Throughout this summer, Ray Mullin and his wife, Tiara Gunstone, have been busy putting back together a little piece of history in the community of Trout Lake.
Trout Lake Hall has had many names in the past, but for over a hundred years, it has been host to parties, banquets, dances, dinners, and any kind of get-together you can think of. When Mullin, a 20-year veteran of the Portland music industry, and Gunstone, an experienced interior designer and owner of Crush Staging, a real estate staging company, saw the opportunity to renew the spirit of the historic building, they jumped on it.
Following the closure of The Historic Trout Lake Country Inn, the couple started a conversation with the building’s owner, Danica Rawlins, and as the conversation evolved, they knew they had struck gold. The couple has decided to lease the building and convert it into a spot for live performances, private events, and more.
Mullin brings decades of experience working as a concert promoter and venue manager in different spots around Portland.
“I got into putting on concerts and running venues as a teenager,” Mullin said. “I was sort of just in a strange headspace as a kid and had some friends that played in bands and wanted to figure out how to book them concerts and shows and I started out helping out with a little punk venue in Southeast Portland.”
The opportunity gave him more connections to the music scene and he worked in different places, later becoming the manager of Satrycon, a now-closed punk club in Portland’s Chinatown, renowned for hosting many of the greatest bands to come out of the Northwest. Following his departure, he became the manager of Mississipi Studios and helped to open Revolution Hall in the Buckman neighborhood of Portland, managing the venue as well. For the past ten years, he has had the responsibility of overseeing most of the departments from operations and security, to booking and ticketing.
“I love music, I love live music,” he said. “I love creativity and community that comes from gatherings and the positive energy that you can kind of feel from a large group of people having a good time.”
That energy lives on in the walls of Trout Lake Hall today.
Built in 1904 by German settlers Henry and Herman Thode, the “Amusement Hall” housed a large dance floor, a stage, a soda fountain and a two-lane handset, candlestick bowling alley, according to a history by Gil Martin, submitted to the National Register of Historic Places.
“Upon its construction, the Hall soon became widely known for its recreational offerings, especially the Saturday night barn dances, which featured music by a variety of talented local artists,” Martin wrote. It later became host to the Trout Lake Bachelor’s Club. Purportedly the first of its kind in the Northwest, the organization took out advertisements in regional newspapers seeking eligible bachelorettes. As the brothers aged, so did their taste in business opportunities as they leased a portion of the property to a gas station nearby, and later sold the business to Josephine Jermanne in 1924. The Jermannes opened The Tourist Club, known affectionately as “Doodle’s Place.” The business offered food, beverage,and nightly pinoche games. While alcohol was prohibited, some male customers hid their stash by stuffing bottles into the snow bank off the porch in winter. Jermanne later installed an addition to the rear portion of the house, which served as a public bath house while the front portion served as a post office, and offered a soda fountain through to the early 60s.
The business was again sold to Bill Morris in 1964, which served as a makeshift hanger for portions of his fragmented airplane, while farmers and loggers still stopped in for the occasional beer. The tavern was the only watering hole for 12 miles in any direction, Martin noted. Weekend music returned in 1975, and stage plays came back in 1980 while summer dinner shows were performed from 1980 to 1998. Since then, the building was used as a bed and breakfast, and rental of the hall for weddings and reunions.
Mullin has always dreamed of owning his own venue — “I tried when I was 16 and I had no idea what I was doing. I was maybe a little bit too ambitious.”
Gunstone and Mullin both grew up in Portland, while Gunstone’s family has owned a house in Trout Lake since she was a kid.
“Since we’ve been together, we’ve been coming to Trout Lake for a long time. Now we’re spending a lot of our free time up here,” he said. They are considering making the move to Trout Lake full time and have their daughter, Odell, start school there.
This summer since leasing the building, they have been hard at work renovating the commercial kitchen, the roof and replacing some of the siding on the exterior walls. The inside will be opened up much more and the bar and kitchen area will be entirely reformulated, he said.
The couple hired a music promoter recently, Lindsie Feathers, who is actively booking talent for a concert series in the fall. No opening date has been set yet as construction is ongoing, but Mullin said the business will be booking six to eight weekends through the rest of the year, and finish out any leftover construction projects in the winter. They plan to be open with regular business hours and to be open for food and drink, with opportunities for entertainment and private events.
“I’m exploring having either food pop-ups with some chefs or some food trucks for the show series. But anytime we’re open, we will have food,” he said. “I’m just over the moon about everything. I’m really, really excited about being able to work to build it an excellent place for the community to come and have a good time.”
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