Nye Beach regains former glory
MARCH 1993. My husband and I pull into Newport in the midst of a ferocious Oregon storm, the rain coming down so hard and fast, the windshield wipers can’t keep up.
If there are signs pointing the way to Nye Beach, we don’t see them, but we know the ocean is to the west and it can’t be but a few blocks away. We turn right on Highway 101, coast down a sloping back street, then crest another and take in our first glimpse of Nye Beach.
On the edge of the headland, the Sylvia Beach Inn stands tall and green, perched like the neighborhood monarch. A few doors down there’s the Nye Beach Hotel, barn red and looking like it’s seen a few decades, though it opened only the year before. We take a hotel room with an electric fireplace and views of the ocean and hunker down for an afternoon inside.
But as quickly as the skies had opened, the clouds pass, the sun bursts through, and we are off to explore Nye Beach.
There is not, it turns out, much to explore. There are a handful of shops, the Performing Arts Center, quiet and empty on this afternoon, and a dark locals’ kind of lounge with pool tables and a door that stands open to the street, inviting passersby to peek inside. There is no view, the bartender doubles as the waiter and the menu offers your basic burger and fries kind of fare.
And yet, though there’s not much to the little neighborhood, I am instantly smitten. There is a distinct charm here, an almost haunted air that suggests here is a place once greatly loved, but long since forgotten.
Which I come to learn is exactly the Nye Beach story.
At the turn of the century and decades after, this was where Oregonians spent their weekends, often catching the train to its end at the river bend, then connecting with the ferry that delivered them to the Bay Front. A boardwalk connected the Bay Front to Nye Beach, and, once there, visitors could soak in the waters of Dr. Minthorne’s Sanitarium and Hot Sea Baths or soak up the sun on Nye Beach, one of the best stretches of open sand, old-timers say, on the entire coast. There were agate shops, candy stores and a recreation center.
Bill McKevitt, whose family owned the Nye Beach theater, swimming pool and dance hall, recalls, “It was a beachfront town of its own. People came from all over. I have been on Beach Street in 1934-35 for the Fourth of July when you could barely walk up and down the street. The Chamber used to put up 6-foot-tall fences in sections of about 8 feet on the beach. They went down in a zig-zag fashion to protect you from the wind.”
But the years were not kind to Nye Beach, and in the ‘60s, says Elmer Taylor, whose family built an oceanfront cottage in 1910, “It really went to pot.”
By the time I discovered Nye Beach, she was just beginning to pick herself up. Today, the old belle of the beach has not only brushed herself off, Nye Beach is like a girl just returned from a full-scale makeover. It’s still her, but my, how she’s changed.
In the past three years, Nye Beach has undergone renovations to the tune of roughly $2.25 million. Streets have been widened and paved in brick; the new William McKevitt stairway connects upper Nye Beach to lower; and new restrooms feature slate exteriors and tile inside. There are benches for people watching and flower boxes blooming with spring color. Should you question whether you are actually in Nye Beach, two concrete arches, one up top, one below, frame the heart of the neighborhood, with Nye Beach spelled out and even lit at night.
“Oh, I love Nye Beach,” says Kathy Cleary, who took a chance on the neighborhood eight years ago, opening Toujours when Nye Beach was still brushing itself off from decades of neglect. “It has the beautiful ocean right there. It’s a neighborhood where people can walk around. We have places to eat, places to stay and wonderful shopping. We have the Performing Arts Center, and there’s always something going on there, and the Visual Arts Center, and they have wonderful openings and shows.
“There is the spirit of the past there. It’s like where the past meets the present without going too far into the future. Charm is the word that jumps to mind.”
March 2004. It’s a Saturday in Nye Beach. The sun is shining. Welcome flags snap in the afternoon breeze, shop door bells jangle. Signs at the PAC announce an upcoming performance of “Macbeth” and an evening with the symphony. A chalkboard outside the Sandbar invites passersby upstairs for dining with a view, and on the corner at Toujours, shoppers consider the latest spring fashion. At Tsunami Ceramics, the pottery wheels are spinning and, at Panini Bakery, it’s an endless parade of locals and tourists lining up for coffee, fresh pastries and dog biscuits for the canines waiting outside.
Over at the Nye Beach Gallery, a wine shop and gallery for Lon Brusselback’s sculptures, the weekly wine tasting is under way. A handful of people jockey for space at the tasting bar. Owner Wendy Engler, a transplanted Washingtonian, polls the visitors from Washington, California and Portland on their opinion of the $20 bottle of wine. “It’s better than the $60 bottle we drank last week,” offers one woman. Another couple moseys in. Engler uncorks a fresh bottle of red and slices more cheese.
I sip a red, accept a bite of cheese, then head back out into the sunshine, bound for the beach — still, in this new local’s opinion, one of the nicest stretches of sand on the coast, and once again with a thriving neighborhood all its own.