Oshkosh’s Oldest Taverns

Oshkosh is home to many historic taverns. There are approximately 30 active bars in this city that trace their roots back to saloons or speakeasies that were established more than a century ago. These taverns represent one of the most durable aspects of our culture.

Early 1900s inside the former Witzke’s tavern, which traced its lineage back to 1873. Witzke’s closed in 2019.

Of the existing taverns, three stand out for their longevity: Acee Deucee, Calhoun Beach Club, and Jerry’s Bar. We’ll start with CBC…

Calhoun Beach Club, 695 N. Main St.
If location is the lone criteria, then Calhoun Beach Club is the oldest tavern in Oshkosh. The first saloon at the southwest corner of Main and Irving was established in 1868. There’s been some form of tavern at this spot ever since. It began with a German immigrant named Michael Laubach.

Calhoun Beach Club at the southwest corner of Main and Irving.

Laubach purchased the property on September 10, 1868. His saloon/grocery appears to have opened there several months before he acquired the real estate. Laubach died in 1892. But the tavern remained in operation and under family ownership until 1905, when it was sold to Clara Hilton. She was the daughter of Charles Rahr Jr. of the Rahr Brewing Company. Rahr Brewing bought the saloon in 1908.

The saloon became a speakeasy at the start of Prohibition and was the site of several raids by federal agents. The speakeasy became a legal tavern again when Prohibition ended. Here is where it gets complicated.

The above photo shows the original building where Michael Laubach ran his saloon. This picture was taken in either late 1938 or early 1939. Rahr Brewing had just been granted a permit to tear the building down and replace it. The building that Calhoun Beach Club now occupies is the building that was constructed in 1939.

July 17, 1939.

Can this qualify as Oshkosh's oldest tavern if the original building has been replaced by one built in 1939? You tell me.

Acee Deucee, 1329 Oregon St.
The situation here is more straightforward. On August 10, 1874, a German immigrant named Anton Koplitz purchased the lot at the northeast corner of 14th and Oregon. In 1876, he began building what is now the home of Acee Deucee. Construction was completed in June 1876. A date stone remains visible at the top of the structure that bears the Koplitz name and the 1876 date.

Acee Deucee at 1329 Oregon St.

Anton Koplitz lived in the Town of Black Wolf, where he tended a farm. His son Edward was a brewer at Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery on Doty Street. Ed was said to be the largest man in Oshkosh, weighing about 400 pounds. Which made it tough to work in the cramped quarters of Horn and Schwalm’s rustic brewery.

So, in 1876, Ed Koplitz quit the brewery and applied for a saloon liquor license. He then took out an ad in the Wisconsin Telegraph, a German-language newspaper published in Oshkosh. The ad was an announcement for the grand opening of his new saloon at the corner of 14th and Oregon on July 1, 1876. That means that this bar will mark its 150th year in 2026.

Wisconsin Telegraph, June 30, 1876.

Sadly, Ed Koplitz died young. He was just 45. The saloon was taken over by his brothers Theodore and Frank. The photo below is from the early 1900s when “T & F Koplitz” were there. The Koplitz family remained involved with this bar well into the 1930s.

Jerry's Bar, 1210 Ceape Ave.
Getting to the origin date of Jerry’s Bar took some work. The details will be spelled out below, but I’ll cut to the chase for those who’d rather not suffer through the grind of all that: what is now Jerry’s Bar was launched in 1878 by two German immigrants. Their names were Wilhelm “William” Noe and Hermann “Onkle” Heinze. Onkle Heinze was the more prominent of the two in terms of running the bar.

Before I get into the research that led me to those names and that date, I want to dispel a persistent myth about the age of this bar. Here’s a quote from a book published in 2012 that cuts to the heart of it.

“The building it is estimated has been “standing” since about 1858. The building in its earliest days also housed an Oshkosh saloon.”
  – Oshkosh, Preserving the Past; Ron La Point, Dog Ear Publishing, 2012.

Over the past 50 years, the 1850s date has appeared in several stories written about Jerry's. If that date was correct, Jerry’s would easily be the oldest tavern in Oshkosh. There is, however, no evidence to support the 1850s date. There are many sources, though, that contradict it.

For example, none of the Oshkosh City Directories published before 1879 place a saloon of any kind near the east end of Ceape. In fact, the land where Jerry’s Bar stands was vacant during those early years. The drawing below is by Albert Ruger published in 1867. It presents an accurate depiction of the area at that time. The arrow points to where Jerry’s would later be built.

