A timber hall on Main Street, a block from the Brickyard.
Big Woods came out of Nashville, Indiana with a simple idea: good beer, good food, and rooms that feel like the Brown County woods they were named for. When the brand moved to Main Street in Speedway — a block off the Indianapolis Motor Speedway — the building had to carry that feeling into a race town. Hearthstone cut and raised the frame that does it.
Project
Big Woods Speedway
Location
Speedway, Indiana
Discipline
Heavy Timber Commercial — Brewpub & Taproom
Details
Opened 2016 · Full heavy-timber frame · horseshoe bar hall · covered street porch · taproom and dining
Speedway, Indiana is a place with one obvious landmark, and any restaurant that opens in its shadow has to decide whether to compete with it or offer something else entirely. Big Woods chose the second path: a warm, heavy-timber hall that feels like a lodge dropped into a race-day street grid.
The plan turns on a long horseshoe bar under a full timber roof. Principal posts carry chamfered braces and curved knees out to the walls, and the roof framing is left entirely exposed — purlins, rafters, and common trusses reading straight through the room. There is no ceiling to hide behind, which means every joint had to be finished as a visible piece of the design.
Hearthstone drew the frame in true-solid 3-D, cut it in Newport, Tennessee, and shipped it north for raising. The timbers were dried to the core before they were cut, so the joinery holds tight in a building that swings from race-weekend capacity crowds to quiet February afternoons.
Outside, a covered timber porch runs the length of the Main Street elevation — shade in July, shelter in the rain, and a permanent invitation to sit down. Inside, reclaimed barn siding, blackened steel, and copper-topped tables sit against the fir. It is a commercial room built with residential care, and after a decade of hard service it still reads as new work.
