Quilici Bar
Later known as the Rumpus Room and Abby’s Highway 40, the bar was opened by Roy Quilici in 1940.
Roy Quilici had already managed several bars in Reno when he had the brick building at 424 East 4th Street constructed in 1940 to house his namesake Quilici Bar. The building had a prime location. Fourth Street was the main east-west thoroughfare through town, having been designated the Lincoln Highway and then U.S. 40. The Savage Building next door (now known as the Morris Hotel) had opened in 1931 with a hotel upstairs and retail below. And the corridor was rapidly becoming a thriving commercial district.
Roy (born Romolo Mansueto Quilici) was an Italian immigrant who lived in a house right next door to the bar with his wife Mary Matilda and their four daughters. In 1945, Quilici sold the bar to George Mross, who renamed it the Reno Bar and claimed “We serve the largest glass of beer or whiskey in town at popular prices.”
In 1953, the Quilicis had a small building constructed between their house and the Reno Bar, and opened it as a little coffee shop called the Green Cup Café, with Mary Quilici as the proprietor. Longtime Louis’ Basque Corner owner Louis Erreguible later remembered that the coffee shop was a popular morning gathering place for area workers.
In the 1960s, the Reno Bar was one of the city's first gay bars. By 1970, it had become the Rumpus Room, which had been relocated there (along with its signature sign) from a spot on South Virginia Street. In 1984 or 1985, the small café space became the first home of Bertha Miranda’s Mexican Restaurant, and after that an eatery called The Gourmet Burger. By 1991 the little restaurant was Davo’s Little Brooklyn, and was under the same management as the Rumpus Room Lounge. By January 2000, the Rumpus Room had become Abby’s Highway 40.
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