Historic Red Rooster Inn Opens to Light of a New Day
The Historic Red Rooster as the Hillsboro Hotel in the early 1900s.
We are privileged to have our “Beacons in the Darkness: Hope and Transformation Among America’s Community Newspapers” book party become the first public event at the Historic Red Rooster Inn in Hillsboro, Il. The town of Hillsboro (pop. 6,100) is a town of wonder and it is about an hour’s drive south of Springfield, Il.
The Red Rooster building turns 120 years old on Nov. 21. It opened as the Hillsboro Hotel and the initials were carved into the anchor post of the lobby staircase. They can still be seen today. The free event begins at 7 p.m. on Nov. 3 at the Historic Red Rooster, 123 E. Seward St. in Hillsboro. Registration here.
The evening will feature a panel discussion celebrating the Hillsboro community and the importance of community journalism, along with DJs from Gold Pan Records, and food from Gianni’s Italian. The food is sponsored by the Journal-News in Hillsboro, which is featured throughout the book. Drinks will be available through the Historic Red Rooster. The book will be for sale at the event.
The Historic Red Rooster Inn is being reimagined as a downtown hotel, apartment building, taproom, and distillery.
Historic Red Rooster, circa 2022 (Provided photo.)
John and Kendra Wright began their work renovating the abandoned Rooster in 2018, about a year before I began visiting Hillsboro to research my book.
The Wrights are from Central Illinois. John is a former Apple executive who was the project leader for the development of the iPhone (it’s all in the book). John retired from Apple in 2016 and the family left the San Francisco area to come home. And Hillsboro is better for that.
It only took a couple of visits to Hillsboro to pick up on this unique commitment to community. I saw it in the humble comraderies at The Journal-News newspaper. I saw it in the newspaper’s fourth-generation owner John Galer, who puts ego aside for the betterment of his product and therefore his community. On Oct. 8 Galer was installed as chairman of the National Newspaper Association, a 1,700-member group that enhances and promotes America’s community newspapers.
I saw it with the Wrights when I watched them work tirelessly on the hotel restoration. I saw it with young people like Matt Sands and Brian Lee, co-owners of Gold Pan Records in downtown Hillsboro. They opened an independent record store with nearly 5,000 pieces of vinyl. That’s almost one piece of vinyl for every resident! (I’ve found some great soul LPs.) A used bookstore operates out of the rear space of their downtown building.
Lee curates the Small Town Cool website (check this out!) which was instrumental in spreading the word on early downtown redevelopment. Lee is also an accomplished tradesman. He renovated the Gold Pan building. He owns and renovated the Blackboard Mercantile gift shop and Evi Salon buildings downtown and even renovated the counters at the Orpheum Theatre which opened in 1929 as a vaudeville house.
Brian Lee (left) and Matt Sands at Gold Pan (Hoekstra photo)
Lee and his wife lived in the future groovy East Nashville (Tn.) in 2011. “That was a cool community,” he told me on one of my visits. “Hip and going from gritty to popular. I thought that was a close community. But living here, ‘It’s like, what the heck is this?’ There’s no other way to have this much face-to-face. In architecture and design, they always say when you put people together in public spaces, it’s safer. You can’t cheat on your spouse or whatever. Anything you do, you’re gonna’ get caught.
“We’re all right here.”
Hillsboro is a bit off the beaten path. Litchfield is to the east and it connects with I-55 and Route 66. Hillsboro is set in some gentle hills about 12 miles east of Litchfield. I recommend anyone within fun driving distance to Hillsboro to check out our event. We’ve created a program where you will be able to feel the large spirit of this small town.
The event is co-sponsored by the Historic Red Rooster, Agate Publishing, and Imagine Hillsboro. Journal-News publisher Mike Plunkett will moderate a panel consisting of John Galer, Mary (Galer) Herschelman, the fine (fifth-generation) editor of the Journal-News, Tori O’Dell, a staff writer at the Journal-News, Matt Sands, Kendra Wright and myself. Matt and Brian will DJ with records from their eclectic collection.
Kyle Herschelman, Journal-News sports editor and wife Mary Herschelman, Journal-News editor covering an area high school football game. (I love this provided photo.)
Our event will be in the hotel lobby. The upper taproom will be open as well. The hotel is almost done. It is just awaiting the finishing touches. There are 13 hotel rooms and eight apartments. The target date for housing is a little longer.
“We haven’t set a date to be in full operation,” John wrote in an Oct. 11 e-mail. “Between material delays, finding employees, and the fact we just don’t want to take any shortcuts on making this building the best it can be, it gets too hard to predict.”
Ah, but where there are newspaper people, I predict there will be beer.
The brewery-distillery is located in a new 2,000-square foot metal building attached to the back of the old brick Red Rooster. The Wrights installed a 15 bbl (beer barrels) brewhouse with an oversized 30 bbl mash tun (vessel) so they can make grain-on whiskey mashes. It’s just like printing a newspaper!
The system was manufactured by Crawford Brewing Equipment in Rock Island, Il. with all-American sourced stainless steel. The still is manufactured by Headframe Spirits, a global company out of Butte, Mt. It features an 18-foot tall column. John explained, “We also have two grain silos (one to house malted barley for beer and one to house corn for the bourbon) on the outside of the building manufactured by Schuld Bushnell in Bushnell, Il. I can’t guarantee that every part of the brewery is made in the USA with USA materials, but we sure did our best to source as much domestically and as locally as possible.
