282 Rantoul Street in Beverly, Massachusetts:
One address, two brands: Bridge Nine Records & Sully’s
Over nearly a century, just three businesses have occupied the retail space at 282 Rantoul Street.
For the first thirty-three years, it was a Chrysler car dealership. Then for the next fifty-seven, it was an auto and commercial glass company. As of 2021, it is the new retail store and headquarters of Bridge Nine Records and Sully’s Brand.
But before 282 Rantoul Street was the address of a business, it was home to a family of musicians that had formed what over one hundred years later would be known as one of the longest-running musical groups in the country.
Prior to 1929, the home at 282 Rantoul Street:
From 1920 until 1926, 282 Rantoul Street (pictured above) was the home of Otis Manuel Jr. Otis worked as a chef and was a performing musician. Otis lived here with members of the Manuel and Mitchell families. The Manuel’s and Mitchell’s were two of the few African American families residing in Beverly, Massachusetts during the early 20th century. Both families became well known in the city because several members were in Manuel’s Black and White Orchestra, which had begun performing music locally in 1916. (Photo courtesy of the Beverly Historical Society).
Otis Manuel Jr. (pictured far left holding the trumpet in the above photo) started what would become Manuel’s Black and White Orchestra as a teenager in 1916 with family and friends. The orchestra was initially formed so they could play their high school prom, because no band was available as many of the musicians of the time were off fighting in the First World War. Manuel’s orchestra was made up of talented musicians, but what made it so unique was that it featured both African American and Caucasian members as integrated performers, which in the early 1900s was virtually unheard of. Celebrated band leader and “King of Swing” Benny Goodman is widely credited as having the first integrated jazz “big band” to play before a paying audience in the 1930s, yet Otis Manuel’s Black and White Orchestra had been doing it for almost two decades by that point!
By the mid-1920s, Rantoul Street was becoming one of the busier thoroughfares in Beverly, and 20th-century commercial storefronts were replacing nineteenth-century residential homes. On October 9th, 1926, Otis Manuel Jr. sold the property to real estate developer Peter Bonacci.
In 1929 the home (known as the “Old Grady House” after Thomas Grady, who had lived there from 1893-1915) was lifted onto a wooden platform and moved just under a half mile away to an empty lot on Elliott Street. Construction then began on the brick building that now stands at 282 Rantoul. The two-story, 8,600 square foot building included a private fifty-car garage (lower level, accessible from Riverside Street), and a car dealership on the upper level, accessible from Rantoul Street. Members of the Manuel and Mitchell families moved to 27 Chapman Street in Beverly. Otis Manuel Jr.’s sister, Mary Manuel Mitchell, opened a dance school at that location in 1932. Mitchell’s Dance Studio and Performing Arts is still open, 92 years later, at the same location under the 4th generation of family ownership.
In addition to his own orchestra, Otis also played trumpet with many of the big band names of the time, including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, and Glenn Miller. Otis performed with his Manuel’s Black and White Orchestra until he passed away in 1979 at the age of 81, and incredibly, the group continued to perform locally until as recently as the late 1990s. Their membership and performances spanned decades and generations, and members of the family, four of whom were musicians in the orchestra, spent some of their earliest years in the home at 282 Rantoul Street.
1930-1963, the Chrysler & Plymouth dealership era:
From 1930 until 1935 the building was leased by McVey & Berry, a prominent auto dealer started by John P. McVey (who had passed away two years earlier in 1928) and Ralph C. Berry over a decade earlier. The McVey & Berry dealership was 282 Rantoul’s first commercial tenant.
By 1936 the name of the dealership was changed to R. C. Berry Motor Corp., and the company continued selling cars from its showroom at 282 Rantoul Street until Ralph Clinton Berry’s passing in April 1963 at the age of 71.
December 1963 - February 2021, the Beverly Glass era:
After a brief vacancy, by December of 1963 the space that had housed a car dealership for over thirty-three years was re-opened by a gentleman named Milton Kaufman as Beverly Glass, a commercial glass company that catered to both the automobile market as well as to homeowners.
Beverly Glass continued under the stewardship of Tom Trudel, a trusted employee who bought the business from Mr. Kaufman in the early 1980s. At this time, the building was owned by Steve Keegan, who had purchased it in 1981. Steve was the owner of the neighboring Eastern Cycle Ducati motorcycle dealership. He had purchased 282 Rantoul from a gentleman named Andrew J. Abdo (who had owned the property since 1944) because its basement was a convenient place to store his excess inventory. The entrance to the building had a vehicle ramp and was directly across the street from his own garage door. In 1984 Tom Trudel bought the building from Steve and for the first time, 282 Rantoul was owned by the business that occupied it.
