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| Looking towards the northeast corner of 6th and Ohio, and the saloon John Lueck built in 1875. |
When the Sixth Ward was created in 1871, it was the least populated ward in Oshkosh. By 1891, it was the city’s second most populous and the most Germanic in composition. More than 40 percent of the residents were foreign-born. German was the ward’s native tongue.
The influx was so rapid that the original Sixth Ward had to be split in 1893. Everything below 9th Street went into the new Thirteenth Ward.
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| The new boundries of the old Sixth Ward after the 1893 division. |
The Lueck saloon passed into the hands of a new man in 1892. His name was John Sippl. He embodied the Sixth Ward. Sippl was born in Bohemia in 1850. He was 34 when he left for Oshkosh with his wife and two children. Sippl got a job driving a beer wagon for Lorenz Kuenzl, a fellow Bohemian. Kuenzl ran the Gambrinus Brewery on Harney Avenue.
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| Gambrinus Brewery beer rolls. This photo was taken around the time Sippl worked there. |
John Lueck’s saloon was probably on Sippl's route. He leased the saloon when Lueck retired. It looked like a good fit: a fellow Highholder holding forth at a bar that was foundational for the Sixth Ward. But what looked good in theory got whacked by reality.
The Sixth Ward was growing saturated with saloons. There were now more than 20 bars within a few blocks of Sippl’s place. The one that did him in was built just across the street.
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| The Pabst Exchange at the southeast corner of Sixth and Ohio. The building still stands. |
Pabst Brewing Company discreetly purchased the lot at the southeast corner of 6th and Ohio in December 1896. The brewery’s plan for the property leaked in March 1897. The Daily Northwestern, which possessed a loathing for the Sippl saloon that had incubated during the days of Lueck, sent up a dreamy cheer for the new Pabst place. “The structure will be of brick and its design will be that of an old, German castle.”
It was better than that. It was named the Pabst Exchange, and it was spacious, and modern, and had no equal on the Southside. The barroom was three times the size of Sippl’s. With a club room and bowling alleys to boot. Upstairs was a dancehall. The boxing matches held there were just about the only feature in keeping with the ethos of the Bloody Sixth Ward.
A week after Pabst announced its plans, John Sippl transferred his liquor license to a saloon on Ceape. He’d been run off by the largest brewery in America.
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| The ornate downstairs bar at the Pabst Exchange. Photo courtesy of Marjorie Douglas. |
Hell’s Corner
After Sippl jumped ship, the oldest saloon in the Sixth Ward sputtered. A couple of failed proprietors passed through before the course was corrected. The new direction, however, had nothing to do with being correct.
In the fall of 1898, a Highholder named Clyde Pollack took over. Pollack was nine when he came to Oshkosh from Bohemia in 1881. He grew up a few doors down from the Lueck saloon. He was the right age to take part in the underage drinking sessions the saloon was known for in the 1880s. He was also the right age to be part of the child-labor workforce at the McMillen lumber mill.
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| The McMillen Lumber mill as it appeared when Clyde Pollack worked there. The mill was located between the Fox River and High Avenue (south of New York). |
Pollack’s life sentence at the mill was commuted by the Woodworkers’ Strike of 1898. He was 26 when he began his new career by leasing the old saloon. Probably not the best career choice for a guy like Pollack. He was an unstable boozer with an appetite for mayhem.
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| A headline following one of Clyde Pollack’s 1890's misadventures. |
The saloon gave Pollack space to explore his lewd side. His bar had nothing to offer that the Pabst Exchange didn’t do better. So he offered something the Pabst Exchange didn’t.
Pollack was arrested on January 18, 1900, and accused of “keeping a disorderly house.” A sanitized charge often levelled at brothels and saloons engaged in sex trafficking. Pollack pleaded not guilty and abscond to San Francisco.
Into the breach stepped Anton Mondl. He made Pollack look like a puppy. Mondl is one of the most grossly degenerate saloonkeepers in the underworld history of Oshkosh. He migrated from Bohemia in 1881 and adopted the Bloody Sixth Ward as his new homeland. Mondl bounced around working at lumber mills before he took to the bar at 6th and Ohio in early 1900. He was 40 then. Mondl moved with his wife and two kids into the apartment above the saloon.
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| The air-conditioning unit in the second-floor window faces into what was once the Mondl family’s apartment above the bar. |
The first of Mondl’s arrests occurred in February 1902. He was caught stabling a team of sex workers at the saloon. Among them was a young hustler named Ira Pritty. Mondl was fined, but undeterred. The following January, he was collared for pimping out his 14-year-old daughter. Luckily for Wilhemina Lueck, she had given Mondl the boot just before that charge was leveled.
Wilhemina had inherited the saloon after her husband died in 1895. She’d been leasing the place out ever since. After ejecting Mondl, she sold the property to a respectable Highholder named John Tomaschko.