I’m not sure where the 1850s date came from. But I suspect it began with an offhand remark made to a Daily Northwestern reporter more than 60 years ago. Gustave “Jerry” Wesenberg was the proprietor of Jerry’s at that time. In an article published on June 29, 1963, Wesenberg is quoted saying that his bar is “all of 100 years old, it was here when I was going to school.”

Jerry Wesenberg was born on November 2, 1882. And he was absolutely correct that the bar was there when he was a kid. His 1963 quip that it was “all of 100 years old” was probably just his way of saying that the place had a lengthy history that preceded his ownership, which began in 1911.

Jerry Wesenberg in front of his bar in the early 1960s.

Here begins the grind. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to refer to this tavern simply as Jerry’s from this point forward. I’m hoping that will be less intrusive than continually repeating “the tavern that is now Jerry’s.” So I’m going to call it Jerry’s even though that name came to it years after the period we’re about to dive deep into.

To get to the genesis of Jerry’s you have to begin with Hermann Heinze. I wrote about his background in a post I published in October. But all we need to know for now is that Heinze had been working as saloon keeper on Main Street for about 10 years before he launched Jerry’s Bar.

The 1876 City Directory is the last that shows Heinze living and working on Main Street. The next city directory was not compiled until the spring of 1879. It was issued in July of 1879. This one shows Heinze on Ceape Avenue as the proprietor of Jerry’s Bar. That narrows the origin date of Jerry’s to a three-year time frame.

There are two main sources that make closing the gap possible. Most important are the real estate records held at the Winnebago County Register of Deeds office. Next are the historical tax and property assessment ledgers preserved by the Area Research Center at UWO’s Polk Library.

2025 City of Oshkosh Assessors Map for the lot where Jerry’s Bar resides.

Jerry’s Bar is located on a part of Lot 100 in the Replat of Block 29. That land was purchased by Ludwig “Louis” Genter in 1871. Genter was a carpenter living on Washington Avenue and owned several other empty lots near Jerry’s. He began developing those parcels in the mid-1870s.

On February 5, 1877, Genter took out a mortgage on the Jerry’s lot. He may have done this to finance construction on the property. Something was clearly in the works. On November 20, 1877, Genter signed a lease agreement with William Noe, who was working with Hermann Heinze.

All signs point to Noe and Heinze having a financial relationship, but not a typical business partnership. Newspaper stories about this saloon always identify Heinze as the sole proprietor, while Noe’s name is never mentioned. The alliance with Noe may have been necessary for Heinze due to his abysmal credit rating. Heinze was given the lowest possible credit score in an 1878 edition of the Commercial Agency Register, published by McKillop & Sprague.

In any case, the signed lease went into effect on July 1, 1878, and lasted five years. William Noe didn’t last that long. On January 12, 1880, he assigned the lease to Hermann Heinze. There is absolutely no doubt that this lease was for the Jerry’s Bar property. Both the original lease and the lease assignment reference the legal description for the property. It identifies exactly the same property where Jerry’s stands today.

The fact that the lease began nine months after it was signed suggests that the tavern had not yet been built. The 1877 assessment of the property also points to this. The assessed value of the property did not increase that year.

That changed in 1878 when the assessed value of the Jerry’s property jumped 67 percent. The increase was consistent with reassessments after new constructions on nearby lots, which ranged from 50 to 75 percent. The assessed value of the Jerry’s property rose by another 25 percent in 1879. This could have been caused by the addition of the bowling alley that was once attached to the east side of Jerry’s.

All of this indicates that Jerry’s was up and running by July 1, 1878. It may, however, have opened a little earlier. On April 25, 1878, Heinze took out a new saloon license. If he had been waiting for July 1 to open the saloon, he probably would have delayed paying for that license until he needed it.

When the new city directory was released in July of 1879, Heinze was already there on Ceape settled into his saloon, with a beer garden and bowling alley to boot.

1879 Oshkosh City Directory, page 170.

Don’t be confused by the 147 Ceape address. This belongs to the old numbering system used in Oshkosh. It was such a failure that the city council ordered the renumbering of the entire city. That project began in October 1882.

November 13, 1882; Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.

The address for Jerry’s changed from 147 to 385. The new number was in line with the other address changes in that neighborhood. There are countless examples of this, here is one: Ferdinand Bunke, whose home was across the street from Jerry’s, saw his house number change from 150 to 390.

