bartender.

“It was just a pleasant work environment for a cook there working at a prep table with a big, giant window looking out into the bay, seeing the boats go by,” said Buy, who lives in Boulder City, Nev. “Tourists would occasionally bump the side with their boats, and when the fire boat went by, you could definitely feel the boat rock.”

Over the years, the restaurant changed hands, becoming a Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse and later, the Riverboat Restaurant. In 1995, the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum moved aboard, and the boat was renamed Pride of Newport.

The museum operated three galleries, a classroom, a library and a restaurant there before relocating to the Balboa Fun Zone last year, when its lease for parking lot space from the Irvine Co. expired.

“Moving to the riverboat from the one-room schoolhouse was a great stepping stone for this museum, and we have a lot of fond memories there,” said David Muller, executive director of the museum. “The realistic side of this is that the Reuben E. Lee has been around for 40-plus years, and it was built with a 20-year lifespan, and the cost of standard repair was significant.”

As the boat heads into its third week of demolition, many will miss the veritable Newport Beach marker. The work is expected to end in two to three weeks, and the Irvine Co. has announced no future plans for the space.

“It’s just part of the landscape when you come over the bridge heading south on the highway,” Buy said. “It will just be odd not seeing it there, but times change.

“Newport is still Newport, even without it — I guess.”

Alicia Robinson contributed to this story.