- This program is brought to you by the combined resources
of the Wisconsin Historical Society
and Wisconsin Public Television.
*
- Narrator: Long before theme bars, before fern bars,
and teen bars, there were other kinds of bars
and before those bars, there were more bars.
- Jim Draeger: Wisconsin is a tavern state.
It's something that defines the culture.
- Narrator: On this map, the red dots show areas
with more taverns than grocery stores.
- Draeger: In order to have taverns, you have to have beer,
and Wisconsin was a brewing state, too.
A lot of the people who settled in Wisconsin
came from beer-drinking cultures.
- Narrator: Over time, most historic taverns disappeared
or were remodeled to fit the times.
But somehow, a few remain
and each one has a story to tell.
- Bottoms Up, Wisconsin's Historic Bars and Breweries
was funded by
the Wisconsin History Fund,
supported in part
by the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Narrator: Before the coming of the railroads,
horse-drawn stagecoaches
traveled Wisconsin's early roads.
- Mark Speltz: The bumpy, dusty roadways
that connected all of the frontier towns.
And spaced out along these routes were stagecoach inns,
places where people could spend the night
get a warm meal, and enjoy a drink
or game of cards in a taproom.
- Narrator: At the midpoint on the Sheboygan and Fond du Lac line,
weary travelers could rest at the Wade House.
Now preserved as an historic site,
the Wade House tells the story
of a busy frontier tavern
run by Sylvanus and Betsy Wade.
- David Simmons: When Sylvanus arrived here with his wife Betsy
and their nine children,
he really had his sights set on building a town.
One of the key elements in building a town
was the construction of a tavern.
- Betsy Urven: Folks that were coming in
might go to the parlor to wait for a meal
waiting for next stage that's going to pull out.
Or gentlemen would go across to the taproom.
Mr. Wade did serve gin, whiskey, and beer.
You could also get a non-alcoholic drink.
There was lemonade served here, as well.
- Simmons: It wasn't solely a place for the taking of drink.
But it was also a place
where passengers could get a meal and spend the night.
- Urven: There are eight private bedrooms
off of this main hallway.
Each little room has a bed,
a washstand with a pitcher and basin, and a chamber pot
so you don't have to get up in the middle of the night
and go out to the outhouse.
- Simmons: The tavern served not only itinerant traffic,
but also it was a place of gathering
for the local population.
- Urven: Men from town would come in, again, to get a drink,
maybe just to socialize, play checkers,
kind of catch up on the local news.
Mr. Wade did take newspapers from New York, other places.
Walls would be covered with notices
of maybe, local auctions.
- Simmons: Being the largest structure in town
it afforded space for public gatherings,
elections, or meetings.
There may be theatrical performances
and then also dances.
Cotillions and balls, we know, were held
on the third floor of the Wade House.
- Narrator: As railroads began to take the place
of stagecoach lines,
the stagecoach tavern soon gave way
to the storefront saloon.
- Draeger: In the 19th century,
a saloon didn't really look much different
than any other store on the street.
It had the same kind of storefront.
They were typically
about 40 feet wide and about 100 feet deep
so they're big, long, rectangular spaces
on the interior.
And when you walked in the inside of a saloon,
you were met by a set of saloon doors
and a saloon screen.
The saloon screens were architecturally elaborate.
They had incorporated leaded glass,
beveled glass, stained glass.
They were beautiful,
very architecturally wonderful features.
And the intention of the saloon screen
was to appease the objection
of the temperance people
that someone walking by could be exposed
to these immoral acts
of people drinking at the bar.
The women and children, the innocent,
would see these activities and then they'd be swayed
and led off the path of righteousness
into this world of debauchery.
When you pass through the saloon doors
a back bar and front bar
run along the long edge of the space
and that creates sort of a workspace
for the bartender
so he's not having all of the customers
mingling around where he's working.
It's kind of a defensible space
that creates a barrier between the customers and the booze
so he can keep an eye on his stock
and it kind of helps him
to control the business of the bar, as well.
You may find tables and chairs like you do in taverns today.
But many of them didn't have it.
They were just standing.
No bar stools; people stood at the rail.
It was thought at the time
that it was more healthful to drink your beer standing up
or your booze standing up, than sitting down.
Next to them on the floor, strategically placed,
were some big brass spittoons.
A lot of people chewed tobacco back at that point
so the spittoons were a place
where the excess of the tobacco went.
The 19th-century tavern was almost exclusively men.
It was very much a male space.
The only exception to that was if you were in an area
that had a high German population,
you would have found a separate room called the Ladies Lounge
that was for women, children, and families.
We're going to take a look at it here.
This space is separate from the tavern.
It's closed off by its own doorway.
It has its own side entrance from the street
so women and families enter directly into this space,
thereby shielding them from all of the un-virtuous activity
that's happening in the tavern.
So if you go into a bar in Wisconsin,
and you see a separate back room with pool table in it
and a side or a rear entrance,
it was probably the ladies' parlor.
- Narrator: In New Glarus,
Puempel's Tavern, run by one family for 100 years,
keeps the feel of an old storefront saloon.
- Chuck Bigler: The bar was originally built by the Puempel family
Joe and Bertha, in 1893.
They ran it until 1935
when their son Otto took over.
He ran the bar for 58 years.
He lived upstairs all that time, raised a family, retired
and then finally sold the tavern to us.
So we're the third owner
and the first non-Puempel to own the tavern.