The 1882 Wisconsin State Gazetteer and Business Directory also places Heinze at Jerry’s Bar. That directory spells out his location as being on the north side of Ceape east of Frankfort. But Heinze was gone by the time that book came out. He died on December 25, 1881.

Heinze’s lease on the bar did not contain a clause terminating the contract upon his death. His wife, Anna Marie, had to fulfill the terms of the lease until the end of June 1882. Her neighbor, a painter named Jacob Wenzel, stepped in to help. Wenzel took over the saloon in 1882 and then purchased the property from Louis Genter on December 17, 1883.

Jacob Wenzel’s Saloon and Bowling Alley.

In 1881, Heinze had organized a semi-private club that met at Jerry’s called the Lake Shore Casino Club. Wenzel and company kept the Casino Club moniker alive into the next century. The bowling team sponsored by Wenzel was still being called the Casino Club team as late as 1901.

The address for Jerry’s changed again after another city-wide renumbering in 1957. Jerry’s Bar became 1210 Ceape Avenue, just as it is today.

Jerry's Bar, 1210 Ceape Ave.

There’s so much more waiting to be told about all three of these places. Each has a history worthy of a book. This is just a start.

Good Spirits at the Museum

I’ll be talking about the history of Oshkosh’s unique drinking culture this Thursday, November 6, starting at 5:30 pm at the Oshkosh Public Museum. The talk will use the museum’s Good Spirits exhibit of drinking vessels and decanters as the starting point to explore how Oshkosh’s drinking habits have evolved over the past 175 years.

The talk is free, but the regular admission fee to the museum applies: Adults $8, Seniors (62+) $6.

There is limited space for this event, so the museum is asking that people reserve their place in advance. The free ticket can be obtained HERE.

This should be a lot of fun, hope to see you there!

For more info see the Oshkosh Public Museum’s event page.

Onkle Heinze and the Lake Shore Casino Club

Jerry’s Bar, at the east end of Ceape, wasn’t always called Jerry’s. When it opened, almost 150 years ago, it was known as Heinze’s. That name originated with the German immigrant who ran the saloon. At the same time, it sometimes went by another name: The Lake Shore Casino Club. You have to get to know Hermann Heinze to see why his saloon had two names.

Jerry's Bar, 1210 Ceape Ave.

Hermann Heinze was born in 1835 in Bitterfeld, a small town about 100 miles southwest of Berlin, Germany. He was nineteen when he boarded a steamship and left for America. Heinze landed in Baltimore and later said he came straight to Oshkosh. I’ve yet to find evidence of that. His trail through the 1850s went cold long ago.

In 1861, Heinze was definitely in St. Louis. There, he joined the Union Army. He was not yet a U.S. Citizen. That didn’t spare him from the deadly early days of the Civil War in Missouri. He fought at the Battle of Boonville and at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, where more than 1,300 of his fellow soldiers were casualties.

The first confirmed trace of Hermann Heinze in Oshkosh is from late 1867. He shows up working as a carpenter living in an apartment on Main Street. About a year later, he found his true calling. Hermann Heinze became a saloon keeper.

Over the next decade, Heinze worked his way through a series of Main Street saloons. He also met his wife. He married Anna Marie Schmarje in Oshkosh in 1871. The couple lived on Main Street in apartments above whatever saloon Hermann was tending to at the time. They didn’t find their way to the east end of Ceape until about 1877. They arrived in a neighborhood that was beginning to fill in with German immigrants like themselves.

A current view of Heinze’s neighborhood on Ceape. His home was at the corner of Frankfort and Ceape. His saloon was just across the street.

Heinze on the East End
The neighborhood at the east end of Ceape was a world apart from the polyglot of Main Street. This place was like an echo of Germany. Most of the folks were immigrants who spoke little or no English. A German grocery had recently opened at the corner of Ceape and Rosalia. A German music teacher gave lessons a couple doors away. It was a neighborhood of working-class families adjusting to a new world.

An 1878 blurb from the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern lampooning the language skills of the German speaking people living on Ceape. “Notice – Anyone troubles this Wood without Special Order from ___ Will Cause themselves trouble.”

Hermann and Anna Marie fit right in. They had no children of their own, but were soon adopted by the neighborhood kids. They were called Tante and Onkel, German for Aunt and Uncle. The pet names became so fixed that later, after the trouble started, Hermann was identified in the newspaper simply as Onkel.