“Right now we are still finishing up our installation (pretty much everything is working except our scales for the grain, which we have been waiting on parts) and we are finishing up parts of the building. For the event, I’m making some beer to serve from our small test batch system. It is fermenting behind me as I type this.”
John and Kendra Wright: the spirit of community. (Hoekstra photo.)
The Red Rooster got its name in 1965 when third–generation owner Virginia Brinton Imie was operating the hotel and opened an English Pub influenced restaurant and bar in the basement.
Kendra is not sure why it was renamed The Red Rooster, although red roosters are considered protectors against demons. And in 1964 the Rolling Stones had a hit with Howlin Wolf’s imposing blues ballad “Little Red Rooster” The Wrights bought the building in 2017. The Historic Red Rooster will change the face of downtown Hillsboro.
In 2020, the Wrights also renovated a former snack bar facility on Old Lake Hillsboro, outside of town. The year-round getaway is now a two-bedroom and one-studio unit “beach house” known as The Lakehouse by Historic Red Rooster Inn. Each of the units has items from the Rooster, including mirrors made from old windows and reclaimed doors. Paintings in the lakeside rooms were done by local artist Taylor Meyers.
During a 2020 visit to the beach house Kendra told me, “This is about getting people to Hillsboro. If there are two breweries, a distillery, a cool hotel to sleep in, there’s no reason Hillsboro can’t be as awesome as St. Genevieve in Missouri, or a mini-Galena (Ill.) We have cool shops, you walk down to the Opera House (a downtown brewing company) and there’s cool stories to be heard.”
John Galer (left), owner of the Journal-News and publisher Mike Plunkett after deadline. (Hoekstra photo.)
Like many rural communities in America, Hillsboro has encountered rough waters.
In 2019 the Coffeen Power Station closed after producing power in the area since 1965. The Hillsboro Glass factory opened in 1907 and closed in 1997 when it was sold to Ball Bros. of Muncie, Ind., the world’s biggest fruit jar company.
When the Hillsboro Hotel (Red Rooster) was built in the early 1900s, Hillsboro was on the main line of the New York Central Railroad. Trains made 13 daily trips from St. Louis to New York City.
The Hillsboro-Litchfield-Taylorville area was coal mining country. My mother’s side of the family consisted of coal miners from Taylorville. The iconic labor leader Mary Harris “Mother Jones” (for whom a magazine is named) is buried under a 22-foot high granite monument in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive, just 15 miles southwest of Hillsboro. An Irish immigrant, Mother Jones (1837-1930) was the most successful organizer in the history of the United Mine Workers of America. Coal mining provided a base for merchants, trades, and professionals, most of which have gone away.
Family affair: The lead pressman is Keith McLaughlin, who is son of owner John Galer’s sister Annie. (Hoekstra photo.)
Hillsboro has reimagined itself with sparks from the city, the newspaper, and a non-profit group called Imagine Hillsboro–one of the sponsors of our book launch. Imagine Hillsboro was started in 2015 by a group of residents and a program facilitated by the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University.
Hillsboro’s vision has not been lost on the Smithsonian Institution. They chose Hillsboro to be part of their 2023 traveling exhibit “Spark! Places of Innovation.” The exhibit will come to Hillsboro as part of the city’s 2023 Bicentennial year and subsequently travel to be displayed in 26 different states over six years.
Downtown Hillsboro, 2019 (Hoekstra photo)
In September 2021 Hillsboro Community Planner Jonathan Weyer told me, “The exhibit is about small towns that were ravaged by globalism and the close of major manufacturing systems that have rebuilt themselves through a variety of forms of innovation.” The Journal-News will collect information, interviews, and history. Tori O’Dell was invited to be involved in the process. O’Dell is from Coffeen. She started volunteering with Imagine Hillsboro around 2016 and is now president of the organization. O’Dell is a concise and deeply soulful writer. She is a gold standard of how hopes can be realized when journalism connects with the spirit of community.
Tori O’Dell, the fine Journal-News staff writer and president of Imagine Hillsboro (Provided photo)
O’Dell and her husband Corey have two sons who are 7 and 8 years old.
“The oldest is autistic and that’s the main reason we decided not to move from the area as we had planned when we first married,” she wrote me in a 2020 e-mail. “It helps to have a strong family and community support system. I volunteer my time on the TASC (The Autism Support Connection) Board. TASC is a support group for families of children with autism and other special needs. It is important, especially in a rural area. We have families that come from throughout central and southern Illinois to attend our meetings and events because the support for people with disabilities is so lacking in rural areas and we are one of the only groups around.”
The response to our book has been rewarding, especially from small-town heartbeats. Newspaper folks in cities of all sizes are fighting myopic perceptions, low wages, inflation, and long hours into the night to create a common good. I saw this while researching my book. I’ve lived this. “Beacons in the Darkness” honors the spirit of the newspaper community. They are American champions. I’m just the messenger.
Hi Dave, what a fantastic article! Would you be interested in visiting on my radio show on WSMI-FM? We can do it on the phone before the Red Rooster event. johnmarty@gmail.com
Sure, let’s do it! Thank you sir.