We bought it, basically, so that it would stay the same.
We didn't want somebody to buy it
and make wholesale changes to it
that would ruin the atmosphere of it.
So we bought it as a hobby.
I still work full-time outside of here.
That way, we don't have to do the things
that you might have to do to generate income
such as jukeboxes, video games, pool tables.
This has become the gathering place for the card games.
We have a lot of class reunions.
Things that require more of a quiet atmosphere
where people can actually visit, play cards, talk.
Usually every Monday, Wednesday and Fridays,
they'll be there, we play Jass.
- Well, I got four nils.
- Oh, my God in heaven!
- Jass is a Swiss card game
that I don't understand how to play.
There they are... There they are.
You deal me these faceless cards, gee whiz!
[indistinct talking]
Oh, oh, missed one.
I got to get out.
Trouble in the house.
- Bigler: Somebody will throw cards on the table and holler, "Schterk!"
- Schterk!
- Bigler: It must mean the finish or something,
but I don't have any idea what it is.
- Pfund: All my folks and all their neighbors played it.
We were in a Swiss neighborhood.
Every time they'd get together they had to play a game of Jass.
I'm still playing.
- Mine's ace.
- Pfund: Ace? Sure, I figured that was over here.
Goll' darn it!
- Bigler: The paintings were done in 1913.
They were painted by Albert Struman,
who was staying upstairs.
Back in the early 1900s, this was a boarding house.
Albert Struman needed something to help pay
his 60-cents-a-day room and board.
He asked if he could paint
murals on the wall.
He painted them off the postcards
that were chosen by the Puempel family.
We have the Andreas Hofer story of Austria
being taken away by Napoleon.
I'm going to take that.
How 'bout that one?
How 'bout this one? How 'bout that one?
- Bigler: We put a thumbtack through the dollar bill
and we fold it around a 50-cent piece.
We let the customers throw it,
and we donate it to charity.
We donated $1,556 off the back half last year.
- Holy cats, you're mixin' drinks?
- It seems to be more like home or family here.
It's just like the old neighborhood bar.
- Bigler: If I was looking at it from a visitor's standpoint,
I guess it's just a cool place to visit
if I didn't have to work there.
- Narrator: Many small breweries once dotted the countryside,
fueling a growing number of saloons.
And from its earliest days,
Wisconsin was on its way to becoming a tavern state.
- Draeger: To be a tavern state,
you have to have access to beer,
which means you have to have good clean water,
you have to have agricultural lands
to grow all of the ingredients that are used to make beer,
and you need to have people who will drink it.
And Wisconsin had the perfect blend of all of that.
There were all of the Germans, and Irish
and Eastern Europeans
who came to Wisconsin from a culture
that was a drinking culture.
- Narrator: Soon, hundreds of breweries
hauled barrels of perishable beer
to local saloons.
- Draeger: Early breweries were very, very local places.
The brewery was really focused on a neighborhood
or a small town.
Beer didn't keep well.
The earlier beers that were brewed in Wisconsin
the ales, porters, and stouts didn't last very long.
They had to be drank fresh.
- Narrator: In Milwaukee, German immigrants
preferred the taste of lager beer.
Brewed with cooler temperatures
lagers fermented in caves cooled by ice.
Lager beer gave brewers an additional benefit.
It stayed fresh longer.
- Draeger: It had a longer shelf life
so it was more shippable.
So you could brew lager beer and put it on a train car
and ship it out of the city limits
and ship it somewhere else.
- Narrator: An expanding market meant that the lager brewers
in Milwaukee: Schlitz, Blatz, Miller
and Best, which would become Pabst
began to grow larger.
[alarm bell ringing]
- Fire?
- Nothing much, over on DeKoven Street.
Hear tell they blamed it on a cow.
- A cow?
- Mrs. O'Leary's cow.
- Draeger: The Chicago fire was probably the best thing
that ever happened to Milwaukee brewers
because when Chicago burned,
it burned all of the breweries in Chicago, too.
As people came in to rebuild Chicago
that required a lot of beer.
Milwaukee brewers expanded quickly
to try to get a toehold in that market.
Yes, sir, nothing like a good, long drink of cool beer.
Quit jokin'.
Hey! That is beer!
Where'd you get it?
They're shippin' it in from Milwaukee
- Draeger: That's why Pabst, and Miller
and Schlitz, and Blatz,
that's really why they became national beers.
- Narrator: At the time, almost all beer was sold
in neighborhood saloons, which played an important role
in Wisconsin's rapidly developing communities.
- Draeger: Many people in the 19th century
lived in very modest houses
or in tenement buildings
that didn't really have any social space.
The tavern served as sort of an extended living room.
- Saloons in neighborhoods were always community centers
a place where you could go
and relax outside of your cramped quarters
after a long working day.
If you were out of work
it was a place where you could ask about a job.
They were a great source of news.
- That was the communication network of many neighborhoods.
So you'd go into a tavern to look for a place to live.
Somebody's on hard times and needs some help.
The barkeeper would help rally the neighborhood
and raise money for causes like that.
They were also political places.
The tavern owners themselves had a lot of sway in politics
because they had their ear to the ground.
They knew what people in the neighborhoods were talking about
They knew what the issues were.
- Narrator: All over the city of Milwaukee
saloons sprang up to meet the needs
of its many immigrant groups.
In the Brady Street neighborhood,
Wolski's tavern opened over a hundred years ago
to serve the local community.