His new saloon wasn’t just a drinking place. Heinze opened a summer beer garden behind the barroom that grew into a popular gathering spot for families on Sundays. There was a bowling alley on the east side of the building. Heinze's Saloon became the cornerstone for the close-knit community at the east end of Ceape.

A rare advertisement for Heinze’s saloon from early 1879. The addresses reflects the old numbering system in Oshkosh.

The trouble began in 1881 after Joseph Stringham was narrowly elected mayor. Stringham came to Oshkosh from New York in 1864 and made a fortune in Southside real estate. His wealth was not a balm for his crusty disposition. Stringham seemed incapable of taking pleasure in living. His stiff-necked conservatism was entirely at odds with the culture of pleasure brought to Oshkosh by its German-speaking residents.

 Joseph Stringham

Temperance crusaders were waiting for a guy like Stringham to come along. They had voted for him. Now they wanted theirs. At the top of their list was enforcement of Wisconsin’s “Blue Laws.” On Sundays, they wanted no bowling, no dancing, no concerts, no fishing, no sports, and especially no alcohol sales or open saloons. And they wanted their agenda imposed by the police.

Blue laws targeting saloons had been thoroughly ignored in Oshkosh for years. The disregard ended three weeks after Stringham took office. On the Saturday evening of April 23, 1881, Oshkosh police toured the city notifying every saloon keeper and liquor dealer that they'd be arrested if they opened on Sunday.

Oshkosh saloons went dark. The liquor stores on Main Street were closed. There were three breweries within a few blocks of Heinze’s saloon. Each of them hung black crêpe on their door as a symbol of mourning. The city went dry for the first time that Sunday.

Blue Sundays
The sense of betrayal was too great for people like Herman Heinze to tolerate. He’d staked his life on a country that promised freedom. He’d fought in their war. He'd renounced his allegiance to his homeland and became a U.S. citizen. And now he was being tyrannized by a clamoring minority of bigots and zealots.

For the German-speaking people of Heinze’s neighborhood, it wasn’t just Sunday beer that was being denied. What was banned was at the heart of their culture. Sunday was their one day free from work. The one day when they could join together and relax with friends and neighbors at Heinze's tavern in a spirit of gemütlichkeit.

The resentment wasn’t confined to the corner of Ceape and Rosalia. It harboured wherever the working classes resided. The following Sunday, Heinze opened his saloon. So did Frank Kuebler on Merritt. And Mike Laubach at Main and Irving. All three were German immigrants. And all three were arrested.

The former site of Mike Laubach’s saloon at 695 N. Main; now Calhoun Beach Club.

It was happening on the Southside, too. But it was easier to make an example of the Eastsiders. They were closest to the police station. Proximity mattered in a city with just a few cops on duty Sunday to suppress 70 saloons. It was an impossible mission. Chief of Police Alsworth "Alley" Ford admitted as much a day after the first arrests were made. Ford said he would either enforce the law or demonstrate that it could not be enforced at all. He probably already knew how this would turn out.

The Oshkosh Police in the 1880s.

Heinze and the others paid $10 fines, but the fight wasn’t over. They didn’t know it, then, but they were setting an example for the Oshkoshers who would reject National Prohibition some 40 years later. Like those who came after, Heinze and his cohorts never stopped kicking back against the prejudicial law.

At the Rahr Brewery, Charlie Rahr claimed immunity from the Sunday Law due to his place not being a licensed saloon. He began serving beer on Sundays in an ice barn behind his brewery. Alley Ford was not amused. He had Charlie Rahr arrested and fined him for selling beer on Sunday.

Another mutiny took place on an eighty-foot steamer named the O.B. Reed. The ship would load up with beer on Saturday and then set out for Tustin on Sunday morning with the beer flowing as steady as the river. The Daily Northwestern, which advocated for the crackdown, groused about the “crowd of excursionists on board who spend Sunday indulging in their lager (beer) without the interference of the Sunday enforcement.”

A fully loaded excursion steamer similar to the O.B. Reed preparing to leave the Oshkosh dock at what is now Riverside Park near the Main Street Bridge.

Onkle Heinze took another route. He hit the city where it hurt: in the kitty. He and a Main Street saloon keeper named Charley Bly threatened to incite a saloon keeper's revolt. The annual $75 liquor license fee was coming due in May. If the saloon keepers refused to pay their licensing fees, the city would lose an essential source of revenue.

