Crossroads Tabletop Tavern, a Manassas-based game pub, has put out a call to local historians for information about the building that it’s inhabited since 2018.
According to Crossroad’s post to its Facebook page, the building that houses the tavern located at 9412 Main Street will celebrate its 111th birthday. The tavern wants to mark the occasion by finding out more about the building’s history, but they’ve only been able to go back as far as 1984.
The building had been a bar up to that point, but Crossroads owner and founder John Hornberger says that there’s proof that people used to live in the building.
“The building may have been apartments since it has the wiring and remnants of bathroom facilities that would have gone along with those kinds of things,” says Hornberger.
Hornberger also talked about an artifact from back when the bar was known as Jake’s. In a drop ceiling above the kitchen not visible to the public’s view, signatures of the people who took part in a drinking contest are seen. If participants drank all six of the bar’s original beers in one night, their names would be added to the ceiling.
Another piece of the puzzle in the history of the building comes from the world of pop music, along with other landmarks in old town Manassas the building was featured in the Steve Winwood music video for the song “Back in the High Life Again.”
Hornberger also plans to officially name the building if he can’t find out its official name. His choice would be the Baggins Building, a nod to the character of Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings books by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Crossroads plans to have a month-long celebration for the building, including a weeklong birthday celebration, an overnight gaming session for select invitees, and a month-long sale on games.