- Bernard Bondar: This was a Polish neighborhood
and it kind of evolved around St. Hedwig's church
which is up on Brady and Humbolt.
A lot of Polish flats, mostly frame houses.
There were quite a few tanneries around here on the river.
A lot of people worked at those tanneries
so, a working class neighborhood.
Our great-grandfather started this bar in 1908
and he was Bernard Wolski
so I guess I was named after him.
I'd say a shot-and-a-beer-bar.
We do make fancy cocktails Cosmos, Moscow Mules.
Twenty bar stools, five tables.
We offer pool tables.
We've had English darts from the day we opened.
The building, to our knowledge, was moved here.
It was on Brady Street.
We thought it was a dry goods store.
They moved the building here with horses and logs.
My great-grandfather had 14 children.
They all lived on this property.
About this street, Pulaski Street
it's shaped like a hockey stick.
Now, this was a creek that did feed the river.
We have the tavern on this side, and across was the butcher.
Then there was a bakery directly across.
And there was a dry goods store.
This street was just like its own little community.
There was actually a bar on each end of the street.
- Dennis Bondar: It was run by my three great-uncles,
which were his sons, for about 67 years.
- Bernard Bender: My brother Mike and I took the bar over
from our third cousin.
And then, my other brother Dennis came in five years later.
- Dennis Bondar: When I first started working here I knew that I would be
a part-owner of a 100-year-old, fourth-generation business.
That's really what kept me going.
How many people can say that?
I'll tell you, I would not want to do this business
all by myself.
It can be the best job in the world
and five minutes later, it's the worst.
The longevity in this bar
is because it's been run by three brothers
other than six years.
There's nothing like the trust you have with your brothers.
So many people that come to this bar
are just so attached to it.
It is truly a community house.
- Bernard Bondar: "Because of the bumper sticker, we're kind of a destination spot"
A lot of tourists come in here.
We've been them giving out, I'd say, 35 years,
at closing, to anybody that wants one.
After all these years, it's amazing the stories
I hear from people who have seen em, wherever they have seem em,
from Africa to the Great White North, to Alaska, Ireland.
The stories are incredible.
- Bernard Bondar: When people go on holidays, we'll give them extra stickers
Europe or Russia, Antarctica, Afghanistan.
We're really proud of that.
It's kind of neat.
It's of a Milwaukee calling card of something.
Rock on, Wolski's!
- Narrator: As Wisconsin brewers
began to produce ever larger quantities of beer
they soon faced a big problem
as the price per barrel began to plummet.
- Draeger: They're trying to get their beer into the taverns.
The tavern owner is basically buying his beer based on price.
Who can give me the best price on a barrel of beer.
The response of the brewers
was to become the tavern owners themselves.
If they owned the tavern
then they could dictate the price of beer.
This was very popular, and all of the breweries
began to buy up and open taverns.
At its peak, it's estimated about 85% of all taverns
during this period become tied houses.
They're called tied houses because they were
economically tied to the brewery through ownership.
- Narrator: In Fall Creek, just outside of Eau Claire,
the Walter Brewing Company built a tied house
now called Big Jim's Sports Bar.
Some of these old wrestling posters I've got
with like, Nord, the Barbarian.
Then you've got Billy Robinson over here.
- Narrator: Today, the walls showcase highlights
from the athletic career of owner Jim Gagnon.
- Gagnon: I played football at the University at River Falls
as well as my brother Paul.
I actually went out to the Seattle Seahawks
and signed a professional contract in 1977
to play for the Seahawks.
I injured my knee after about a year there.
I decided to get into power lifting to strengthen my body.
I won the Wisconsin State Badger Open in 1986.
I set a couple records.
One in power lifting, which is 815-pound squat.
Verne Gagne called me up
and wanted me to get into professional wrestling.
I guess the highlight of my career would be
going to Germany in 1987 for the World Cup Tournaments.
I got to meet Andre the Giant, 7'6", 550-pound giant.
It was quite an experience to be with him.
On nights we weren't wrestling
we would going out on the town and partying a little bit.
In 1998, I owned the All American Wrestling.
We wrestled in a five state area.
That was a lot of fun. I had a good time with it.
Eventually, I decided to move on.
I was selling my league to a person from Augusta.
As I was driving through town,
I saw this bar for sale here on the corner.
I got out of my car and walked over.
I looked through the window and saw this old bar in the back.
I thought, boy, this is a pretty neat place.
I'd like to get in the bar business.
So, I called the guy the next day,
and I bought the tavern that day.
The story gets pretty good, because as I'm at the bar
the first day cleaning it up, and getting ready to open up
this older lady comes in
and she says, "Are you related to the Walter brewing family?"
And I said, "Yeah.
My grandfather used to own the brewery here in Eau Claire."
And she goes, "Didn't you have an uncle named John Walters?"
I said, well, "Yeah, I've got an uncle,
and I have a great-great uncle named John Walters, too."
She says to me,
"Hey, they bought the land and built the bar here."
I go, "Really?" I was just amazed at the fact
that I'd stumbled into this place by accident
and my great-great uncle actually started it up.
You know, there were dirt roads here.
I mean, basically there was nothing from here to Eau Claire,
which is approximately eight to nine miles away.
They used to deliver the beer on horses.
It must have been quite a scene to see, you know?
[saloon piano music]
- Narrator: In Jefferson, the saloon on this busy corner
was rebuilt by brewer Rudolph Heger
to serve as a tied house for the Heger Brewery.
