After more than 30 years of minimal to no use, the city of Portland, Ore., had three ideas for the old building that once housed Washington High School: tear it down, convert it into office buildings space, or — the more out-of-the-box idea — turn it into a music venue.

The Washington High building “was a bad investment for anybody, honestly,” says Portland entrepreneur Kevin Craddock, who owns Revolution Hall, Mississippi Studios and Polaris Hall. But local developer and preservationist Art DeMuro had a vision for the long-standing brick building. He envisioned a concert hall within the more than 130,000-square foot facility with additional office spaces in the place of former classrooms. “DeMuro was savvy enough and respected enough and beloved enough that he got the deal done with the city,” backed by real estate developer PacTrust in 2013, Craddock adds.

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Shortly after securing the high school — which first opened in 1906 and moved to its current location in 1909, then was rebuilt in 1924 following a fire — for an $18 million restoration, DeMuro passed away from cancer. But the project went on, and when it came time to design and build out the concert venue, the development company Venerable Properties reached out to the owners of Portland’s beloved indie venue Mississippi Studios, Craddock and Jim Brunberg, to build what would be called Revolution Hall.

“I was having a sandwich next door at this place called Meat Cheese Bread, and Jim just rolled over with our talent buyer at the time and said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna go look at this high school. They want to turn it into a music venue,’” says Craddock. “I didn’t even go with them.”

Craddock was familiar with the building. Back in his bartending days, he used to break into the high school after work through what he called “the door of debauchery,” and take in the stunning view of the city in the wee hours of the morning. He says that the door was never latched and earlier this year he got the original vestibule he broke in through tattooed on his leg.

After the school shut down, Craddock also attended experimental shows called Time-Based Art put on by the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art at the building. At the time, there was no running water, only one usable bathroom on the bottom floor, and the event organizers had to run electricity from a generator.

“I think they had permission, but maybe not,” says Brunberg.

“It was permission light,” jokes Craddock. “Diet permission.”

Revolution Hall in Portland, Ore. Jim Brunberg/Courtesy Revolution Hall

By the time DeMuro’s team was ready to renovate Washington High, the whole place needed to be gutted. The restoration project included a historic overlay to preserve the exterior and design elements of the school, but new plumbing and electrical systems were installed, as well as a new roof. Despite the obvious cost and complications of renovating a space that hadn’t seen regular use in over three decades, Craddock and Brunberg, who always have a sawzall or some form of chainsaw in their cars to “tweak” things at one of their venues, were up to the task.

Wanting to spend more time at home after years as a touring musician in bands like Box Set (which appeared on the cover of Billboard magazine’s best unsigned bands issue in 1994), Brunberg opened Mississippi Studios in 2003. Originally, the space had been a recording studio, but Brunberg transformed the former church into a 100-cap room that welcomed underplays from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Brandi Carlile, Regina Spektor, Feist, Rickie Lee Jones and Hot Tuna. A few years later, Brunberg met Craddock at a mutual friend’s party.

“I knew who Jim was the whole time, so when he very casually said, ‘The business isn’t doing good, I just had these kids and I’m on the road, be my business partner,’ I was like, ‘That sounds like a good idea,’” says Craddock, who had spent years in music-adjacent jobs and in construction. The trust was immediately apparent in their working relationship. “Jim announced to the staff before I even was a legal owner that I was one of the owners, and then he went on the road with [the band] Storm,” says Craddock.

Revolution Hall owners Jim Brunberg (left) and Kevin Craddock. Byron Beck/Courtesy Revolution Hall

In 2009, Craddock fully jumped in to improve food and beverage options and add structure to the business side of Mississippi Studios. Over the years, Mississippi Studios has been renovated several times and the pair added the Bar Bar restaurant, which claims to have the best burgers in town.

“He saved the business because I was a dumbass musician trying to run this little venue,” says Brunberg. “We’re like a family. Everybody thinks that Kevin and I are either married or brothers, and that’s fine with us.”

The jovial duo quickly realized the biggest initial expense in renovating Washington High was soundproofing the auditorium so that the other tenants wouldn’t be disrupted by soundcheck in the middle of the day. And the historic overlay meant even the curved wood auditorium chairs had to keep their original design.

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“The old seats were only 16 inches wide, but we did not notice that when we first got the tour of the building,” Brunberg says. Local codes mandate that seats be at least 21 inches wide. On that initial tour, Brunberg laughs that he patted himself on the back for bringing a tape measure to check the length of the seats. “They were 23 inches wide, which is great. But those were the teachers’ seats at the end of the rows.”

Alongside local woodworker Matt Lackey, they had to learn to bend plywood and rebuild 500 seats by hand. “We were both spending the night there,” says Brunberg. “I would work on the seats all day and then literally fall asleep on the balcony and Kevin would fall asleep on the floor in the bar because we were trying to just get things open and running a skeleton crew — enlisting our friends and bandmates and family.”

They brought in old bowling alley lanes to create two of the four bars throughout the building, which includes the main concert hall and the Assembly Lounge bar on the second floor; a lower-level 200-cap room called the Show Bar; and ground-level cafe Martha’s.

Wet Leg at Revolution Hall in Portland, Ore. Jason Quigley/Courtesy Revolution Hall

Shortly before the soft and hard openings of Revolution Hall in February and April 2015, respectively, Brunberg and Craddock asked a handful of local musicians to christen the venue by being the first to play music in it. Soul singer and local legend Ural Thomas — a regular at Mississippi Studios — was asked to join.

“I wanted [Rev Hall] to have his blessing,” says Brunberg, who had the pleasure of attending the then-75-year-old’s local jam sessions. “He said, ‘I want to sing my mom’s favorite song.’ He teared up and sang “Danny Boy.’”

Revolution Hall opened its doors to the public with two nights of Neko Case in April 2015 and has since welcomed Indigo Girls, Cat Power, Kim Gordon, Kathleen Hanna, Kurt Vile, Robert Glasper, Tegan and Sara, Lindsey Buckingham, Nick Cave, Buddy Guy, Pennywise, Laufey, Jack White, Sleater-Kinney, Wet Leg, Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples.

The talent buying team (Trevor Solomon, Lori Hughes Killen and Theo Craig) at the promotion and booking arm of Mississippi Studios, True West, “are great people and the shows they’ve gotten for the venue have been really innovative and outside the box sometimes,” says Brunberg. “But also they can do the mainstream.” The True West team not only books talent for Mississippi Studios and Revolution Hall, but also Show Bar and Polaris Hall, which is a former progressive women’s hall-turned-290-capacity music venue. In addition, earlier this year, Rev Hall’s rooftop bar was completed and can host the occasional small show.

From April to October, the renovated Roof Deck (the same space Craddock had tattooed) is open to the public and “one of Portland’s most popular tourist attractions,” says Craddock. The Roof Deck is the 10th bar they’ve built across their three locations and they consider it an economic imperative to have as many concession spaces as possible, especially ones open to the public on non-show nights.

“Ticket sales won’t ever pay all the bills. You need a robust concession program. You need private events,” says Craddock. “But the reason that we are there is not because of the margaritas. It’s because of the music.”