Heinze and Bly were exploiting a glitch in the law, which read “every person licensed shall keep his saloon closed on the Sabbath day.” No license, no need to close. Of course, they could all be arrested and fined for selling liquor without a license. But the endless prosecution of cases would have overwhelmed the police and courts. And that fine was no greater than the fine for selling beer on a Sunday.

Mayor Stringham was furious. He called an emergency meeting of the City Council to deal with the “rebellion among the saloon keepers.” But more than half the council opposed the Sunday Law and refused to appear. Stringham directed the chief of police to bring them in. Chaos ensued. While the turmoil swirled at city hall, Heinze hatched another plan.

The Lake Shore Casino Club
The Lake Shore Casino Club was born in May 1881, just a couple of weeks after Heinze’s arrest. It was chartered as a private club. In reality, it was open to just about everyone. Meetings took place on Sunday at Heinze’s “closed” saloon. The Daily Northwestern mocked the idea, calling Lake Shore Casino nothing more than a “Beer Club.” It was definitely that.

Heinze didn’t mind the mockery. In fact, it seemed to inspire him. The club not only subverted the restriction of the Sunday Law, it became Heinze’s platform for satirizing the sanctimonious gaggle who had started all the trouble in the first place.

In early June 1881, Heinze hired a lawyer to draw up articles of incorporation for The Lake Shore Casino. The document dripped with high-toned sarcasm. Among the exceptionally relaxed by-laws was a proclamation that the club would be composed of “Citizens of blameless character, for the promotion of social progress and sociable intercourse” and “the improvement, perfection and the embellishment of life.”

Henzie recorded the articles with the Secretary of State. And that brought it to the attention of several Wisconsin newspapers. They weren't in on the joke. Madison’s Wisconsin State Journal described it as an “extraordinary as well as mysterious document.” Back in Oshkosh, Heinze wasn’t at all shy in admitting that “there was no secret about it, that the association was formed to evade the enforcement of the Sunday law.”

It worked. The Lake Shore Casino Club enjoyed its Sunday beer without interference from the police. Others followed Heinze’s lead by forming clubs of their own. As Police Chief Ford had suspected, the Sunday Law was turning out to be practically unenforceable in Oshkosh.

Looking east on Merritt. The former saloon known as Kitz Hall is shown on the left. It was among those saloons that created beer clubs in response to the Sunday Law.

Schadenfreude
There’s a German word, Schadenfreude, that translates to "damage-joy." It refers to taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune. In the Spring of 1882, there was plenty of Schadenfreude to be had in Heinze’s neighborhood. Mayor Joseph Stringham did not win his party’s nomination to run again for mayor. It was evident he stood no chance of winning the coming election. Chief of Police Alley Ford also got the boot.

In April 1882, Oshkosh voters elected George Pratt to be their new mayor. He ran on a platform that promised an end to the enforcement of the Sunday Law. He won with 53% of the vote. In Herman Heinze’s ward, Pratt took 63% of the vote. The Daily Northwestern, unhappy with the result, blamed the saloon keepers for Pratt’s victory.

George White Pratt

Pratt’s name endures in Oshkosh. In 1960, the City Planning Commission named a road in his honor. Pratt Trail winds through Menominee Park along Lake Winnebago. It’s the most scenic roadway in the city. But at the dedication, they somehow forgot to mention why Pratt got elected in the first place.

Joseph Stringham’s name also lingers here, but in a less pleasing way. The city named a sewer after him. The Stringham storm sewer system cuts through the Southside and South Park. It has never lived up to its promise and floods that area on a semi-regular basis.

Pratt Trail in Menominee Park.

Hermann “Onkle” Heinze didn’t get his full share of the Schadenfreude. Heinze contracted typhus in December of 1881 and died on Christmas Day. A Sunday, no less. He was just 46 years old. His large funeral was followed by a lengthy tribute in the Wisconsin Telegraph, a German-language newspaper published in Oshkosh.

But since then, the good Onkle has been almost entirely forgotten. There has been plenty written about Jerry’s Bar over the years. But Heinze, the man who opened that bar, is never mentioned. His marker in Riverside Cemetery has become a symbol of the forgetting. It’s so weather-worn that the inscription is barely legible. The base is sunken and tilting, and the concrete urn that capped his headstone has fallen off.

Hermann Heinze, January 7, 1835 – December 25, 1881.

This piece is being published on a Sunday morning. Jerry’s will open in just a few hours. If you happen to stop there today, have a beer for Onkle Heinze. That might be the tribute he would have appreciated the most.

Jerry’s Bar.