Now known as the Landmark Saloon
the pride and craftsmanship are still on display
with Rudolf Heger's initials carved right into the back bar.
- Draeger: It was built by the brewery
as a showplace for their own beer.
So it's much more ornate and elaborate
than your typical neighborhood corner tavern.
It has this beautiful stained glass window here
with leaded glass around the outside.
In the center, there's a medallion
with a crest of the Rudolf Heger Brewery.
You can see the R and the H
and hop leaves in the center of the field.
It has a magnificent, very large scale back bar
built out of quarter-sawn oak.
A magnificent front bar
with foot rails, marble baseboards
wainscoting on the walls.
The ceiling is copper.
It's just a showplace of a tavern.
Breweries could spend a lot more money on a tavern
than a normal tavern owner could
so taverns got a lot more elaborate
as a result of the tied house movement.
- Narrator: In Burlington, B.J. Wentker
competed with the tied houses
by building an elegant saloon
now preserved as a restaurant that still bears his name.
- Draeger: B.J. Wentker's
is an upscale saloon for the period.
It has a lot of features that are pretty embellished.
It has a encaustic tile floor that's richly patterned
with medallions set in the floor.
It has subway tile, wainscoting on the walls,
a decorative tin ceiling,
and a very rich oak back bar and bar front.
The bar fixtures were produced by the Brunswick Company
which was the largest maker of back bars.
Brunswick got its start
making pool tables
and they realized they could sell a lot more pool tables
if they sold it with all of the furnishings for a tavern.
This bar has an incredible complement
of all of the original bar fixtures and furnishings.
It has the typical front bar and back bar
that we see in many Wisconsin taverns
but it also has kept its liquor cabinets, cigar humidor
the ice box.
What we see right here, set apart from the bar
is a short lunch counter, where every day,
B.J. Wentker set out a buffet
of free food at lunch time: pickled eggs,
pickled pork hocks, sausage.
The temperance movement
agitated for bars to start serving food
because they thought if people had full stomachs
they wouldn't drink as much.
But ironically it backfired for the temperance movement
because bars filled up at lunch time
with a lot of working class people
for which this was the biggest meal of the day
and you could get it for the price of a glass of beer.
- Narrator: The power of the big brewers and their tied houses
promoted a drinking lifestyle
in an already alcohol-drenched culture.
The reputation of saloons became tainted due to excesses
what was called a "devil's trinity"
of drunkenness, prostitution, and gambling.
- Draeger: There was a constant tension
between the forces of moderation
and the forces of "the good life."
- Narrator: Since frontier days,
temperance groups fought against the sale of alcohol,
motivated by the costs imposed by drinkers
on the rest of society.
Former Janesville resident Frances Willard
led the Women's Christian Temperance Union
in its campaign against
the damaging effects of drinking on families.
[train whistle blows]
- I'm so lonesome for you...
- Narrator: The sentiments of temperance advocates
were spelled out in "Ten Nights in a Bar-Room,"
a novel turned into a highly popular play and film.
- You're a thief!
- Don't call me a thief!
- You're a thief!
[anguished yell]
- Narrator: The tireless efforts of prohibition groups
resulted in Wisconsin ratifying the 18th Amendment
banning the sale of alcohol.
- Draeger: Prohibition was an unmitigated disaster
for tavern owners and for brewers.
With the stroke of a pen,
they took away the fifth largest industrial business
in the city of Milwaukee.
- Narrator: Over nine and a half thousand Wisconsin saloons closed
or became soda fountains, or pharmacies.
But in some areas, saloons continued to operate
despite enforcement of the law.
In Hurley, spectacular raids slowed
but never stopped the sale of alcohol from the many bars
lining the main street, that had changed from saloons
to "soda fountains."
- Prohibition had little effect on Hurley.
Hurley was never dry.
- Brain Tarro: Hurley always has had a lot of bars.
It was a place where the miners came
at first with no wives.
- Ted Erspamer: When I was a young man, it was quite a lumbering town
so we had a lot of lumberjacks.
- Tarro: These were underground mines.
The tunnels needed to be shored up with timbers.
The mining companies contracted with many loggers
to supply the mines with this type of lumber.
Of course, then the bars opened up
and the girls came
and the dance halls, and so on, that sort of stuff.
You can see the old movie, "Come and Get It"
which was Edna Ferber's novel
about Hurley and the logging industry.
- Erspamer: A block away from us, you were in Ironwood, Michigan.
They always had strict laws on booze, liquor.
Most of the people that lived around the range
that wanted to go drinking came to Hurley, Wisconsin,
because it was a more wide-open town.
At the peak, we had around 88 bars.
- Speltz: The tavern Dawn's Never Inn opened in 1925.
That'd be five years into prohibition.
It opened as Santini's hotel.
The Santini family installed
one of the most beautiful back bars in Wisconsin.
It's still intact today, built by Brunswick
mahogany, triple arches.
- Tarro: The back bar is Art Nouveau style.
You can see the curlicues with the flowers
the plant leaves
and the carved heads of the winds.
- Erspamer: Dr. Gresham bought this place
and his wife Dawn was a little bit teed off
and she said, "You'll never see me in that."
So he said okay, and he named the place "Dawn's Never Inn."
- Dawn Gresham: He wanted to save the beautiful back bar.
He thought it would've been sent to California in pieces
and there goes the history, which I agreed to.
