A Prequel to Mabel Murphy’s

Mabel Murphy's was leveled by fire in the early morning hours of May 7, 2019. In the days that followed, there was an abundance of reporting on the destruction of this popular Oshkosh tavern. A couple of things in those reports struck me.

First was the sense of attachment people had to Mabel’s. It was a theme running through several of the stories about the fire. Oddly, that made me feel somewhat better about it all. I like that we live in a city where people still think taverns are important.

What also stood out were the comments on the historical relevance of Mabel’s. One of the people interviewed by Fox 11 News said, “I don’t know the actual age or anything, but it’s been here as long as I have and I grew up here. It is part of our history here in Oshkosh."

That summed it up nicely. Without knowing the specifics, people here seemed to have an intuitive sense that Mabel’s represented an important part of Oshkosh’s cultural history. And that intuition is dead right.

Mabel Murphy's

City of Oshkosh property records show that the building that housed Mabel Murphy's was built in 1856. But when it comes to construction dates, those records are notoriously inaccurate and I doubt that this one is correct. The 1856 date doesn’t correlate with what appears in Oshkosh directories or with maps of the city issued in the ensuing years.

Detail of an 1858 Oshkosh map. The yellow dot is at the northwest corner of Main and Irving.

And then there’s Albert Ruger's drawing from 1867. Ruger's sketch of Oshkosh includes the intersection of Main and Irving streets. The lot where Mabel's stood is shown as vacant.

Detail of Ruger’s 1867 drawing. The red dot is at the northwest corner of Main and Irving.

What is certain is that from 1856 to 1884, the property at the northwest corner of Main and Irving passed through the hands of more than a dozen owners. None of them either worked or lived at that location. The most noteworthy of those people was Byrd Parker.

Parker was a black man, originally from North Carolina, who came to Oshkosh in 1855 from Chicago. While living here, he became regionally famous for his fiery lectures on civil rights. Parker toured throughout the Wisconsin frontier arguing for black suffrage. Back home in Oshkosh, he led a quieter life.

Parker purchased the Mabel's property on August 9, 1856. For Parker, it appears to have been an investment property. At the time, he was running the Oshkosh City Lunch, an "Eating Saloon" on Main Street near High Ave.

Byrd Parker's Oshkosh City Lunch; Oshkosh Courier February 20, 1856.

Parker sold the Mabel's property in 1859 for a mere $350 (about $11,000 in today's money), which may further support the argument that the parcel had yet to be built upon.

What came to be Mabel's begins coming into focus in 1884. The property had been sold once again, this time to an Oshkosh butcher named Edward Mittelstaedt. It's around this time that the building we all knew as Mabel's was constructed. An 1885 insurance map presents a recognizable outline of the structure at what was then 377 Main Street.

1885 Fire Insurance Map with the new building at 377 Main.

The first business listing there was for a grocery store and broom shop run by a man named Carlos Woodward. That didn't last. Within a couple of years, the Mabel's space was vacant again. And then came Albert Thom and his sons.

Albert Thom

Albert Thom was born in Bernsdorf, Germany in 1839. In 1868, he and his wife, Johanna, and their five-year-old son Reinhold moved to America. They landed in New York and went to straight to Oshkosh, eventually settling in at a home that still stands at 928 Waugoo.

928 Waugoo Avenue.

Albert Thom spent most of the next 20 years working in the sash and door plant at Gould Manufacturing. He quit that in 1887 to go into business with his sons Reinhold and Emil. The Thom's opened a grocery store and saloon at the southwest corner of Main and Irving in a building that has changed much over the years and now houses Calhoun Beach Club. In 1880s Oshkosh, the tandem of saloon and grocery was a common arrangement. It's one that the Thom family would work until the turn of the century.

1889 Oshkosh City Directory.

The Thoms had hardly gotten started before they were eyeing up the newer place across the street. On March 19, 1890, Reinhold and Emil Thom purchased the building that would later become Mabel Murphy's. They paid $3,200 for it, or about $91,100 in today's money, and nearly all of that was borrowed. Their new location mirrored the old one.

The shingle they put above the front door read A. Thom and Son. The Main Street facing portion of the building was where the grocery resided. Albert took care of that. Meanwhile, 27-year-old Reinhold and 21-year-old Emil were in back slinging lager beer. You could visit them there by slipping in the back entrance.

The Thom's Grocery and Saloon, circa 1891. The hanging, corner sign reads Lager Beer.

The saloon did a bustling business. Emil had to run it on his own for much of 1898 and 1899 while Reinhold was away panning for gold in the Klondike. But that didn't pan out and after Reinhold returned they went full in on the saloon. By 1900, father Albert and the grocery business were retired.

Reinhold and Emil were now proprietors of what they advertised as "A first-class bar of wines, liquors and cigars." The cigars were in easy reach. Upstairs was a factory churning them out. It was run by John Wichmann, a veteran Oshkosh cigar maker. Wichmann had started rolling tobacco up there in 1895 and by the turn of the century his 5-cent cigars were being sold in saloons all over Oshkosh. His specialty was something called the "Long Wick."

