Lost on Wisconsin

Here's an extinct Wisconsin Street bar I'm sure a lot of Oshkoshers will remember. Over the years, it’s gone by many different names: The Fox River Bar, The Lost Dutchman, Nantuckets, The Bubbler, The Buffalo Breath Saloon, Nad’s... In 1934, it was John Mailahn's Fox River Bar and it looked like this...

Photo courtesy of Janet Wissink.

That picture has plenty to say. It starts with the men we see gathered around a table-top radio. They were a crew of workers from the Radford Company. Radford was just across Hancock Street from Mailahn's tavern. Maybe these guys were on their lunch break. Hitting the bar for a couple of beers at midday was once common among Oshkosh mill workers.

You might have noticed the cropped "BEER" sign hanging on the corner of the tavern near the entrance. Here's what it would have looked like in full and in color.

That sign was made for the Oshkosh Brewing Company by the Veribrite Sign Company of Chicago. It's a pre-Prohibition piece, circa 1917. Somehow it survived the dry years of 1920 to 1933. Many of those signs were consigned to the trash heap when Prohibition hit.

Behind the men is another sign painted on the side of the tavern. It's for Chief Oshkosh Special Old Lager. That sign would have gone up shortly after Prohibition was repealed. Chief Oshkosh Special was introduced by the Oshkosh Brewing Company during Prohibition as a non-alcoholic brew. When the dry law ended, they made it into a real beer in and re-branded it as Chief Oshkosh Special Old Lager.

It's no accident that the place was draped with Oshkosh Brewing Company advertising. The bar was owned by the brewery. Before we get into that, let's draw a bead on exactly where the tavern stood. Below is a map from 1949. The Fox River Bar is shown at 44 Wisconsin Street with a red star in front of it.

All of that is gone. Here's a recent aerial view of that same area. The building with the red and white roof is Mahoney's Restaurant & Bar. The red star is approximately where the Fox River River Bar stood.

There had been a tavern at that site since 1894 when a mill worker named Fred Martin converted his home there into a saloon and grocery store. The groceries didn't last. The saloon did.

Herman Mailahn became the saloon's proprietor in 1903. He had been born in 1875 and had spent nearly all his life in Oshkosh. He left for a few months in 1898 to go to the Philippines where he fought in the Spanish-American War. After he returned home, he took a bartending job at a saloon on High Ave. that no longer stands. A couple of years after that, he became the keeper of the bar at 44 Wisconsin Street. But that was short lived. And so was Herman Mailahn. He died in 1905 at the age of 29 from an obstruction of the bowels.

In swooped the Oshkosh Brewing Company. At that time, OBC was buying up saloon properties in Oshkosh in a bid to take control of the Oshkosh beer market. The saloon at 44 Wisconsin became part of that gambit. Just two months after Herman Mailahn died, the brewery bought the tavern and installed Herman's younger brother John as its proprietor. John Mailahn would run that saloon for the next 47 years. The Oshkosh Brewing Company was his landlord for all of that time.

Prior to 1920, Mailahn's saloon was a straight-up tied house. The only beer served there was beer made by the Oshkosh Brewing Company. That ended when Prohibition hit and the brewery had to stop making beer. Nonetheless, Mailahn managed to keep the bar open. He ran it as a soft drink parlor and lunch counter. Legitimately. Mailahn was never busted on a dry-law violation.

From the 1926 Oshkosh City Directory.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, the beer returned but the old tied-house arrangements had been made illegal. Some breweries, however, gamed the system. The Oshkosh Brewing Company did. OBC transferred its saloon properties to a real-estate holding company whose directors were the same men who ran the brewery. They continued to have influence over the tavern keepers who leased property from them. In some of these places, you'd still find nothing but the landlord's beer on tap. Beer from other breweries was made available, but only in bottles – a more expensive option.

By the time John Mailahn retired in 1952, the bar at 44 Wisconsin had been known as the Fox River Bar for nearly 20 years. And it would retain that name for the next 20 years. For most of that time, it was run by a fellow named Clarence Fischer.

Fischer was an eighth-grade dropout born in Marshfield in 1907. He had been driving a coal truck before finding his true calling in 1953 when he took over the Fox River Bar. Fischer appears to have done quite well there. He purchased the building in 1965. Its address had been changed by then to 100 Wisconsin Street following the 1957 ordinance that revamped Oshkosh's street numbering system.

A bar token with the new address of the Fox River Bar.

Fischer ran a welcoming, working-class tavern. Oshkosh author Randy Domer remembers it fondly. In his book Oshkosh: Land of Lakeflies, Bubblers and Squeaky Cheese, Domer recalls, "One of my favorite memories was listening to the tunes coming out of the old Seeburg jukebox at the Fox River Bar on Wisconsin Ave. It was where my dad liked to stop for a couple of beers on occasion and sometimes he would let me tag along."

Domer liked the place so much that he managed to save one of the old card tables that had been used there. In the photo below you can see the side pocket where a player could stow their beer while the cards skimmed across the table.

Clarence Fischer retired from the Fox River Bar in 1970. Things were changing. With the growth of the university, "the strip" of bars along Wisconsin Street went from being working class places to hangouts for younger people and college kids. For 80 years those bars had served the folks who worked in the mills and factories clustered around Wisconsin Street. That time was coming to an end.

The next photo is from 1973. The old Fox River Bar was painted red at this point and called My Brother's Place, a name borrowed from a recently closed tavern that had been on High and Osceola streets.

Photo courtesy of Dan Radig

Through the 70s, 80s, and 90s the name of the tavern and its owners seemed to change every few years. In the late 1980s it was the Buffalo Breath Saloon. It was managed by Jeff Fulbright, who would go on, in 1991, to launch the Mid-Coast Brewing Company of Oshkosh and Chief Oshkosh Red Lager. Here's a look inside the Buffalo Breath Saloon...

Photo courtesy of Jeff Fulbright.

In the end, the tavern was known as Nad's. It was run then by Nate Stiefvater, who now operates Barley & Hops Pub and Beer Garden on North Main Street. Nad's closed in 2001. The building, which was then almost 120 years old, was demolished soon after. Here's how it appeared in its final years...

Look around the next time you’re on Wisconsin Street near the bridge. That stretch used to be full of industry and saloons. All that has been cleared out. There’s not a hint left of how it once was.