Eight months later, if the bar,
which is 10 feet high, could've fit in our home,
I don't think we'd be having this conversation today.
[laughs] I don't, no.
- Tarro: The main street is Silver Street,
and it's four blocks long,
and it slopes toward the river.
This building is part
of the section called the 'lower block.'
Lower in every sense of the word:
lower morality, etc.
- They had girls upstairs and they had gambling downstairs.
- Upstairs, it was a hotel, by the hour.
- Gresham: Down the hall is 13 rooms
that were used for salesmen.
That's what I was told.
Each room has a little buzzer on the door
for [ahem] I'm not sure what.
And one bathroom for all of them.
- Tarro: This particular bar's draw
was that it was a gambling place.
If you go downstairs,
you see that there is a hole in the wall
looking out at the poker players
to see that nobody was cheating.
The money was kept in the back
and the big money went through the opening in the wall.
This bar is perhaps the last one that remains
fairly authentic to what it originally was.
There's still a lot of places on the main street
but they've been remodeled and names changed.
Some have burned down, and some have been redone.
So that this is perhaps the most representative example
of what we had in Hurley in the old days.
- Narrator: During prohibition, early tourists
made their way up to northern Wisconsin
where taverns were built to serve them in a rustic style.
The rustic Northwoods style of architecture
is really based on a long-standing nostalgia
and an interest in frontier cabins
and logging camps and the lure of the Northwoods.
- Narrator: Outside St. Germain
Sisters Saloon preserves the rustic look
of an old resort restaurant and bar.
- Speltz: Sisters Saloon got its start in the 1920s
as more and more tourists headed north.
They used this Northwoods rustic architecture
to attract people.
Inside, the walls had the color of a crackling fire.
The bar, the cabinets behind
were created by a craftsman
who peeled little twigs, split them in half
and arranged them in a really unique and original design.
- Cherie Anderson: It's one of the places
that people like to stop because it's very Northwoods.
The newer places are fun too, I mean fancier
but this is a typical Northwoods place here
that people like to come and look at.
It's a log structure, not easy to heat
but it's nice to look at.
It was always called Peacock Lodge.
I'm told the original owner of the place,
worked in the southern part of the state
for a meat packing company called Peacock Hams,
and that's why he named it Peacock Lodge.
In the '70s, my boyfriend's parents
used to own the tavern here, and the restaurant.
I used to ride my horse down to visit with the boyfriend
back in the '70s.
Then my sister had moved back home here.
We heard that the previous owner was thinking about selling
so we came and talked to them, and the rest is history.
I'm on a lake called Fawn Lake.
It runs into Big St. Germain Lake
and also Lake Content.
So I get a lot of lake traffic, the fishermen,
and the boaters, and skiers come up
to come and have lunch or dinner or something with us.
I have people from years ago
that still have to stop and see the place
that honeymooned here, maybe back in the '40s or '50s.
They'll take a ride up north to come see the old place again
where they used to stay
because this was all a big resort at one time.
There was a lot of logging going on in the '20s up here.
I don't know where the original builder happened to be from.
He built several other restaurants in this area, too
in St Germain back in the '30s.
Behind the bar, it had to be all done by hand.
I don't know if they had to split the logs,
but they're smaller and it must have taken a lot of work.
I'm sure it took him a lot of work.
I took woodworking in school
and I couldn't do that. [laughs]
[celebratory marching band music]
- Narrator: In 1933, the disaster of prohibition
ended for brewers and taverns
setting off celebrations across the state
as beer and bars came back.
[din of background conversations]
It had been a long haul for brewers large and small,
which did what they could to survive.
- Schlitz made candy bars, Pabst made malted milk.
- Narrator: One of 73 brewers to survive prohibition
the Potosi Brewery first opened in 1852.
After prohibition, it grew to serve a regional area
before closing its doors in 1972.
- Herb Page: Potosi was one of many little breweries in Wisconsin
that fought a good battle for a long time
and then finally went by the wayside.
- Narrator: The Potosi Foundation
recently brought the building back to life.
Housing a brew pub and restaurant,
the old Potosi Brewery houses the National Brewery Museum,
telling the story of Wisconsin brewing
through artifacts of the industry.
- Larry Bowden: The idea of the museum
is that our members can exhibit their collections.
- Page: I was intrigued, you know, with the artwork
on the labels and so forth
and with the history of breweries.
So I started collecting beer bottles.
- Some of them started collecting cans, some of them with bottles.
- Page: But gradually, other people recognized
the artistic aspect of these things
and they started collecting.
Before you know it, it had become a nation-wide obsession.
We have a cross section of things
from the larger breweries in Milwaukee
to very obscure, little breweries
in the small towns.
It was a competitive business
and they had to advertise.
A lot of this stuff
was before radio and television.
Some of it had very great artistic merit.
This is, of course, one of the things
that attracted the collectors to these items
because they're colorful, they have local color.
they have historical background and impact.
- Bowden: Up above here, there are two wooden cases
from Semrad and Pusch Brewery, in Highland, Wisconsin,
which is a little town north of Platteville.
The brewery went out of business in 1942.
The case is an illustration of some of the breweriana
that Semrad and Pusch put out during the years.
A 1904 calendar that shows the bottling house
and it shows the brewery.
An old promo piece from there is a nice reverse-on-glass piece
illustrating one of their prime brands
which was called "Old Regulator."