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Pints of the Past

The Winnebago County Historical Society and the Society of Oshkosh Brewers are getting together for an evening of beer-based time travel. Pints of the Past will happen on Saturday, October 25 from 6-9 pm, at the historic Morgan House in Oshkosh.

Pints of the Past is an evening of beer tasting commingled with Oshkosh history. The tasting will feature 13 beers brewed by members of the Society of Oshkosh Brewers. Each beer has been made from a recipe used in Oshkosh by a brewery that operated here at some point over the past 176 years. The oldest recipe used in this pack of brews dates back to 1849.

The 13 beers will cover the entire breadth of Oshkosh’s history as a center for brewing. Included in the line-up are famous lagers of the past such as Rahr’s Elk’s Head, Peoples Holiday & Bock beers, and Chief Oshkosh Bock. Among the more recent re-creations are Chief Oshkosh Red Lager and Fox River’s Caber Tossing Scottish Ale.

The tasting path will wind through the historic Morgan House, built in 1884. Guides will be available to discuss the histories of both the beers and the home, creating a uniquely immersive experience.

The Morgan House at 234 Church Avenue.

Tickets for this event are limited and must be purchased in advance. More info and tickets are available HERE. And here's the Pints of the Past Facebook event page.

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A Pint for John R. Morgan.
There’s a tasty bit of irony to all of this. The Morgan House was built for John R. Morgan (1833-1906) and his wife, Eleanor (Hughes) Morgan. John Morgan wasn’t especially loud about his views on alcohol. But every indication of his opinion on the matter suggests he was a Prohibitionist. Morgan was associated with temperance groups, like the American Bible Society and the First Congregational Society. He was also a supporter of Rev. Edward Henry Smith, a leading light in Oshkosh’s sputtering temperance movement of the late 1800s. So if you make it to the Morgan House for Pints of the Past, maybe take a moment to raise a glass to John R. Morgan. He could have probably used a beer or two. Hope to see you there, Prost!

John R. Morgan

The Green Front Inn Speakeasy & Boxing Club

There is a building on Main Street with a stone embedded at the top that has “Joe. Laus 1894” carved into it. Joseph Laus was into candy. The “Laus Block” was home to the Laus Candy Company for 38 years.

What was once known as the Laus Block at 576 & 578 North Main Street.

But this story isn’t about candy. It’s about what happened after a part of that building was leased to a trio of scofflaws and how they used it as a clubhouse for their underworld adventures. This story begins with the death of Joe Laus.

Joesph Laus.

Laus had been making candy in Oshkosh ever since moving here from Milwaukee in 1879. He’d come to the right place. If a city is known by its appetites, then alcohol and candy would be the cravings that explain 1890s Oshkosh. With a population of 27,000, the city supported 120 saloons and 25 confectioneries. Joe Laus thrived here. Right up until he died in 1925.

His children inherited the business and the building. The candy company occupied the north half of the Laus Block, what is now 578 N. Main. The south half – 576 N. Main – was vacant. The Laus kids kept the candy shop running, but then did something Joe Laus would never have done. Two months after their father died, they leased the adjoining space to three young men who wanted to open a soft drink parlor.

Maybe the Laus kids were supremely naive. Or maybe just careless. In Oshkosh, “soft drink parlor” was synonymous with speakeasy. Having an illegal booze dive next door to the home of the Caramel Nut Sucker was no way to sell candy.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; June 23, 1926

The perpetrators of the speakeasy were Arvin “Dick” Schrader, Herb Koeck, and Roman Schwartz. Dick Schrader was the oldest of the bunch and, initially at least, the ringleader. He was a 26-year-old baker and World War I vet. Schrader’s wife was Herb Koeck’s sister..

Herb Koeck was a 19-year-old Southside fighter. He grew up in his father’s saloon at the corner of 6th and Knapp. He was better known as Battling Herb. Koeck quit school at 15 and began his boxing career about a year later.

Rounding out the trio was Herb Koeck’s unlikely best friend, an Eastsider named Roman Schwartz. He had been an honor student and noted athlete before he started running with Koeck. Schwartz was 17 when he quit school in 1923. That summer, Koeck and Schwartz tried walking to California. The trek gave them plenty of time to talk about what they'd do when they got back to Oshkosh.

The Green Front Inn
You had to get a $50 license to run a soft drink parlor in Oshkosh. Dick Schrader put in the application and moved into the apartment above 576 N. Main. And at the end of June 1925, the Green Front Inn was open for business.

