Red Men’s Hall adds the 4th Corner Speakeasy to Vallejo’s musical scene

VALLEJO – If you’re looking for a place to go on a Saturday night to hear high quality music, a recent addition to Vallejo’s offerings may fit the bill. 

The 4^th Corner Speakeasy is a night club housed on the third floor of the Red Men’s Hall at 431 Georgia Street. With a small stage, a full bar, tables sitting four to eight people, and a total capacity of 160, it provides an elegant atmosphere in a historic building. 

Richard Abbot, a member of the Red Men’s who is part of the promotion committee, said that the fraternity started putting on some events sporadically in their third floor club a couple of years ago. Last December, they decided to hire a professional to offer a more consistent experience.

Longtime concert promoter and booking agent Jeff Trager took the reins this January and has been programming concerts every Saturday night ever since. 

“I think we have a very unique room,” Trager said. “It’s very cool. It’s very quaint. It’s very intimate. And I want to bring to it high quality music, first and foremost.”

Both Abbot and Trager emphasized that the Red Men’s Hall hosted incredible concerts in the past by jazz legends Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Lionel Hampton, among others. 

“Vallejo has always been a place for great music,” Trager said. “I think this is a chance to recreate that. We are giving people a club where they can come and feel comfortable, have a good time, and dance if they want to.”

The name 4^th Corner Speakeasy, Abbot said, came about because the Red Men’s Hall is within a two block radius of Vallejo’s historic downtown, which now has a number of popular corner businesses.

“Two blocks down on the corner is Bambino’s restaurant,” Abbot pointed out. “On Virginia Street’s corner with Sacramento is Provisions. And on the corner with Sonoma Boulevard is Gracie's and Vallejo Brewery, right? And so that makes us the fourth corner.” 

Trager aims to make the night club a beloved Vallejo fixture. “What I want to do is have a place where people say, ‘Well, let's go down to the 4th Corner, because we know the music is going to be good.’ That’s our goal,” he said.

But the 4^th Corner Speakeasy is not the only attraction the Red Men’s Hall offers. The building itself, designed by renowned architect C.E. Perry and inaugurated in 1925, is beautifully preserved, with interesting terracotta and bas-relief murals reflecting 1920s motifs associated with the fraternal order. 

Abbot said many people who visit for the first time and have lived in Vallejo for decades had no idea that the fraternity was in the building or what the Improved Order of the Red Men meant. They only saw the large antiques business that has rented the lower floor for many years.

Yet, the fraternity of the Red Men had a prominent place in the U.S., with more than half a million members in the 1920s nationwide and more than a 1,000 members in Vallejo at one point. 

It’s also a direct descendant of the Sons of Liberty, a political organization established in 1765 to undermine British rule. Led by Samuel Adams, the Sons of Liberty carried out the Boston Tea Party protest, dumping 342 chests of English tea overboard in the Boston harbor in 1773.

Mike Bortner, first vice president of the Red Men’s Hall and a history buff, explained that the organization’s name, and the Native American décor found at the hall, is rooted in this origin.

“When the Sons of Liberty decided to dump the tea, had they been recognized, they would have been arrested and hanged,” Bortner said. “They needed to wear some kind of a disguise, so they put on Native American attire.”

Once the American Revolution ended, the Sons of Liberty dispersed into different organizations. In 1813, various groups joined and formed the Order of the Red Men, so named to reference the disguise used by the Sons of Liberty in 1773. It was also a reference to the fact that the Order based their organization on the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — also known as the Iroquois Confederacy — one of the world’s oldest participatory democracies.

The motto of the Order is “Freedom, Friendship, and Charity.” Chapters are called tribes. The Vallejo chapter, Tribe # 22, is called Samoset, after the first Native American to make contact with the pilgrims of Plymouth Colony in New England. 

The Red Men’s motto: Freedom, Friendship, Charity. Photo: Isidra Mencos.

Bortner, a retired dentist, became a member only a year ago, when he started looking for an organization where he could devote his time and contribute in some way to the community. He had been passionate about history since childhood, majoring in it in college. In the Red Men’s Hall, he found a perfect match.

“It was really motivating for me to become a member and have people say, ‘We've got a lot of history. We just don't know what it is. Maybe you can help us dig it up,’” Bortner said.

He found a room full of boxes from floor to ceiling containing record books and memorabilia, not only from the Vallejo chapter, but also from many others that had closed or didn’t own a building to store them. 

He spent a year coming nearly every day a week to the hall and organized a library and a foyer with the chapter’s flag and officers' photos. Patrons of the 4^th Corner Speakeasy can see Bortner’s work as they step out from the third-floor elevator, with the library to the left of the foyer and the club at the end of the hall.

Michael Bortner in front of the library he created, painstakingly going through dozens of boxes that filled the room floor to ceiling. Photo: Isidra Mencos.

Currently, Bortner is researching the history of prominent past members such as Frank A. Leach, the founder of the Vallejo Evening Chronicle who would later become the Superintendent of the San Francisco Mint and the director of the U.S. Mint.

Although the Red Men’s Hall went through lean years with as little as six members, it has more than doubled its numbers in the last two years, going from 20 to almost 50. And for the first time, membership includes women.

Ann Adams, a Vallejo resident and a direct descendant of Samuel Adams, was the first woman admitted into the chapter. She first heard about the Red Men’s Hall when a man passed her a flyer during the July 4^th parade. After attending the chapter’s social potluck, she said, “I told the men they needed to make Red Men's Hall into a co-ed club and join the 21st century.”

Sponsored by a friend who was part of the chapter, she became a member a few months ago, along with a few other women. 

“There are about 30 other Red Men's Halls throughout the United States, but Vallejo is the only club which currently has women as equal members,” Adams said. “I'm proud to be part of a city where independent thinkers in a small club were willing to go rogue and buck tradition.”

Bortner, Abbot, and Adams emphasized that the Red Men’s Hall is not only a place where friendships are formed and music is heard, but also a benevolent society focused on the welfare of the city and the community. 

They support nonprofits like the Alzheimer’s Foundation and veterans groups. They also participate in projects that help Vallejo, such as restoring the tiled steps at the end of Capitol Street, tending the chapter’s plot in Sunrise Cemetery, and lending their hall to community organizations like Vallejo Main Street. 

Adams is researching local charitable organizations to introduce to the chapter. “I hope that at some point our night club, 4th Corner Speakeasy, will make enough money to not only renovate the building, but will also provide a percentage of its profits to local charities on a regular basis,” she said.

The entrance of the Red Men’s Hall and the 4th Corner Speakeasy, at 431 Georgia Street. Photo: Isidra Mencos.

If you are interested in knowing more about the Red Men’s Hall, you can contact them and request to attend their social potluck dinner, which takes place every fourth Monday. And you can find a calendar of the exciting lineup coming up at the 4^th Corner Speakeasy on their website.