- Page: Then we have some items
such as John Graf's Milwaukee Weiss Beer, for instance.
Weiss beer was the pre-soft drink beverage
for women and children.
- Bowden: There's a Million's porcelain sign
that would've hung outside a tavern, double-sided.
You can see Marshfield Brewery,
which of course has been closed for years.
You'll see there's corner signs that hung outside of a tavern.
- Page: Well, for us that manage the operation
it's a real pleasure to do that, because when we're here,
it's an environment, you know, among the things that we love.
We hope that many other people can enjoy the same experience.
- Narrator: When bars came back after prohibition
they operated under a stricter set of rules
that banned using the word "saloon" in a bar's name.
- Draeger: There's a strong idea that they didn't want to go back
to the lawless saloons of the past.
- Narrator: A new addition, bar stools,
gave a seat to a new clientele: women,
who first began frequenting the prohibition bars
called speakeasies.
- Draeger: When the speakeasies come about, all bets are off.
Everything is changed
because there are no longer any rules whatsoever
So women could come into the speakeasies
and commune with the men in a way
that they never could in the saloons of the past.
It attracts young women, flappers
who cast off those Victorian trappings of their parents.
There's a cocktail culture
that develops in the speakeasies
because they need something to mask the taste
of that rotten bathtub gin.
[coughs and sputters]
So sweet cocktails become of vogue
and women start drinking cocktails.
- Narrator: Many of the new bars sported a different look
from the old saloons of the past.
- Draeger: After prohibition, it's a blank slate.
The designers of taverns are free to do whatever they want.
They take their inspiration from movie sets of the period.
the Busby Berkeley musicals
with all of these dancers.
They can't have anything that's very intricate
so they have these very simple
bold, sweeping patterns that looked good on film
but it also made for kind of striking sets
inside of the taverns.
They start introducing curves into the design
lots of geometric shapes, circles and long bands of lines.
- Narrator: A rare survivor of the era, the Casino Bar in La Crosse
reflects some of the design changes in bars.
- Draeger: The curving booths that we have in here
the very streamlined corners on the bar
and the back bar.
The strong chevron zigzag pattern
on the canopy over the top of the bar
the real bold contrast of materials and colors.
They're slick, and clean, and smooth
and bold.
They don't have any of that very opulent ornament
that saloon architecture had.
The Casino is a classic cocktail bar.
It's meant to appeal
to kind of that smart set of people.
Serving more upscale liquor.
It's not just a shot and a beer.
They're serving mixed drinks and cocktails.
They have to accommodate a couple's trade
that never existed before.
So offering booths where couples
could get together with other couples
and be able to talk over the top of a table
was an innovation to try to capture that couple's trade.
The Casino had a lot of fun with the idea
of Jazz Age naughtiness
being kind of speakeasy-like in the legal era of liquor.
The Casino also reflects
this irreverence in the marketing of the Casino, too.
Their tag line for the tavern has been
since it opened in '33
"Lousy Service."
So they're setting this expectation
that when you come here
it's not a typical kind of upscale bar.
It's a little naughty, odd, and a little eccentric.
[glamorous jazz]
- Narrator: Bryant's, Milwaukee's first cocktail lounge
shows little sign of the old neighborhood bar
it used to be
before remodeling by owner Bryant Sharp.
- Dye: There was an old stove and it was very tavern-like.
- Shirley Lafferty: He got tired of the neighborhood crowd
coming in and ordering a beer
and sitting there telling their problems, as the story goes.
So, he closed the place up and completely remodeled it
into a cocktail lounge
and played nothing but classical music.
- Dye: It was a pretty drastic change for the times.
- Lafferty: He would ask what you wanted,
and then he would tell you,
"You don't want a beer, you don't want a shot.
You want one of our drinks."
That's how the cocktail thing began.
The Pink Squirrel, the Banshee, and the Bluetail Fly
was originated by him, which are all ice cream drinks.
- Dye: The most famous drink he invented was the Pink Squirrel.
The Pink Squirrel!
Oh, my gosh! That's my dinner!
- Narrator: When Bryant Sharp passed away
Pat Malmberg carried on the vision, still used today
of offering hundreds of cocktails.
I can just make you something...
- Narrator: With no menu, in a dimly lit atmosphere.
- Lafferty: A lot of people would come in and make the remark,
"When are you going to pay your electric bill?"
or "Turn up the lights," and this is it.
- We have over 400 unique drinks that were invented
either by Bryant or Pat, or one of the bartenders.
- Lafferty: Jimmy was here over 36 years, Dennis was here 36 years.
It was almost like a family.
I just never left.
I just stayed.
- Dye: This is a list of about 250 of our recipes.
The way we get people to figure out what they really want
is to ask them a series of questions.
- Do you want something sweet, sour, bitter?
- Narrator: In 1971, a devastating fire swept through
and destroyed much of the bar.
- Lafferty: Oh, the downstairs was completely gutted.
The upstairs was smoke damaged.
Within three months, Pat had the whole place re-opened.
- Dye: The cash registers are plated in gold
the McIntosh is plated in gold.
It's a one piece, three-tiered bar
which you don't see anywhere
It was custom built for the place.
The vibe and the wallpaper and the sound system, it's amazing.
He did it all in three months, which was really incredible.
[laughter]
It's a bar; it's definitely a bar.
It's a drinking establishment, but it's also almost a museum.
There's so much history and so much tradition here.
It's just wonderful.