There were approximately 90 speakeasies in Oshkosh that summer. That figure doesn’t include the countless beer flats and blind pigs hidden in private homes throughout the city. Competition among the illegal booze merchants was fierce. Koeck, Schrader, and Schwartz hit upon something novel to make their place stand out: boxing.

Battling Herb Koeck (left) and Young Shaw.

Battling Herb and Young Shaw were Oshkosh’s two most popular boxers. Battling Herb had a mauling style. His attack described as tiger-like. Young Shaw, whose real name was Bill Schraa, was a headhunter. A devastating puncher who could “deal out dreamland wallops with either paw.” On more than one occasion Shaw broke bones in his hands while hammering an opponent’s skull.

Koeck and Shaw trained in a make-shift gym squeezed in at the rear of the speakeasy. The fighters would go through their paces and then spar for a few rounds with different opponents. It became a popular attraction, and the Green Front Inn became the headquarters for Oshkosh boxing fans. On fight nights, they’d gather and get lit, then head out the back door and slide down the block to catch the latest boxing card at Armory B.

Armory B at the north east corner of Merritt and Jefferson; the home of boxing in Oshkosh in the 1920s.

The Green Front Inn was the talk of the town by the fall of 1925. It was one of the few Oshkosh speakeasies to receive press coverage for something other than being raided. Which led to it being raided.

On the Thursday evening of October 29, a squad of state Prohibition agents swept in and ordered everyone out… except for Dick Schrader. The mop squad found more than a dozen bottles of moonshine. Schrader was arrested and taken away to spend the night in jail. His first call was to attorney Richard “Romeo” Laus, son of the late Joe Laus of candy company fame. The Green Front Inn gang would keep Romeo busy for some time to come.

Two months later, the Green Front Inn got busted again. The dry squad returned on December 28, 1925 to find Battling Herb Koeck taking a break from his training with a bottle of moonshine. Koeck went the same route as Schrader: a night in jail as prelude to a lengthy court battle where every shred of state evidence was disputed. The flimsy denials paid off. Both cases were eventually dismissed.

The Kindermann Cabinet
The Green Front Inn had become a symbol for the freewheeling liquor trade in Oshkosh. The attention presented a significant downside. State Prohibition agents were now determined to bring the place down. Koeck, Schrader, and Schwartz had never been careful. Their only concession to the dry law was to stow their stockpile of moonshine in a coal bin just outside the back door. Inside the speakeasy, caution was thrown to the wind. Now, they had to do better than that.

The rear entrance and back yard of the former Green Front Inn. The coal bin where moonshine was hidden was just outside the lower door on the left.

What they needed was a spot inside the speakeasy where they could conceal the booze when they were pouring drinks. There was a Southside carpenter who specialized in this kind of thing. John Kindermann was known among Oshkosh bootleggers for his architectural subterfuge. His masterwork was the underground distillery in his own backyard near 7th and Sawyer. The dugout was accessed through a secret door in his basement. It was the most elaborately concealed moonshine plant in Oshkosh.

Kindermann was hired to build a hidden compartment in the Green Front Inn. He devised a plan for a tall, hidden cabinet built into a wall between the bathroom and the barroom. The cabinet would be accessible through a concealed hatch. With the hatch closed, the cabinet full of moonshine would be undetectable.

A week after Herb Koeck’s bust, Kindermann went to work building the secret chamber. He was toiling in the early morning hours, when both the candy company and speakeasy were closed. Kindermann was there when a cop walked by the Green Front Inn just after 3 a.m on the Tuesday morning of January 5, 1925.

Officer Elmer Ludwig squeezed in a motorcycle sidecar.

Elmer Ludwig was the city’s pioneering motorcycle cop. But he had to walk the beat when it was too cold for cycling. He was also one of two sharpshooters on the force. Scouting a deserted Main Street in the frozen wee hours was a step down from the sort of excitement he liked. This morning, though, was different.

Ludwig noticed a faint light coming from the back of the Green Front Inn. He saw a man moving around in the dim glow and assumed it was a burglar. Ludwig ran around the corner, down Parkway and to the back of the building. He pounded on the back door, demanding that it be opened. Through a window, he spotted Kindermann heading for the front door. Ludwig took off after him.

The cop raced around the corner and saw Kindermann running south down Main Street. Ludwig chased after him on the icy street, shouting for him to stop. Nothing doing, Kindermann kept running. Ludwig couldn’t keep up. He pulled out his pistol and fired a warning shot. Kindermann was getting away. Ludwig took aim and fired again.

