Myrtle Fulfills a Live Music, Vintage Shopping and Neighborhood Bar Niche in East Providence
This new hang combines all of the owners' loves into one spot where people can sip cocktails, listen to music and hunt for treasures on its walls.
The backbar at Myrtle in East Providence. Photos all courtesy of Myrtle.
Rhode Island has plenty of bars and plenty of vintage shops, but one thing it didn’t have is a bar that doubles as a vintage shop. Myrtle in East Providence is a cool retro bar where you can purchase items right off the walls. The owners, Natalie Vanlandingham and Tommy Allen, are artists, musicians and former bartenders who enjoy the thrill of the find in thrifting. They decided to combine all of their interests into one place that serves classic cocktails and features live music while also allowing people to shop for nifty stuff.
The partners decided to pursue opening a bar during COVID. “We’ve been working as musicians and artists and bartending for the past twenty years to make ends meet,” Vanlandingham says. “Over COVID, we had time to sit down and think about if we wanted to keep hustling all the time or if we wanted to take the next step and open our own place.”
When they spotted a “for rent” sign in the window of a former specialty machinist hardware store, they called the landlord to explain their vision. They got the keys in April and started doing demolition to gut the place, which included asbestos removal, and tearing out the floor and parts of the ceiling. The storefront lived another life as a shoe store called Jerry’s Hollywood Shoes about 100 years ago, and they were able to salvage a few things from its heyday, including some of the tin ceiling and shoe displays that now serve as the backbar. The old-fashioned Myrtle sign out front was also original to Jerry’s Hollywood Shoes. An artist repaired and painted it with their name and branding.
“A lot of Jerry’s kids and grand kids live around the area so they were excited to see something being done with the building,” Vanlandingham says. “The sign on the outside is the original Jerry’s Hollywood Shoes sign, which we could see when we scraped the paint off to redo it.”
See a slide show of vintage photos from when Myrtle was Jerry’s Hollywood Shoes.
They chose the name Myrtle in homage to Natalie’s great-grandmother who was a Southern belle from Georgia with a penchant for beautiful vintage items. “She loved chandeliers and she drank water out of crystal wine glasses and loved anything thrifted and pretty,” Vanlandingham says. “A lot of the stuff in there is an ode to her and the style I was influenced by growing up with her.”
Serendipitously, the name of the street that Allen grew up on also had Myrtle in the name, Myrtlebank Avenue. The stained glass window above the front door of the bar came from his childhood family home. “It worked out so that there are two little nods to each of our families,” Vanlandingham says.
Even before demolition for the bar was completed, they started thrifting for vintage furniture and decor. They went to Savers every morning, sometimes twice a day, to procure Victorian couches and art for the walls. “Everything you see on the walls we got at Savers or estate or yard sales,” she says. “We got all of the booths out of an old Ninety-Nine restaurant that went out of business, and we covered all of those. We did everything out of order because we were in the middle of construction.”
As far as shopping goes, if someone sees something they like on the walls, they can simply tell the bartenders and name a price. There is also a separate vintage shop with T-shirts and dresses for sale. T-shirts are $15 while dresses are $30. “We wanted to have that as a little perk for coming in,” Vanlandingham says. “Say you come in and you don’t like what you’re wearing, or you don’t have time to change after work, you get there and you’re feeling like you want to be a little more fancy, then you can go in and grab something out of the store.”
The bar is now fully functioning with live local music acts occurring on a near-nightly basis with no cover charge. Vanlandingham has a background working as a professional dancer throughout her twenties while Allen was in bands since age sixteen. Many of their friends in the arts and music community came together to help do construction and open Myrtle, and now they are enjoying the space. But many customers are simply from the neighborhood and enjoy walking to a nearby bar. “ It’s fulfilling that need that we were hoping to fill, so they would have a little neighborhood bar to walk to and not have to drive across the bridge,” Vanlandingham says.
The bar is concentrating on local spirits by using liquor from Industrious Spirit Company, Rhode Island Spirits’ Rhodium, Don Nacho Tequila and Island Coquito, as well as Portuguese wines from East Providence-based Brands of Portugal. They have a set drink menu, but bartenders are encouraged to come up with their own specialty cocktails using seasonal ingredients.
They are thrilled to open a new spot and make local music more accessible. “I can’t believe we were able to pull it together. We’re doing it,” Allen says. “It feels really special and cool. I’m glad people are liking it and accepting it.”
134 Waterman Ave., East Providence, instagram.com/myrtle.rhodeisland
