Grist Mill Tavern Reconstruction Unearths Seekonk's History

Greg Esmay is rebuilding the Grist Mill Tavern in Seekonk and keeping the historical feel that old building had.

“We’re not trying to build a new building,” he said. “We want it to look and feel like the Grist Mill.”

Esmay said he’s always been interested in the history of the place. Back before Seekonk was even a town in the 1700s, the Grist Mill was a working mill, and, Esmay says, a focal point for the community.

“It would be like a shopping mall for the 1700s,” he said. “It was very much a center of that town for the farmers.”

Esmay said the mill was not only a food production mill, but also a sawmill and an ice house. At the time, when Seekonk was part of Rehoboth, the population of the area was mostly farmers. If you needed to build something you could get the wood from the mill, if you needed your crops processed you ground it at the mill.

Earlier in the summer 2012, a fire destroyed the building when a tractor-trailer truck overturned near the building. Esmay said it was not the first time the building was rebuilt as there were a fires in the 1950s and 1970s.

Esmay said the Grist Mill stopped working as an actual mill and opened as a restaurant in the mid 1930s. He said it was not exactly known when the changeover occurred, as there were discrepancies in the records.

“It always peaked my curiosity when we found the twin flue chimney,” he said. “There was one fireplace and yet a second flue. We’ve always wondered if they were using the building for a still. There was also an area were found boarded off that was described as a crawl space, but you could stand up in it. They had all the grain they needed, all that was lacking was the sugar. They could have floated the kegs out the bottom of the building and nobody would have known.”

The mill itself also held many historical pieces. Esmay said digging down during the reconstruction they not only found wood and construction from the original building, but also twin turbines in the basement from the 1830s.

“We’re trying to find a way to leave them exposed without creating a massive hazard,” he said. “I’m excited to find stuff like that.”

Esmay said the reconstruction will see only interior changes in the building’s design.

“The best representation of the stuff that’s going into the Grist Mill is the stuff people don’t see,” he said.

Esmay said though there will still be only a few pieces of the original mill in the building, he feels that the building is more than the sum of its parts. In the same way an antique guitar may have had replacement new strings, bridge, body, neck or tuning gears, he said it’s still the same guitar.

The interior electrics, heating and cooling and handicap access has all gone into the design, Esmay said. He said though work is progressing, the age-old design of the building makes it difficult to know when work will be done due to permitting issues.

“I’ve given up on estimating,” he said laughing. “Permitting is a very long process. We have one final permit, and we’re working back and forth with some designs. Once we have that permit, I’d say about four to four and a half months from now. The thing is we can’t order until we know for sure that the plan we have is the plan we’re building to.”

Esmay added the inherent design of the mill makes it more difficult than another type of building, as conservation will always be an issue.

“It has to go through conservation, I mean there’s a river running through the center of the building!” he said.

Esmay said he had been working there for more than 13 years and decided to purchase it eight years ago, but the process took a lot longer. The Grist Mill was owned by a corporate entity which was bought up by another, making the purchase process a lot longer than it had to be. But he said it was totally worth it.

“The Grist Mill became one of 4,000 restaurants,” he said. “They needed to sell it because it needed to become independent again.”

Esmay said he and the Grist Mill have always supported the local community. Aside from sponsoring youth sports from year to year, he said every St. Patrick’s day, the restaurant holds  a fundraiser (this year it was at the Wharf Tavern in Warren, which Esmay also owns) and donate 100-percent of the proceeds to the Little Sisters of the Poor in Pawtucket.

“About 1,100 people come out and eat corned beef and cabbage,” he said.

Esmay added unlike many restaurant fundraisers where a portion of the proceeds is donated to a charity, he donates all of it.

“I mean that’s not a charity, that’s saying thanks for doing the advertising,” he said. "If you’re going to give something to somebody, actually give it to them.”

He said they raised more than $50,000 this year for the charity on that one night, based on food sales, auctions, raffles and other activities.