There is a connection between the Organ Grinder restaurants and the legendary Earthquake Ethel’s Roadhouse nightclub in Beaverton.
Several of the same people were involved, and Ethel’s will have a chapter in the documentary.
And here, we are happy to present to you, an original painting of the mythical Ethel herself, loaned to the production by Dan Zilka, who among many other things was a senior manager at Ethel’s.
Early in the planning stages for the first Organ Grinder, the founders used an architecture firm which specialized in restaurants and hotels. The design was very conventional – a rectangular building, with the entrance and kitchen at the front, and the organ at the back. No towering windows showing off the pipes to the street,…
This week, we visited the Architectural Heritage Center in Portland, Oregon to view the Will Martin archives. Will Martin was the architect who designed the unique Organ Grinder building. Will is most famous for designing Pioneer Courthouse Square in Downtown Portland. Among other items, we found this concept drawing of the Organ Grinder exterior, rendered…
This childhood drawing was provided by an Organ Grinder fan who spent hours creating elaborate scenes of their dream pipe organ. This instrument has everything – note the inclusion of not one, but two pianos!
The Organ Grinder restaurants in Portland and Denver were special places to spend your birthday back in the 70’s, 80’s, and into the 90’s. Now, you can send an Organ Grinder birthday greeting to anyone by sharing this video’s YouTube link. The clip used here was recorded at the Portland location in 1996, shortly before…
Today, I met with a charming person who a lot of people might remember from the Organ Grinder’s heyday. This person was in possession of a trove of documents and memorabilia, including multiple scrapbooks kept by Paul Forchuk, one of the Organ Grinder’s co-founders. These scrapbooks were previously thought to be lost. (Obviously, the person…
Yesterday, we returned to the Architectural Heritage Center in Portland, Oregon. The AHC had just unearthed a set of slides from the architecture firm Martin, Soderstrom and Matteson (now Soderstrom Architects), originally co-founded by Will Martin, the architect who designed the Organ Grinder building. The slides feature the Organ Grinder building in 1973 around the…