Classrooms where you can put up your feet

PORTLAND, Ore. -- OK, when I was in elementary school I don't remember ever having a television in my classroom. I vaguely remember chalkboards, nagging teachers and very high ceilings in the aging Tacoma building -- but no TV.

Just for authenticity sake, the McMenamin brothers decided not to put televisions in their historic Kennedy School classroom lodgings in Portland. The intrusion, they figured, would ruin the experience they were after.

Let me explain. Kennedy was an elementary school that opened in 1915 on the outskirts of northeast Portland -- so far out in the boonies that, at the time, there was an ordinance against shooting rabbits from the trolley on the ride out. For 60 years the school was the quintessential neighborhood elementary school, sort of the center of the universe for the sprawling outlying community.

Today the former elementary school -- now called McMenamins Kennedy School -- is a neighborhood icon of a different ilk, and only 15 minutes from downtown Portland by bus. The revised edition of the school features lodging in former classrooms, plus a brewery and theater, 107-degree soaking pool, restaurant and several bars, as well as wedding, convention and meeting spaces.

The Portland, Oregon-based McMenamin brothers, Mike and Brian, who started in the pub business in the early 1980s, today own and operate 53 properties in Oregon and Washington, including seven historic hotels and eight theater pubs -- all slightly unusual and some more funky and outrageous than the others.

JEFF LARSEN / P-I

Even the beer kegs at portray bits of the history of the original school.

One of the McMenamins' more recent acquisitions, the "Kennedy," as it was affectionately referred to over the years, historically served a variety of civic functions when school was out, such as a public meeting hall, Red Cross blood-drawing center, a weekend playground and food-relief shelter during the Depression. The school also was the neighborhood polling place.

The school chugged along until the 1974-75 school year, when the district decided to close the place because it was too rundown to fix and enrollment was on the skids. Neighborhood activists, the PTA, former students and others had grown to love the versatility the school added to the neighborhood and overwhelmingly wanted to keep it as part of the community, even if it had outlived its usefulness as a school.

Over the next 20 years or so, several proposals were floated to save the facility. The McMenamins' idea for the property eventually floated the highest in the mid-1990s.

In the spring of 1997 renovations started. Six short months later school opened again -- this time, however, in a much different fashion.

The school's tiny detention room, where elementary school kids who misbehaved were sent, now is called the Detention Bar. The dimly lit, cramped quarters features a pot-bellied stove, a half-size bar with two favorite house beers on tap, high ceilings with transom-style windows that bartender Jason Handy can open with a long stick with a hook on the end, and (plug your nose) cigar smokers.

JEFF LARSEN / P-I

Ethan Laarman-Hughes, 7, scrambles out of the hot soaking tub at McMenamins Kennedy School.

Down the hall is the larger, more traditional Cypress Bar, the other smoking bar in the school. Around the corner from the Cypress Bar, and down the hall, past the former gymnasium -- now a large meeting room with gaily decorated basketball hoops at each end -- is the tiny, non-smoking Honors Bar. Just as I figured, the Honors Bar feels socially and culturally far removed from the depravity of the Detention Bar. The Detention Bar was packed. I only found one customer in the Honors Bar.

For dinner I enjoyed a tasty, slightly spicy chicken dish called The Jerk in the restaurant bar at the rather conventional-looking Courtyard Restaurant. The brewery is next to the restaurant. During the summer, outdoor dining is plentiful in the school's adjacent courtyard.

After dinner, as I headed for the Detention Bar, I noticed that the waiting line to get into the restaurant was about a dozen diners long, even on a Wednesday night. The pizza and calzones are popular menu items.

The theater, which shows first-run films, also features a small snack area and bar and is situated just across the courtyard from the restaurant. Registered guests get in free. With its overstuffed chairs, coffee tables and couches, the theater's seating arrangement looks more like a giant living room than conventional movie theater seating.

JEFF LARSEN / P-I

Arriving on his bicycle at the front entryway is Jason Handy, bartender at the Detention Bar.

The 35 large guest rooms have been parceled from the school's original spacious classrooms and besides modern amenities, such as a bathroom and Wi-Fi, include original vertical-sliding chalkboards, a queen-size bed and a handy desk.

All the rooms are segregated from the hallway by two doors and a hallway to provide privacy from the hustle and bustle in the hallways of the rest of the facility. Instead of numbers, the rooms are smartly named after the first names of former or mythical schoolteachers. Last month my son stayed in Sally (coincidentally his wife's first name) while attending a friend's bachelor party. I stayed in Myrtle on what the school calls its Hammerhead Package for $139 double occupancy, which includes dinner (and two Hammerhead brews) and breakfast in the Courtyard Restaurant.

Hotel check-in is handled by a lively staff of young people in the former principal's office just inside the main entrance on Northeast 33rd Avenue. Guest parking is free in the back of the school, with two convenient entrances. I never did see the dreaded vice principal's office, thank goodness.

Hotel manager Owen Craig showed me a detailed guide map, available in the principal's office, of the eclectic collection of artwork, murals and photographs on walls, ceilings, doorways and hallways throughout the school (even on the beer kegs in the brewery). Some of the historical photographs, like one of a group of elementary children standing in front of the school holding their custom-built birdhouses, remind guests of simpler times.

Describing the rather large carved, wooden figures against the wall in the main entryway, Craig shrugged, "Indonesian -- no particular reason that I know of." Who would expect to find Indonesian artwork on display just outside the principal's office in a historic elementary school in Portland, Ore.? But detention at McMenamins Kennedy School is much more fun than when I was in elementary school. Where's the Honors Bar again?

If you go

McMenamins Kennedy School ý 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave., Portland; reservations, 888-249-3983, direct line 503-249-3983. Rates vary seasonally, currently Sunday-Thursday nights $84-$99, Friday and Saturday, $94-$109. Online reservations available: www.mcmenamins.com.

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