Sometimes I feel like a curator more than a bar owner. [laughs]
Good bars have good days.
- Narrator: As Wisconsin suburbanized after World War II,
the big brewers stepped up their marketing efforts
sponsoring sports teams
and getting into the new television market
to build national brands.
The big brewers also began to move away from taverns
by aiming at the home market,
and selling beer in bottles and disposable cans.
- Draeger: Once there were beer cans
it meant that beer became a commodity that began to be sold
in grocery stores and in other places.
Taverns started losing a lot of that off-site sales
that was such a big part of their market.
The brewers also promoted sales
of bottles and cans because they realized
that getting people to drink at home
would be part of the way to safeguard the breweries
from prohibition happening again.
Bring it into the household
where family morals can help moderate
some of these ill effects of drinking
that were un-moderated within the taverns.
You see a lot of imagery of the housewife
serving her husband a glass of beer
of the husband and wife both sitting down together
having a beer in the living room.
- Narrator: In the suburbs, zoning laws
meant that bars were no longer located in neighborhoods
but instead along a commercial strips,
where they competed for attention.
- Draeger: As people become more mobile
how do you attract somebody to your tavern?
Well, try to come up with something novel.
Try to come up with something
that the other tavern doesn't have.
Lots of them hooked onto dramatic
or popular themes of the time
and found ways to set themselves apart.
- Narrator: In Rochester, outside Waterford
the DMZ Bunker serves as a VFW post
that acquired decommissioned military equipment
through a government program.
- Jeffrey Hartzheim: That's an M60A3 tank.
It has a 105-mm barrel on it.
It weighs about 106,000 pounds.
It was heavily used in Vietnam, and after.
I've always wanted to do something with a military motif.
I've kind of been military most of my life.
This is an A-7 Corsair.
It flew about 90,000 missions
jets of that style, in Vietnam.
I talked to a couple friends, an Army and a Marine veteran
and we decided, yeah, we're going to do this.
This is a T-33 Trainer, they called it.
It's a two seater.
That's how they trained the pilots to fly.
This was our first jet used in Korea.
The Cobra attack helicopter is Vietnam era.
When somebody passes away, their son or daughter-in-law,
or somebody, will bring in--
"My grandpa had this in the basement."
They'll bring it in and we hang up what we can, you know.
It's a mix right now.
There's a lot of World War II, a lot of Vietnam,
some Korean.
We're just starting to get into Iraq.
A lot of nice things.
We just hang up everything we get our hands on.
There's no method to it.
If we have room, we put it there.
- Woman: Welcome to International Exports.
If you know the password, quietly whisper it in my ear.
- If you don't have the password, we can't let you in.
- Incorrect verb.
So do you think you know? I'll give you a try.
- You can't get in, but we never turn away anybody.[laughs]
- I just need you to pass
an undercover mission to gain entry.
[all clucking and laughing]
- Welcome back!
- Woman: When you're on the run, you really need a safe house.
- Man: Control told us to set this one up in Milwaukee.
'Cuz spies had to have a place to stop for a little R&R.
- That's how it all started.
It's been going since 1966.
- How fun is this?
- Agent 007: This is kind of a museum now.
We have pictures here from the old Soviet Union.
In fact, we have an oil painting
of the godfather of the KGB, Felix Dzerzhinsky.
We have a whole CIA collection from the Cold War.
We have a cell door from the Stasi Interrogation Prison
in East Berlin.
- Agent, I have pulled you aside
because we have reason to believe you are a double agent after all.
- Agent 007: As long as there's two countries,
there will always be espionage.
- Eliza: So, when you come into the Safe House,
you have diplomatic immunity.
So everybody can, you know, relax,
have some wonderful food, and enjoy themselves.
What's whispered at the Safe House, stays at the Safe House.
- By the way, you can't show this to anybody!
- Yeah, don't show this to anyone!
- It's a secret place, you know.
Nobody's supposed to know it's here.
- Right.
- Narrator: Another bar with no sign outside,
The Joynt, in Eau Claire enters its fifth decade
without an obvious theme.
But the walls tell the story of a time
when The Joynt served as a small and unlikely venue
for legends of jazz, blues, and folk music.
- I was sitting over in this other corner,
which we now call the Blue Room, although it's not blue anymore,
but there used to be a Point beer sign in here that was blue.
So anyway, we were over there
and Ahmad Jamal came up on my jukebox
and I said, "Let's get this guy."
So, Ahmad Jamal came here. It was terrific.
I didn't have any PA, or anything.
We rented a piano.
Right in the middle of it, it occurred to me--
I gave the tickets away.
It was a really nice thing to do.
I thought, if we could just do this.
We'd sell, maybe six, eight or ten times a year at the most
call them "The Joynt Break Even Concerts."
That was a hell of an idea, only we never broke even, never!
So for whatever, from '74 to '91
I spent about every dime this place took in on music.
Over that course of time, we had everybody here.
Jazz, and Blues, and Folk music.
Dizzy Gillespie played here. Charles Mingus played here.
Woody Herman's band played here, and Stan Kenton.
McCoy Tyner, Bill Dixon, and Herb Ellis.
It was like church in here, no noise.
We didn't even ring the cash registers out.
Dave Van Ronk, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee were here.
Ramblin' Jack Elliot was here
Gary Burton was here with Pat Metheny.
And the Blues guys, Son Seals and John Lee Hooker.
And then, the phone company calls, "Hey, your phone's off the hook."