A 1901 ad for Wichmann’s “Long Wick” Cigar.

Beer, on the other hand, was turning into something of a problem. The Thoms had hooked up early on with the Oshkosh Brewing Company. By 1900, Oshkosh's largest brewery had come to so dominate beer sales in the city that it was able to set the price on beer sold into saloons. That wasn't sitting well with saloon keepers. The brewery kept raising the price on beer forcing saloon keepers to eat the additional cost. Oshkosh's unyielding tradition of nickel beer left them little recourse.

A saloon token good for a nickel beer at Reinhold Thom’s saloon.

The Thoms revolted. In 1902, Emil sold his stake in the saloon to Reinhold and went to work for Schlitz Brewing. He became the brewery's Oshkosh bottler and distribution agent. Reinhold also signed on with Schlitz. He turned the saloon into a Schlitz tied house. That meant that if you went to the Thom stand and ordered a beer you were going get Schlitz. That was all they had. And if you ordered a bottle of beer you would have been handed this...

The association with Schlitz proved no more satisfactory than the one they’d had with the Oshkosh Brewing Company. Emil quit Schlitz around 1905. Reinhold was soon moving in the same direction while trying to cook up a defense against the big-brewery influence that vexed saloon men like himself.

Reinhold helped to assemble a group of Oshkosh saloon keepers looking to launch a jointly-owned brewery. One that would treat its clients more equitably. Reinhold was named treasurer and appointed to the board of directors of the firm. Initially, they called it Peoples Independent Brewing. They later shortened that to Peoples Brewing. It took a few years to come to fruition, but in 1913 they began making beer on South Main Street. Thom’s saloon was among the first in Oshkosh to put Peoples beer on tap.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern June 21, 1913.

It was a heady time for Reinhold Thom. At the start of 1914, he was 50 years old and running one of the more successful bars in Oshkosh. At the same time, he was helping to direct a brewery that was growing rapidly and breaking the stranglehold the Oshkosh Brewing Company had put on the city's saloonkeepers.

The darker building is Reinhold Thom's saloon, circa 1914.
The sign on the side of the building advertises James E. Pepper whiskey.

But there was a shadow being cast over Thom's success. As the decade wore on, the unthinkable became the inevitable. When national Prohibition went into effect in 1920 it put an end to Reinhold Thom's 30-year career as a barman in Oshkosh. He was 57 years old and out of a job. He was also an outlier. Most Oshkosh saloonkeepers immediately turned their bars into speakeasies when Prohibition came. Reinhold Thom didn't.

The old, lager beer saloon was taken out. Reinhold's younger brother Albert moved in. What he put there had nothing to do with what had been there. The name Albert gave the new business seemed concocted to emphasize that point. It was called The Modern Sanitary Bakery.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, February 17, 1920.

It wasn't all white aprons and cakes. Upstairs, they were still rolling cigars. But that ended, too, at the end of the 1920s. The bakery had more staying power. It continued on under a series of different shop keepers until 1939. That's the year that Eddie Kollross rolled in.

Edward L. Kollross had come up the hard way on the south side of Oshkosh. Born in 1898 to disabled, immigrant parents he had gone to work early to help support the family. By the time he was 17, he was running a taxi service with his older brother William. He'd served a brief stint in the Army, but by 1920 he was back in Oshkosh and out of work. So, he went into bootlegging.

Through much of the 1920s, Kollross ran a southside soft drink parlor owned by his sister Mary. The soda was just a front. The place was in actuality a speakeasy with a wildcat brewery in the barn behind it. Kollross didn't make it through the dry decade unblemished. He was arrested for selling alcohol in 1927 and again in 1928. But neither fines nor jail time persuaded him to abandon the "soft drinks" business. He kept right on at it.

After Prohibition ended, Kollross opened a roadhouse bar just west of Oshkosh where he was arrested a couple more times on charges of running a gambling house. By the end of the 1930s, he seems to have decided to clean up his act. He split from his wife and opened Eddie's Tavern in the former bakery at Main and Irving.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; June 29, 1940.

Reinhold Thom still owned the building, but there was nothing left of the saloon he'd once had there. Kollross turned it into a bar and restaurant serving everything from fried chicken to frog legs. The restaurant side would come to be emphasized. By the time Kollross purchased the building in March 1946, Eddie's was known more for its food than its drinks. A month after he had bought it, Kollross sold the building to Irving Wussow, a longtime tavern owner in the area. Wussow continued the trend and turned it into a steak house.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; December 22, 1961.

Beginning in 1946, what is now 701 N. Main Street would remain primarily a restaurant for almost 30 years. Wussow's Steak House gave way, briefly, in 1966 to Red's Korner Lounge, which became the Blue Lantern and then Red Lantern pizza restaurants.

In 1974 it became Mabel Murphy's. Today, 45 years later, all that's left is a charred pit surrounded by chain-link fencing. It's an ugly scar where a place full of life once stood. But this won't stay, either.

Oshkoshers have a long history of being inspired by fire to rebuild something better in place of what was lost. Let's hope that can happen with Mabel's. If not, there's still the history and memories of this place. A fire can't take that.