The Mill Remains a Friendly Downtown Staple

Gone are the days that locals would bring in empty buckets to in downtown Montgomery and have them filled to the top with beer for a quarter.

Those are the types of memories that Alice Sutcliff recalls from her childhood.

Sutcliff was raised atop The Mill at 310 N. River St. and spent many waking and non-waking hours in the tavern below. 

Sutcliff's parents, Alex and Sophie, purchased the tavern in 1944, when she was just seven years old. Previously they ran a bar on River Street in Aurora across from the old Hotel Bishop.

Sutcliff, 73, literally grew up in a bar. She pulled out a small album with old black and white photographs of her standing in front of the tavern with her parents, who emmigrated from Lithuania. The aging photos almost depict an old fashioned saloon with a long wood bar and tin ceiling tiles. 

As a child, Sutcliff remembers falling asleep in her dad's office, which is now an extension of the tavern. Her parents ran the tavern, tending bar and cooking food, until 1953 when they leased out The Mill and retired to live on a farm along Montgomery Road. Sutcliff later subdivided the farmland, which became Arbor Ridge, where she lives today. 

In 1958, Sutcliff took back control of The Mill with her first husband, Don Webster. Over the years, she has seen a lot of change at The Mill, but she said the small town bar has kept its essence—even though it has lost much of its crowd.

"It was a packed house all the time," she said of the years leading up to the closing of many area factories. Over the years, the area lost Dial, Western Electric, Anchor Brush, Lyon Metal and Allsteel.

"Allsteel was the killer with three shifts going. And then the smoking ban came in," she said. 

With the decreased presence of factory workers and the smoking ban, the bar now opens at 11 a.m. instead of 8 a.m.

The Mill still has it's loyal followers, she says. And the liquor store and Lottery tickets help.

The Mill liquor store in the adjacent building has been the "Home of the Lucky Winners" since the early 1980s, when they added an Illinois Lottery machine. The liquor store was formerly a barber shop and a pizza parlor.

"The downtown has died," she says, but she is grateful that her neighborhood bar is still an attraction for locals and visitors. "People travel in for Montgomery Fest and they get together here."

Sutcliff sees the tavern as a place where friends, coworkers and neighbors can get together and talk. She jokes that a lot of "man conversations" happen at the bar, now managed by her daughter-in-law, Carin Sowers. 

"It's a family bar. We have very little problems," Sutcliff said.

And when she retires and if the bar closes, she said, it "would be the end of a huge era."