To get inside this new Johnson County bar, enter an unmarked door. Then give a password
To the unsuspecting eye, half of the brick building at 117 Elm St. is empty.
Void of noise or signs, its darkened windows tell no secrets.
Open its heavy side door, however, and receive your first clue that something is off. In a closed entryway — distressed wood and hardware make it like a tool shed — a rotary phone hangs against the wall. Pick up the receiver, and a skeptical voice answers.
“How can I help you?”
They’re fishing for a password. A correct response triggers a man in a suit and cap to pull open a second door, revealing a scene like something out of a shadowy 1920s photograph. Dozens of patrons gather around a bar while a woman with feathers in her hair pours them whiskey. She sways under candlelight to the beat of a jazz song.
If you haven’t heard of The Forge, that might be part of its clandestine appeal. Though it does have an Instagram. (It is 2024, after all.)
Derrick Stockton, a former Gardner Edgerton High School teacher and one of the bar’s owners, helped transform the space into a Prohibition Era hideaway. Next door is his cigar bar, Ash and Anvil, and behind the building is his outdoor bar, The Bellows, which just reopened for the season this month.
For his new project, Stockton wanted to create something unlike anything else in the Kansas City area.
“I didn’t want to copy what some of the other bars are doing,” Stockton said. “It’s a lot of fun.”
Once customers are seated, they’re handed a menu, sandwiched between two wooden planks. A memo about the building’s history paints a picture of what once took place between The Forge’s walls.
In the mid-1800s, a wooden carriage house stood along the historic Santa Fe Trail. After the building burned down in 1897, the Hayden family constructed a brick building in its place.
That building became a blacksmith shop from 1905 until the 1940s — hence The Forge, Ash and Anvil, and The Bellows’ names and decor.
One of the blacksmiths there was John Hayden, whose family still lives in Gardner, Stockton said. After Hayden moved out, the building was an automotive garage for decades.
Now Stockton and his team are pouring one out for John Hayden. Quite literally. If you order the “John Hayden,” the bartender will give you an Old-Fashioned. Order it smoked, and the bartender will serve it in a smoke box. Vapor clouds billow out of the box once opened.
Other drinks include the Rosemary Lemon Brulee — made with dry gin, almond liqueur, rosemary, lemon and egg white. (The bartender uses a torch to caramelize the lemon at the table.) The Bombay Nights is made with Bombay Sapphire dry gin, elderflower liqueur, lime and a puff of cotton candy floating on top.
Dozens of other cocktails and spirits can be found on the menu (like the Canard, a whiskey negroni).
The bar, which opened more than a week ago, is lit with dim lamps and flickering candles. A wooden bar, made of an original 1600s church communion rail brought in from Ireland, stretches across one side of the room. Customers lounge on antique furniture.
“Nobody expects something like this in Gardner,” he said. “A lot of the comments we’ve gotten is just that it’s beautiful.”
On the back wall hang black and white photos of Prohibition protests and patrons guzzling beer in real speakeasies. Another shows a frowning woman with a high-collared neckline.
That’s Carry Nation, an advocate of the temperance movement who smashed saloons across Kansas with rocks and hatchets. She might not approve of Stockton’s establishment, but if it’s any consolation, many of the drinks on the menu can be made with a lower alcohol content on request.
The Forge is open from 5 p.m. to midnight Thursdays through Saturdays.
As for the password, we’ve been asked not to give it out. But feel free to follow its social media pages or phone a friend in Gardner.
When you do, be careful not to let any hatchet-wielding grannies onto your scent.
