The Courthouse, McHenry’s new tavern, is a piece of history

Kopley family makes a case for repurposing original McHenry County courthouse

Taking a 184-year-old building and repurposing it into McHenry’s newest tavern was an easy deliberation for the Kopley family.

Nick Kopley is a real estate developer with a history of redeveloping old buildings in Chicago. In 2019, information about the McHenry property — the original McHenry County courthouse at the corner of Pearl Street and Riverside Drive — landed on his desk.

His brother, Demetri Kopley, has a background in bars and restaurants, including one he runs now in La Grange. Although McHenry is out of the area both men usually work, they loved the history of the old McHenry courthouse.

“McHenry was a nice little village, and with the proximity to the Fox River, it was a project we could work on together,” Nick Kopley said.

The result of that project is The Courthouse tavern, which opened in the original courthouse building in March.

Nick Kopley owns the building now, and Demetri Kopley owns the restaurant with his nephew, Kyriakos Kopley. Nick’s wife, Michelle Kopley, was involved in the decor with the help of Carrie Savino Design. Manager Kristen Kwasniewski runs the day-to-day operations.

The decor and the drink menu lean into the courthouse theme. The second floor has a sign pointing to it, reading “The Jury Room,” and a back office door is marked as the “Judge’s Chamber.” Movie posters hang in the hallway leading to the second-floor staircase, including those for “12 Angry Men,” “My Cousin Vinnie” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The Jury Room has a 48-star U.S. flag adorning one wall.

According to a historic marker, now moved to the back patio, “McHenry County’s first commissioners met in this building on Aug. 5, 1840.”

Back then, the building was on the Court Street side of the public square — now Veterans Memorial Park.

In 1843 — after McHenry and Lake counties split in two — the McHenry County seat was moved to what is now Woodstock, and the county auctioned off the old building in 1844. It was a tavern and a hotel after that, according to the sign.

Over the years, the family has been told, it was a tavern, a boardinghouse and a brewery. For the past several decades, the building was known as the Town Club tavern.

Not long after the Kopleys bought the building in fall 2019, COVID-19 hit. Not a lot of work was done, other than tearing down the house it was attached to.

The Kopleys really got going on the work in May 2022. The original wood beams and brick walls are about all that remains from the original building.

“We mixed the old and the new for a more modern feel but preserved the character of the original courthouse,” Demetri Kopley said.

“It would have been easier and faster to tear it down” and start from scratch, Nick Kopley said.

But with the delays, they had more time to figure out exactly what they wanted the restaurants and bar to become.

In a trial by fire, their first day open to the public was March 15 in the middle of ShamROCKS the Fox, McHenry’s St. Patrick’s Day festival.

“We were still painting on the 14th. We were wall to wall (with) people, inside and out,” Demetri Kopley said.

As the kitchen wasn’t ready, they brought in a food truck and had a tent on the back patio with live music.

Kyriakos Kopley is working on finalizing the tavern’s website and is in charge of social media. McHenry customers have been talking up the business on social media and sending new clients their direction.

Online search engines still haven’t quite separated The Courthouse tavern in McHenry from the actual courthouse in Woodstock.

“Finishing up the website will make it easier for people to find us,” Kyriakos Kopley said.

They still are working on making their case to the public, tweaking the menu and determining what they will be for the community, Nick Kopley said.

It would have been nice to open sooner, he said, but “I would not change what this will mean for McHenry in the future. I am more excited about what we will evolve into in the next couple of years.

“This is not the finished product. We will keep on improving and adding more and more down the road.”