Historic Bangor Tavern Building Lists for $2.7M, Over Four Times Assessed Value

The McGuire Building in downtown Bangor, home to the Main Tavern bar and two notable public artworks, has gone up for sale for $2.7 million, the Bangor Daily News reported.

City assessing records peg the property's combined value at $620,900, split across two lots that together make up the roughly 22,000-square-foot building at 158 Main St., on the corner with Union Street. The building was constructed in 1900; the Brountas family has owned it for more than six decades. Floors above the bar house the Robinson Ballet dance studio and half a dozen one-bedroom units with shared bathrooms that once functioned as rooming-house lodging.

The Main Tavern, one of Bangor's oldest continuously operating businesses, opened in 1939; it has since been called several things, among them Peter's Candlelighter and the Jaguar. Known for karaoke nights, the bar has hosted only occasional private events since around early 2025, when owners Peter and Deb Brountas said they would retire and put the space up for lease; it remains without a new tenant. The Brountases wrote on Facebook that they had received "numerous offers" to buy the building or lease the space.

The building displays the "Hopeful" sign, created in 2021 by Yarmouth artist Charlie Hewitt, and a Bangor-welcome mural painted in 2014 by local artist Annette Dodd. The family, which has produced three former Bangor mayors, once ran a Greyhound bus terminal at the site before Greyhound moved to Hermon in 2012, when the Brountases expanded the bar.

This story was first reported by Bangor Daily News.