The Curve Inn once sat on an actual curve.
The nightspot, housed in a 94-year-old building at 3219 S. Sixth Street Road, was badly damaged by fire in February 2026.
The Inn originally was near a long curve that connected northbound Route 66 to Bypass 66 on the south edge of Springfield. (The bypass generally followed today’s Stevenson Drive and Dirksen Parkway to allow Route 66 travelers to avoid city traffic. If a driver wanted to stop in the city, he or she stayed on what was called “City Route 66” – essentially, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth streets.)
The opening of the bypass in 1939 had immediate effects, Illinois State Journal writer Adolph Belval wrote in 1950:
Myriad businesses have sprung up along the bypass – tourist courts catering to tired tourists, filling stations for fuel hungry cars and eating places for food hungry motorists. New homes also adorn the landscape along the beltline as residents moved to the fringes of the city.
The area near today’s Curve Inn originally was known as Copp’s Corner, named after Melio Copp (1896-1982), an Austrian immigrant who owned the first business at the site, a filling station, about 1924. He later added a grocery store. Copp constructed the building that became the Curve Inn in 1932. Shortly afterward, Lawrence Comerford (1875-42) opened the Comerford Inn, a restaurant/tavern there.
The Comerford lasted until 1945, when Guido Manci purchased the building. Manci supposedly asked customers what his new bar should be called; they came up with the Curve Inn.
The Curve Inn’s curve was straightened in the 1950s. To do so, the state paid Louis and Edna Odorizzi of Gillespie $3,500 for a 250-by-175-foot strip of land across from Little Flower School.
The Curve Inn started to change its image under the ownership of Neil McGillivray (1937-96), who operated the bar from 1972 until 1993. When he bought the Curve Inn, McGillivray told State Journal-Register writer Mick Cochran, it was a quiet neighborhood bar, “a catfish dinners on Friday night type bar.” McGillivray decided he wanted to appeal to a college-age clientele.
On Sept. 30, 1973, the night Illinois’ legal drinking age for beer and wine was lowered to 19, the Curve Inn “was transformed into a giant sardine can full of youth,” Cochran wrote. (The drinking age reverted to 21 in 1980.) McGillivray later sponsored weekly jazz nights and a piano bar and in 1975 opened the Cask and Keg, a members-only club.
Ray and Ami Merchant bought the Curve Inn in 2002 and, expanding on McGillivray’s initiatives, converted it to one of Springfield’s top nightspots. The Merchants, with Ami primarily in charge, brought local, regional and national musicians to the bar, built a beer garden with a stage and raised thousands of dollars through charity events. The Curve regularly made it onto local “best bar” lists.
The Feb. 20, 2026, fire began in the beer garden and went on to damage the building itself. The cause was still unclear a week after the blaze. Ami Merchant said on social media she and her husband hoped to rebuild.
Its historic connection made the Curve Inn a site on the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway.
Scandalous history?
According to the bar’s website, “The Curve Inn had a scandalous history, offering prostitution and gambling. Customers could ring a buzzer at the bottom of the back stairs and could enter to the apartments above the bar for entertainment with the ladies.”
While that might be true – Sangamon County was notoriously open to vice prior to about 1950 – newspaper records indicate the Curve Inn was never raided or otherwise mentioned for misbehavior beyond routine bar fights and allegedly overserved patrons.
This article was initially published by the Sangamon County Historical Society as “The Curve Inn’s Curve.”
