You know how some movie stars are when they try to make a comeback. Yeah, they’re a little old now, and not all the plastic surgery worked and that last movie bombed. But with some new kinds of roles, a good script and director, a new generation might come to appreciate what she can do. All she needs is the right manager.
More than a couple of owners have tried to manage a comeback for one of downtown Springfield’s faded beauties, the Virgil Hickox house on Capitol Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets. The old place might soon get a new owner with new plans to turn the 188-year-old building into news by turning it into event space, a B&B, apartments, maybe even bringing back Norb Andy’s from the dead. Why not? The White Sox came back. Even the convention center is coming back.
The Hickox house was one of the first of the houses of local swells to be built on what became known as Aristocracy Hill. Downtown in the modern sense then stood blocks to the north – not a place of department stores and diners but rail yards and factories. Not all the bad smells in Springfield in the old days came from the Statehouse so the rich built their houses south and west where the prevailing winds blew away the coal smoke and stinks.
The family left and the upstairs parts of the house were being rented as early as 1894, but even during the years when the basement was buzzing the rest of the house wasn’t. The main floor attracted hopeful entrepreneurs like conch shells attract hermit crabs – a social club, a music shop, a funeral home, a dance studio, a furrier. None thrived for long.
By the time the do-gooders banned booze in 1920, the Hickox House was just a rundown old house. A speakeasy that operated out of its basement during Prohibition couldn’t help but make money, standing as it did between two of the big downtown hotels full of thirsty lawmakers and conventioneers. In 1937 that space became home to a legit tavern by one Norbert Anderson. He called it Norb Andy’s Tabarin, after the Bal Tabarin (which can be translated into English as “fool’s ballroom”),a Parisian cabaret from the Belle Epoque made famous in this country by an imitator that opened in 1931 in San Francisco. Ordinarily any merchant who asks Springfield to pronounce French is asking for trouble, and Anderson’s newspaper ads spelled it “ta bar in” to help the yokels.
The name was the only way that his place resembled the originals. His version offered no floor shows or naughty business on the side. As for the menu, Norb’s in the 1960s offered “filet mignon” for $2.50 (definitely a bargain, although whether it was a filet mignon I can’t say) and the beer was no worse than everywhere else in town in those days.
Didn’t matter. Food and drink were not why people went there. Basically, Norb’s was the white-collar version of the neighborhood tavern where the guys from the plant – in this case legislators, lobbyists, Statehouse staff, journalists, lawyers – would drop by after their shift to gossip and plot and kvetch. It had regulars and the regulars had “their” tables; what made the place interesting was who else might be there, who once in a while was a governor.
I have very little experience as a businessman, apart from helping to put a couple of magazines out of business. Nonetheless, it seems to me that any attempt to resurrect Norb Andy’s as it used to be will be, uh, difficult. A big reason for Norb’s success was location – not just the location of the building but the location of its customers. Norb’s was a great place for a lunch or an after-work drink for people who lived or worked downtown because they could walk there and wobble back to the desk in just minutes. Norb’s 2.0 and 3.0 did not fail because the owner changed or the bartender or the menu changed, in short. It failed because the neighborhood changed.
Plus, the property has its problems, in addition to the recent fire damage. The old pile of brick is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for historic rather than architectural reasons but its history, while interesting, is not unique among downtown’s buildings. Its setting lacks charm and there’s no parking. While money has been put into the place in recent years – it looks better than it has for decades – remodels have left it a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. Some say the place is haunted by the ghosts of the dead from the old funeral parlor upstairs but I’d bet they are the ghosts of Norb’s and all the other dead businesses that were born and died there in so much hope.
James Krohe was an irregular patron of Norb Andy’s in the 1980s.
This article appears in October 15-21, 2026.