The bullet went through Kindermann’s right leg, shattering his fibula. The carpenter went down hard in the parking lot of the Gibson Tire Company. Ludwig called in for help. Kindermann was scooped up and carted to the hospital. John Kindermann recovered. The Green Front Inn went on life support.

A 1926 drawing of the Gibson Tire Company at what is now 537 N. Main.

The former Gibson Tire Company, now the Gibson Social Club, and the approximate spot where Kindermann was shot.

Punching Out
The shooting and secret moonshine cabinet made for splashy news in the afternoon paper. The uproar pushed Dick Schrader over the edge. Six wild months at the Green Front Inn was all he could take. Schrader signed off and moved out.

That left Herb Koeck and Roman Schwartz. Neither had yet turned 21. That alone should have excluded them from getting the permit required to keep the place open. Except it didn’t. A few lies later, the license was transferred to 20-year-old Battling Herb Koeck. Battling Herb wasn’t quite living up to his name anymore.

A boxer training in a speakeasy may have been novel, but it wasn’t especially productive. Koeck had been struggling in the ring ever since the Green Front Inn opened. In December 1925, he was knocked out by a Milwaukee boxer named Joe Ortez. It was the last time Koeck would get a main event bout. Battling Herb Koeck was never the same.

Joe Ortez and the card for Battling Herb Koeck’s last main event, December 11, 1925.

Things were going no better at the Green Front Inn. The city council unanimously rejected Koeck’s application for license renewal in 1927. So Roman Schwartz applied for it. After some debate, the license was granted. And that didn’t sit well with state Prohibition officials.

State agents raided the Green Front Inn again in February 1928. They dug six pints of moonshine out of the coal bin and arrested Roman Schwartz. The agents must have been disappointed not to find Herb Koeck there. The raid, clearly some time in the making, smacked of retribution. That same evening, the same squad of agents arrested Koeck’s brother Martin at his home on Seventh Street, and Koeck’s father, Joe, at his speakeasy on Sixth & Knapp. Martin was making moonshine. Joe was serving it. They all went to jail.

Joe Koeck’s speakeasy at the north east corner of Sixth and Knapp, circa 1928. Now home to the 1890 Pub & Bistro.

Romeo Laus was back in court with another client from the Green Front Inn. But State officials weren’t going to let Roman Schwartz slip through the cracks like Schrader and Koeck had. After six hours of deliberation, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Schwartz was able to avoid jail time by paying $600 in fines (about $11,000 in today's money). It was the end for the original Green Front Inn.

Roman Schwartz moved to Fond du Lac and declared bankruptcy. He got a job as a janitor and was never arrested again. Schwartz remained in Fond du Lac until his death in 1956 at the age of 50.

Arvin “Dick” Schrader returned to the speakeasy business in 1929. After a bitter fight, the city council narrowly agreed to grant him a license for a former Main Street saloon that had been called the Phoenix House in its heyday. Schrader managed to avoid getting busted there. He remained in the tavern trade in Oshkosh for the rest of his working life. Dick Schrader died in 1982 at the age of 83.

The Phoenix House Hotel and Saloon which became Schrader’s speakeasy in 1929. The lot is now occupied by the Sideyard at Peabody’s

Battling Herb Koeck returned to his father’s speakeasy at 6th and Knapp and continued pouring moonshine. He got busted again in 1931. And, again, he managed to beat the charges. He remained in Oshkosh, usually working as a bartender, until 1945 when he moved to San Francisco. He died there in 1951. Herb Koeck was just 45 years old.

Battling Herb Koeck, circa 1950.

The Green Front Inn wasn’t quiet for long. In April 1928, a new speakeasy went in. The place was raided once more in 1931. When Prohibition ended in 1933, the former Green Front Inn became a legal bar named the Colonial Tavern. The last bar there was Snookum’s, which closed in 1980. The photo below is from the late 1960s, when it was Ted’s Place with a Chief Oshkosh Beer sign over the entrance.

The former speakeasy at 576 N. Main is now home to the 920 Tattoo Company. No boxing. No moonshine. But there’s a green front once again framing the stores of the old Laus Block. An unwitting nod to the roaring Green Front Inn.

The 920 Tattoo Company at 576 N. Main, formerly the Green Front Inn.

The roof-line mural on the south wall of the former Green Front Inn.

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