Commercial Project
Blaze Restaurant Wood Fired Cuisine Overlooking Bangor
Blaze Upstairs completes the original two-story vision for the Bangor location of the Blaze restaurant franchise. For most of the building’s life the second floor was a single undeveloped room, and its one great asset was the view over downtown Bangor. Ervin Architecture built the floor around that view. A bar sits to the windows so guests look out across the city, and the wine and liquor sit on lit glass shelving that reads from the street below. Deep-cavity walls are skinned in flush-face reclaimed wood from Maine Heritage Timber, carrying LED-lit display niches. The floor runs its own wood fire — a 36-inch Grillworks Grillery and a Maine Wood Heat oven with a Le Panyol insert — in an open kitchen the whole room can see. The atmosphere takes a contemporary turn, a deliberate step away from the restaurant below, and the fifty seats can be booked out in full for private functions and meetings.
Client
Blaze Restaurant, LLC
LOCATION
Bangor, Maine
STYLE
Contemporary
CATEGORY
Commercial
Restaurants + Bars
Restaurants + Bars
Services
Architectural Design
Interior Design
Permitting
Lighting Design
Fabrication
Interior Design
Permitting
Lighting Design
Fabrication
Designing a Second Floor Above a Working Restaurant
A Bar Built Around a View of Downtown Bangor
The second floor had never been developed. It was one room, and what made it worth building was what could be seen out of it — downtown Bangor, from a floor above the street. Ervin Architecture had wanted a bar in that room since the first phase. The design puts guests at the bar facing the city, and puts the bottles on glass shelving lit so the display carries outward: the bar is visible to the people downtown, and downtown is visible from the bar. That single decision set the plan.
A Full Commercial Kitchen on the Second Floor
The floor is not an annex of the kitchen below. It cooks on its own, with a prep station, a 36-inch Grillworks Grillery, a Maine Wood Heat oven with a Le Panyol insert, and a full commercial exhaust system. Equipment of that weight and size does not go up a stair in a downtown block. It was brought in with cranes and Lulls, staged and set before the room could be finished around it. The kitchen is open to the dining room, so the crew works in view of every seat.
Fifty Seats in a Single Historic Room
A single-use bathroom had to be added. So did the kitchen, the exhaust, the bar, and fifty seats. In a room of fixed dimensions with a wall of windows that could not be given up, each of those claims competed with the others, and every one of them also had to survive the aesthetic the room was being built for. Nothing here was placed where it was convenient. It was placed where it was the only remaining option that still worked.
An Event Space in Demand
Blaze Upstairs operates as an event space in high demand. It books months in advance, and through the holiday season it is spoken for well ahead of time.
project COLLABORATIONS
CNC Fabrication
University of Maine, Material Science Lab
Reclaimed Timber
Maine Heritage Timber
Architectural Lighting
Greg Day Lighting
Masonry
Pat Manley Masonry
Wood-Fired Oven Surround
Maine Wood Heat
Wood-Fired Pizza Oven
Maine Wood Heat
Wood-Fired Oven
Le Panyol
Wood-Fired Grill
Grillworks
PHOTOGRAPHY
Monty Rand Photography
In The Press
"Works of Architecture: A Restaurant Takes its Cues from a Lumber Town"
By Rebecca Falzano
"Blaze is setting Bangor's restaurant scene on fire."
By Melanie Brooks
“Blaze Restaurant to open in former Whig & Courier space"
by Emily Burnham
“Lighting The Fire At Blaze, Bangor’s New Downtown Eatery”
by Emily Burnham
“Bangor Native Opens Blaze Restaurant”
By Dale McGarrigle
Designed by Ervin Architecture, Blaze is warm and inviting, with both original brick walls and horizontal blond wood paneling cut from centuries-old timber plucked from the bottom of a Penobscot River tributary by Millinocket’s Maine Heritage Timber — a fitting material for a historic building in the former lumber capital of the world. The bar also is constructed of reclaimed river wood, but its most striking feature is a softly illuminated red wall panel with a stenciled floral design.
