Hansom House: The Zaniest Bar

It all started with a couple of antique rifles, a few wall-mounted antlers, and a reclining nude.

John Jaques, then a 26-year-old bartender and former philosophy student, had just opened the Hansom House, a restaurant and bar, in a rundown but historic building on Southampton's Elm Street.

Thirty-two years later, most would agree Mr. Jaques has come far in his quest to create "the most absurd bar in the world."

Ancient Anomalies

The rifles and antlers still adorn the walls, but they have been joined by a human skeleton, a suit of armor, a devilish-looking wax figure, a smoke-spewing car, and an attic's worth of anomalies ranging from ancient ice skates to an abandoned museum display depicting "The New York State Salt Industry."

The Hansom House is so awash in oddities that it would be as easy to spend a whole evening examining its walls and corners as dancing to one of the reggae and blues bands that play every weekend.

That's fine with Mr. Jaques, who likes to think of the place as "a giant collage" and a work still in progress.

Backlit Mural

"It's really based on entertaining people," he said. "I'm not a musician or anything, so this is my way of entertaining. I figure, if you come in, at least you get a drink's worth of junk to look at."

That's a modest way to put it, considering that some of the attractions are works of art Mr. Jaques himself has labored over for years.

The nightclub's couch-lined main room is adorned with a 30-foot-long stained-glass mural that took the club owner some 13 years to complete. At night, the glass is backlit by a computer-driven set of lights, giving the whole room a warm, ethereal feel.

Outside-In

Like other projects Mr. Jaques has done in the club, the stained-glass window started as a small concept ("I got bored looking at the curtains") and grew into a major undertaking.

"It just went on and on and on," he said. "Thirteen years it took me to get rid of those curtains!"

"The window was more or less a way to present my view of what I saw outside," he explained.

"People think weird things are always going on in here, but when you look outside, things are a lot weirder than they are in here."

The Real Hansom

The Hansom House was not always adorned in strange objects and art, but it has always had a quirky quality.

When Mr. Jaques first opened, the bar and restaurant had a formal appeal, and drew a crowd of socialites. The young club owner would often bring patrons over in a horse-drawn carriage he had bought at a Southampton auction.

The carriage, which inspired the club's name, still adorns one of the rooms - although its driver is now a mannequin fitted with a ghoul's head.

As the club began to establish itself it underwent a number of transformations, mainly in the clientele.

Police Raids

If there was a heyday for the Hansom House, it came in the late '60s and early '70s. In that same era as well, the club established a certain reputation with Southampton Village Police, though Mr. Jaques still swears it was unwarranted.

The place was raided on several occasions, and Mr. Jaques himself has been arrested several times on charges that were eventually dismissed, he said.

The club owner admits his relationship with the village has been somewhat strained over the years, but he is able to laugh about it. He even ran for Village Mayor one year, unsuccessfully.

"You can't hang someone in the village, otherwise I guess I'd be in trouble," he joked.

Metamorphosis

It wasn't until a fire at the club in 1976 that the Hansom House began its metamorphosis into the odd environment it is today. Mr. Jaques, who was going through a divorce and other changes at the time, considered getting out of the business and selling the club.

He took off by himself on a motorcycle trip to Canada. "A one-week trip turned into a month," he said, "and I came back realizing the problems in my life weren't related [to the nightclub]. I set out to create the most absurd bar in the world."

(If you lost something in the transition, it's okay; it wasn't quite that simple.)

Filling The Spaces

Mr. Jaques said some of the inspiration to adorn came from simple boredom. "The winters were so dead out here - I mean really dead - that I just began looking at the walls and thinking of what I could do."

Filling in the spaces through the years became an art form. Each room had its own feel, and thus got its own treatment.

In one room, objects are sparse, but the walls are intricate. Mr. Jaques wallpapered one section with hundreds of liquor labels, one with old concert and movie posters, and one with nude pictures from '60s and '70s magazines.

Another room, boasting a cappuccino machine and a few booths, is overrun with countless layers of objects, hung from the ceiling and plastered to the wall. It's not entirely haphazard, though.

"I tried to create an illusion where everything looks bigger than it really is," Mr. Jaques explained. "You have to look through an infinite amount of junk."

Mr. Jaques also created the 10-foot-high working fountain in front of the club. He had set out to buy one, but found the price wasn't right.

"I had some quartz," he recalled without a hint of irony, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to "have some quartz" lying around.

Debatable Gazebo

"It started small, but it became this big project. The next thing you know, I'm in there scraping concrete out of the rocks with a toothbrush."

With the Hansom House's interior and immediate exterior pretty much established, Mr. Jaques's creative instincts have expanded to the rest of the grounds - on a project not related to the club.

His application to build a gazebo - "kind of a Victorian Taj Mahal" - in the backyard sparked a recent zoning battle with Southampton Village, which contends that the club may not be entitled to use the space in that connection.

Mr. Jaques disagrees, of course, but that is another story.

The Creation

Village building inspectors have also been scratching their heads over another of Mr. Jaques's projects.

This one, which was recently completed, is unrelated to Hansom House. It's a towering waterfall built into a steep hill on an adjacent property, complete with giant boulders, two receiving pools, and a pump returning water to the top.

"If you want to see how absurd I really am, take a look at this," he said, leading a visitor through the backyard gate and down a trail toward the creation.

Book Construction

Though Mr. Jaques sighs about various nightclub-related difficulties - the music, the hardships of running a kitchen, smaller crowds - he shows no signs of tiring. One of his latest conundrums is deciding what to do with a large replica of a rocket ship sitting behind the club.

He has also embarked on a book about his experiences. Like the club, it will be a conglomeration.

"It will be about all the places, and people, the junk, and the concepts" over the years, he said.

"I'm trying to construct it just like the place."