A fixture of Old Towne Daphne for nearly a century has gone dark. Alex Manci, longtime owner of Manci’s Antique Club, confirmed this week that the bar and restaurant served its last customers the previous Sunday, ending an era for one of Baldwin County’s most recognizable gathering spots.
“I have spent my whole lifetime up there,” Manci said of the decision. “It’s time for me to leave. It’s still not easy to talk about, but it was time to go.” He said he hung the handwritten “Closed” sign on the front door Monday morning, calling the moment emotional after so many years behind the bar.
The building’s story stretches back to 1924, when Italian immigrant Frank Manci purchased property on Main Street in Daphne and opened a gas station. His son, Arthur Manci, who later served as mayor of Daphne, took over the business in 1947 and transformed it into a bar after securing a liquor license two decades later. Over the years, the walls filled up with farm tools, old bottles, and other curiosities that gave the place its “antique club” name and unmistakable character.
Alex Manci took the reins in 1987, and in 1995 he and his wife began serving food, expanding the business into the full-service eatery generations of Baldwin County residents came to know. The menu built a devoted following around its burgers, seafood po-boys, fried softshell crab sandwiches, and Bloody Marys, while a quirky restroom fixture — a wooden cutout rigged with a buzzer — became local legend in its own right. The spot’s reputation reached well beyond South Alabama after a Food Network crew featured it on a national cooking show in 2008.
Manci said the closure came down to wanting more time with his wife and a life outside the business after years of long days that started at 8 a.m. and stretched until the last customer left. He employed a small staff of kitchen workers, waitresses, and a part-time bartender, whom he told directly about the closing.
News of the shutdown caught many regulars off guard. The business’s social media page had promoted a catfish special just days before the closure, and longtime patrons flooded the page afterward expressing disbelief and asking whether the rumors were true. Manci confirmed them, comparing the closure to losing family. “It’s like losing my mother and father,” he said, “but I have to have a life myself.”
Manci said he hopes the business can continue under new ownership in some form rather than disappearing altogether, saying he intends to find someone willing to carry on the Manci’s name. For now, though, Old Towne Daphne has lost one of its longest-running and most colorful institutions, closing a chapter that spanned three generations of one family and nearly a hundred years on the same stretch of Main Street.