Oar House restaurant celebrating 50 years on Portsmouth waterfront: 'It's just special'

PORTSMOUTH — Filled with local maritime history everywhere you turn, The Oar House restaurant is celebrating a historic milestone of its own in 2024.

The upscale Ceres Street restaurant and bar is marking its 50th anniversary on the city's waterfront, a crowning achievement on a property with no shortage of stories.

Oar House owner Casey Anderson and his fiancée, Halley Bushe, plan to commemorate the year by spotlighting the history of the restaurant and the site within Merchant’s Row all year long. Anderson, the president and co-owner of Arizona-based aerospace company Stella Air, is a fourth-generation Portsmouth resident who bought the business from former owners Raymond Guerin and Peter DiZoglio in the spring of 2022, while Bushe is the manager of the downtown establishment.

Anderson is also the owner of the seasonal Purple Urchin in Hampton Beach, which he purchased in 2020 without having any restaurant experience on his resume. It’s where he was introduced to Bushe, an employee of the business and a well-known personality within the Seacoast dining scene.

Together, the two dream of keeping the Oar House operating within their family for the next 50 years.

Oar House owner has deep Portsmouth roots

“It means a lot to me because this is where I’m from and where I’ll always be from. There’s no city that means quite what Portsmouth means to us. I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else,” Anderson said.

An Irish immigrant, Anderson’s great-grandmother owned a restaurant, The Shamrock, at the site of what is now the Portsmouth Gas Light Co. His grandmother worked at the restaurant while his grandfather was a shipbuilder at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

“I have a picture of my great-grandmother up on State Street in 1930,” he said. “It means a lot to me.”

Anderson and Bushe recently finished renovating the bar, leaving original elements of the 19th-century building.

“The best part about this place is the 220-year-old stone that is all original. The brick is actually (ballast) from repurposed ships from the late 1870s,” Anderson said.

The Ceres Street building was constructed as a warehouse to store molasses and grain in 1803 in the aftermath of a fire that consumed the former building the year prior. Portsmouth Athenaeum records state the inferno destroyed 114 buildings in the city, costing an estimated $200,000.

The Dec. 26, 1802, fire began at the New Hampshire Bank building in what is now Market Square.

“Five men, Nathaniel Adams, John Goddard, Daniel Humphreys, John Langdon and James Sheafe, were appointed a committee to receive and distribute donations for relief,” the Athenaeum states. “Funds were appropriated in Washington, DC and donations were sent from many parts of the country, including Philadelphia, Trenton, NJ, and Savannah, Ga. Altogether, the committee received and distributed more than $45,000.”

Portsmouth buildings were rebuilt with brick from then on to avoid the risk of going up in flames.

Each diner at Oar House is given a synopsis of the building and the history of the property, which was owned by Alexander Ladd of the wealthy colonial mercantile family, in a pamphlet distributed by the waitstaff to guests.

In the restaurant, a model of the 18th-century, Portsmouth-built clipper ship The Witch of the Wave and artwork from Don Gorvett are on display, while a freshwater well of potable water is visible to patrons seated in the dining room.

“Suggested but never proven is a story that Ladd’s warehouse on the water and his residence were linked by a tunnel under Market Street, which allegedly caved in many years ago and was sealed,” the historic overview of the restaurant states. “During the initial renovation of the Oar House, a spring-fed well was revealed at the rear of our downstairs dining room. The well served the early needs of the building and opened to the street above in case of fire.”

Though unconfirmed, the building has long been assumed to have played a role within the Underground Railroad for slaves en route to Canada, according to Anderson.

“We both love telling the story (of the restaurant). Whenever guests come in to dine with us, we get to tell them the story. It’s always so fun,” Bushe said. “Whenever someone asks, ‘Oh, what’s this?’ I’ll go on for 10 minutes about everything.”

The Oar House offers seafood throughout its menu, with oysters and jumbo shrimp from its raw bar, crab cakes, fish and chips, clam chowder, lobster rolls, calamari, mussels, scallops and salmon. On the turf side, the restaurant serves lamb chops, steak, short rib, a cheeseburger and crispy ribs, as well as pastas, salads and appetizers.

Between the outdoor deck overlooking the Pisacataqua River's working waterfront and the interior capacity, the Oar House can seat approximately 200 guests and will offer a valet service this summer for all who come to dine. Next year, Anderson and Bushe hope to remodel the business’s waterfront deck.

“This space is just beautiful,” Bushe said. “You could be inside or outside, which is really nice. If you want to run away from the heat, you can come step inside and have air conditioning. Everyone just loves it. It’s so nice to see when people are coming in here for the first time, their reactions are so positive. It’s really nice to be a part of.”

The couple hopes to ring in the 50th anniversary of the Oar House all year long with special menu items, a commemorative plaque and a block party later in the year.

“We knew that this was going to be a good fit. I’d wanted to get into Portsmouth. The business aspect is there seeing as it’s been here for 50 years. But just having real estate in Portsmouth like this, it’s just special. There’s really nowhere in the country that has this kind of history, Portsmouth as a city but also this restaurant within Portsmouth with this history. You’d be hard-pressed to find that anywhere else,” Anderson said.

“You're in a city but you’re on a waterfront. It’s just beautiful,” he added.

The Oar House will be open Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. and on Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. until 10 p.m. this summer.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Oar House restaurant celebrating 50 years in Portsmouth, NH