In 1986, Beverly Glass was in the news after an at-capacity oil truck drove into their garage to have its windshield replaced, and the overweight vehicle broke through the concrete floor! Thankfully it wasn’t fully pulled in, and the bumper resting on the end of the driveway kept the truck from landing in the basement.
After its fifty-seven year run on Rantoul Street, Mr. Trudel decided to move Beverly Glass into an industrial building across town that was more conducive to the commercial work that the company was doing. Mr. Trudel put 282 Rantoul Street on the market, and in July of 2020 Chris Wrenn, founder of Bridge Nine Records and Sully’s committed to the space and put down a deposit. After addressing significant due diligence regarding the property, Chris finally closed on 282 Rantoul Street in February of 2021.
March 2021: As a film location for The Tender Bar:
Chris closed on 282 Rantoul and got the keys on Friday, February 26th 2021. The following Monday, he received a phone call from the location scout of George Clooney’s film The Tender Bar. It was the film adaptation of the memoir by J.R. Moehringer and starred Ben Affleck. The bar next door, Jacob’s Corner, had been chosen from over thirty different locations to become “The Dickens,” the bar at the center of the story. Since 282 Rantoul Street would be in the background, the production company wanted to turn the storefront into a 1970s-era Foto Hut photo developing studio. Filming occurred on March 11th, and the crew returned one week later on March 18th to film additional takes.
Making the move to 282 Rantoul was a huge leap, and after many years of Ben Affleck having supported both brands, Chris took this coincidence as a sign he was headed in the right direction. It was also a full-circle moment when Sully’s was given the opportunity to design and manufacture Ben’s “wrap gift,” a t-shirt commemorating the fictional Dickens Bar that was given by Ben to the cast and crew when the film wrapped.
March 2021: The renovation starts:
As soon as filming of The Tender Bar wrapped, with the help from local music fans - most notably Larry Kelley, a local finish carpenter & punk aficionado - Chris spent the next eighteen months renovating the former car dealership and glass company showroom.
Right away, Chris began finding evidence of the building’s car dealership days, including an old license plate, signs, marketing materials and promo mailings from the 1950s (that had been tossed over the warehouse bathroom ceiling seventy years earlier!
Chris, Larry & a handful of supporters immediately got to work demoing the retail space and warehouse. Everything had to get torn out - the drop ceilings and chains that hung them, all of the electrical components, the old wood paneling on the walls and crumbling plaster over the brick:
A general contractor was hired to do the heavy lifting. New HVAC in the store and warehouse, a new bathroom up front and bringing the two in the warehouse back to life, all new electrical and fire alert and monitoring equipment, but the budget was blown very quickly once it was realized that we needed to lower the driveway to turn a window into a handicap accessible entrance (an important but very expensive upgrade!):
Anything that could be done D.I.Y. was handled internally - which was pretty much the entire demo and anything cosmetic. Larry Kelley donated hundreds of hours of his time, tools, and expertise to help Chris bring the retail store to life with custom built-in record bins, cabinets, a butcher block retail counter and so much more:
Throughout the renovation, we had a few requests from bands to film their music videos at 282 Rantoul. Aware that parts of our building hadn’t been updated since the 1960s, Cave In reached out to us and asked, “Do you still have a dirty looking warehouse?” To which we replied, “Why, yes!” They filmed their music video for the song “Reckoning” in our back warehouse where the brick walls hadn’t been re-painted since Richard Nixon was President (he took office in 1969!)
We also had the band Wilderun film a video for their song “Identifier” (available HERE) and the band Aryia filmed parts of their video for their song “2009” (available HERE).
We were also proud to host two Boston hardcore-punk legends for a conversation filmed by Trust Records, Al Barile (S.S. Decontrol) and Pat Flynn (Have Heart, Fiddlehead). You can view that conversation, filmed in our warehouse before it was renovated, HERE!
September 2022: 282 Rantoul re-opens and the Bridge Nine & Sully’s Brand era begins:
After a grueling eighteen-month renovation, we were ready to finally open the doors.
As Bridge Nine approaches its 30th year in business, and Sully’s its 25th, we are proud that both brands have found a home here in Beverly, and we hope our stewardship of the building lasts as long as it did with our predecessors. We are also excited to acknowledge that while it took over one hundred years, music has finally returned to 282 Rantoul Street in Beverly, Massachusetts!
Bridge Nine Records & Sully’s Brand
282 Rantoul Street, Beverly, MA 01915
Hours of operation:
Monday: Closed*
Tuesday: Closed*
(*Available by appointment. Visiting from out of town?
We’re here, just working in back, so get in touch!)
Wednesday: 11am to 5pm
Thursday: 11am to 6pm
Friday: 11am to 6pm
Saturday: 11am to 6pm
Sunday: 11am to 5pm