POTTSVILLE, Pa. — The "Welcome to Pottsville" sign greets vehicles as they turn onto North Centre Street from Nicholas Street, driving by a mural featuring figures from the past and a restaurant that once highlighted some of that history.
Maroon's Sports Bar and Grill was named after the city's NFL team, the 1925 league champions. Pottsville residents remember the place fondly.
"The downstairs was a restaurant," said Ralph Castellano. "Tables, booths, and all that. It was nice."
"The inside was beautiful there when it was open," Bill Zeiler recalled. "I mean, they had a balcony up there in the top where you could go up there and drink, and there were TVs all over the place. Sports memorabilia, I guess worth thousands of dollars, on the walls and everything in there."
At Maroon's, sports were always the top priority.
"They had a TV in the bathroom, so when they went in the bathroom, nobody would miss the game that was going on," Zeiler said.
Though the memories are still fresh in many minds, the building itself has seen better days.
Large cracks have formed between the bricks, and the south wall is starting to bulge out. The owners roped off the area underneath, concerned it may fall.
A Pottsville code enforcement officer told Newswatch 16 the owners hoped to fix the issues and had an engineer examine the wall recently, but like the old NFL team, the building will soon be a thing of the past.
A city official said the owners thought fixing the problem was too expensive, and they now have a building permit to demolish the place.
"I know everything that's going on around here, but I didn't know that was going to be demolished," Zeiler said. "It's a shame."
"They were going to change a lot of things, but they didn't do it," Castellano added. "They let it go down the drain like everything else."
Some are still holding out hope the restaurant comes back.
"I'd like to see it come back the way it was, back to the way it was years ago," Castellano said.
Pottsville officials could not provide a timeline for when demolition will begin on the old building, so steeped in history.