I said, "Lady, please, it's going to be off the hook
for about another hour and a half."
"Well, you know, if you want a phone,
there's no point in taking it off the hook."
And I got Charlie Bird
and a great guitarist or somebody playing here
I say, "Lady, come on."
That's Phil Woods, and that's Gerry Mulligan.
There's no money in doing music
especially if you do something that's really good.
People said, "Well, why don't you get this guy?"
I said, "I don't like that guy."
I said, "Well, I don't think he's any good."
"Well, you might make some money."
I said, "Oh, great, I know what I'll do
I'll start having some shows that I don't like the players."
That doesn't make any sense!
When the Mercer Ellington Orchestra was here
they played here and then played Lambeau Field the next night.
Here's Eddy Harris, right here.
There's Jack Elliot.
That's Mimi Fariņa.
There's Dizzy.
Bill Evans was here two nights.
There's Mingus, right there.
And Odetta, Freddie Hubbard, Ernie Watts,
Bobby Hutcherson, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Jack McDuff,
Dave Holland, and Sam Rivers, and I could go on and on.
I think we did a 167 shows, or something.
I spent all the money this place made.
The Joynt didn't have a penny in the bank.
I thought, there are no old folks homes for club owners.
Let's put some money in the bank.
So I stopped in '94.
It was a very expensive hobby, and worth every penny of it.
And it's sad, but it's okay.
- Narrator: Since prohibition, the brewing industry consolidated
with the biggest breweries, the most successful
able to brew on a large scale
and create memorable ad campaigns.
- It tastes great.
- [yelling in foreign language] Oy!
- All right. It's less filling.
- About 70 brewers survive prohibition.
By the late 1950s,
there are about 37 Wisconsin brewers left.
By 1975, there are eight of them.
- Narrator: Four were giants of the industry.
Pabst, Miller, Schlitz and Heileman
all ranked in the top ten nationally.
But the fortunes of some of the smaller breweries
were about to change.
In Chicago, syndicated columnist Mike Royko,
who harshly criticized the national beers,
arranged for a blind taste test.
In a surprising result
the top three American beers
Point Special, Walter's Old Timer's, and Huber Premium
came from Wisconsin's smallest brewers.
- Speltz: Royko's article provided a shot in the arm
and a lot of free publicity
for small Wisconsin breweries just when they needed it.
- Narrator: In 1978, Newsweek magazine
declared Leinenkugel's the best local beer in America.
That same year, President Jimmy Carter
signed a bill that loosened restrictions on the home brewing
unleashing a wave of innovation.
- Draeger: People start experimenting in their basements
their garages, and their kitchens
with all sorts of different ingredients and different mixes.
They'd go back to the old recipes of the past.
- Narrator: When Deb Carey started New Glarus Brewing
with her husband Dan, she became the first woman in the US
to found a brewery.
- Deb Carey: We were really tired of the corporate life
and just desperate to come back to my home state,
and raise our very young daughters.
- Dan Carey: Deb took a map of Wisconsin, and with a compass,
drew a 30 mile radius around Madison.
So I rented a car and I drove and around,
which is kind of crazy,
and stumbled upon New Glarus.
There was a warehouse here that was empty.
- Deb: The guy who owned the abandoned warehouse
came on as our first investor
and traded me stock for occupation of the building.
- Narrator: One of the pioneers
of what are called "craft breweries"
New Glarus created dozens of varieties over the years.
Most popular is Spotted Cow
brewed from a recipe steeped in Wisconsin history.
- Dan Carey: We're big fans of Old World Wisconsin.
We love to go out and walk around.
It's basically a working museum, an outdoor museum.
We went out to the German Village
and there was a crock covered with cheesecloth
and beer fermenting.
I thought, I wonder what that beer would've been like.
I imagined how the beer would be made.
It would be made with local barley.
It would be made with imported hops.
It would be made with an ale yeast.
It would be made with local corn.
And it would be unfiltered.
That's how we came up with the design for the beer.
- Narrator: Craft beers created a new market niche for small brewers
and scores of breweries and brew pubs
once again dot the state
producing hundreds of distinctive beers.
While many small brewers have flourished
Wisconsin taverns haven't fared as well.
From World War II to the '70s
the number of bars went down by half
and have continued a steady decline since then.
- Draeger: Mom and Pop owned bars have really declined.
There's a lot of turnover
and a lot of change in taverns.
Part of that is attributable to changes in attitudes
related to drinking and driving.
It's more expensive to have a license to open a tavern today.
As a result of that, it's not an easy startup business.
- Narrator: But the number of Wisconsin bars
remains one of the highest in the country
and taverns continue to play a role in community life.
- Draeger: It's much more part of the social fabric
than it is in other places.
Couples, children, extended families
all come to taverns.
And it's always been that way.
It's that everybody's living room kind of function
that the tavern has
that really is why taverns are still around today.
Because they serve the same purpose
that they did a 100 years ago, or even a 150 years ago.
People in other states drink in their homes.
They drink in other gathering places.
In Wisconsin, people get together in taverns.
That's why Wisconsin is a tavern state.
- Bottoms Up, Wisconsin's Historic Bars and Breweries
was funded by the Wisconsin History Fund
supported in part
by the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
To purchase a DVD of Bottoms Up,
Wisconsin's Historic Bars and Breweries
call 1-800-422-9707
or visit the Wisconsin Public Television online store
at the address on the screen.