Cedar Bluff, an 1890s historic home on the May River in Bluffton, SC, in 2013 prior to renovations. Owners Joe & Diana Zokan donated the old metal roofing to Fireforge for the tasting room.

We have returned from Bluffton, SC with some amazing material for the Fireforge tasting room. Thank you so much to Diana and Joe Zokan for donating a ton (literally) of metal roofing from the historic 19th century house that they recently renovated along the May River.

The historic home, named Cedar Bluff, was originally built in the 1840s and was destroyed in June 1864 by Federal ships during the shelling of Bluffton during the Civil War. The current house was built upon the original foundation in the 1890s.

Over the next 100 years, Cedar Bluff had an interesting history. In the 1920s, it’s possible that the second floor was used as a speakeasy and gambling hall. In the 1930s, after Prohibition ended, it was a restaurant called The Silver Eagle.

Eventually, it became a summer home for a Savannah family and over time fell into a state of disrepair. In 2013, Joe and Diana purchased the property and began renovations. They reused as much of the original house as they could, including the original roofing as wall finishes on the second floor.

They had a lot of the metal roofing material left over and offered it to us for the brewery. It was a no brainer, we immediately accepted. The rusted out metal and faded green paint is a perfect fit for the atmosphere we want to create at Fireforge. And we hope that it inspires us to live up to the old days at Cedar Bluff, when who knows what was going on up on that second floor!