The Sixth Ward Beer Baron
Respectable wasn’t cutting it in the Bloody Sixth Ward of the early 1900s. Under Tomaschko’s ownership, the saloon cycled through four proprietors in three years. None could make a go of it in the shadow of the Pabst Exchange. And then a guy came along with an idea. An excellent idea. Something legal, even.
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| Franz Johann Esslinger |
Frank Esslinger was born in Bohemia in 1853. He left for the Sixth Ward when he was 37. Esslinger was working the Southside lumber mills when he hooked up with the Oshkosh Brewing Company (OBC) in the summer of 1906.
OBC was formed in 1894 upon the merger of the city’s three largest breweries. The goal was to drive “foreign” competition out of town. By foreign, OBC meant any brewery that didn’t make its beer in Oshkosh, especially those from Milwaukee. And Pabst in particular.
The Sixth Ward was one of the largest beer markets in the city. Its concentration of saloons and German-speaking, lager-beer drinkers was unrivaled. OBC considered the Sixth Ward its home turf and the Pabst Exchange an insult. In the ensuing years, OBC went about making tied houses out of every saloon in the vicinity of the Pabst Exchange. The only beer sold in these tied-house saloons was beer made by Oshkosh Brewing Company. Pabst was about to be choked out.
OBC tied up Joseph Nigl’s saloon at the northwest corner of 9th and Ohio. The brewery then built a companion tied house across the street, at the northeast corner of 9th and Ohio.
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| Former Oshkosh Brewing Company tied houses at 9th and Ohio. The building on the left was home to the Joseph Nigl saloon. The building on the right (substantially modified over the years) was the saloon run by his cousin Al Nigl. |
Directly behind the Pabst Exchange, OBC tied up Joe Steckbauer’s saloon at the northeast corner of 7th and Ohio. One block north, Wenzel Miller ran a saloon kitty corner from the Pabst Exchange, at the northwest corner of 6th and Ohio. OBC tied that one, too.
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| The orange door at the corner of 7th and Ohio was the entrance into Joe Steckbauer’s saloon, an OBC tied house. The backside of the former Pabst Exchange is visible at the left of the frame. |
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| Wenzl Miller’s saloon, with Wenzl Miller behind the bar. In the upper right hand corner of the photo, a lithograph from the Oshkosh Brewing Company is visible. It’s identical to the OBC litho shown three photos above. |
Frank Esslinger cinched the noose. On July 5, 1906, Esslinger purchased the saloon at the northeast corner of 6th and Ohio. He then immediately sold the property to OBC. The squeeze began. You couldn’t reach the Pabst Exchange without passing a saloon selling Oshkosh Brewing Company beer.
Esslinger ran the saloon, but most of the operating expenses fell to OBC. For Esslinger, it meant that the money landing on the bar was all his after he paid his beer and liquor bills. The old saloon was back in the pink.
In 1914, OBC won its war against Pabst. The Milwaukee brewery conceded, vacating the Pabst Exchange and then selling the property to OBC. The Oshkosh Brewing Company flaunted its victory. The Pabst Exchange was renamed the Kaiserhof (the Emperor's Court). A name fit for a king.
Frank Esslinger moved on, but the arrangement with OBC survived. Until it came undone in an eruption of puritanism that hit the Bloody Sixth Ward like a bomb. The crater it made was called Prohibition.
The Wild Cat
The saloon was run by John Demler when Prohibition began in 1920. Like every proprietor since Lueck, Demler was a Highholder. He was three when he and his family migrated to America in 1892. He took to the Sixth Ward’s saloon life as a young man. Demler learned the trade at Al Nigl's saloon at the northeast corner of 9th and Ohio. In 1917, he left Nigl’s to take over the OBC tied house at the northeast corner of 6th and Ohio.
Demler showed a respect for the law that was rare in the Bloody Sixth Ward. When the dry law arrived, the neighboring saloons stocked up on bootleg beer and liquor and kept running. Not Demler. He quit the bar and got a job at a lumber mill. But he had this friend…
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| Frank “Butch” Youngwirth, his wife, Hattie, and their children, circa 1918. |
Frank “Butch” Youngwirth was a Highholder and had known Demler since boyhood. Demler held the lease on the property and continued living upstairs, while Butch took over the vacated barroom. The place was back in business by the fall of 1921. A couple of months later, Butch got busted there for selling booze and beating a guy up. Butch wiggled his way out of the liquor charge and redoubled his efforts.
Butch Youngwirth wasn’t just another speakeasy operator. His speakeasy was more like his launch pad. His true ambition lay in bootlegging. He’d been working as a roofer, struggling to support his family, when Prohibition began. There had to be a better way. Illegal liquor was it. Once he had the speakeasy going, Butch branched out. He set up a wildcat brewery, just down the street on 6th Avenue, and began making beer. Selling the stuff was the easiest job in the Sixth Ward. And among the most lucrative.
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| Butch behind his bar, circa 1925. Despite the dry law, there was no shortage of beer. |
The money poured in. "I remember Butch made $38,000 one year and $40,000 the next," a former Oshkosh bootlegger named Cyril recalled (last name omitted by request). "That was a lot of money in those days. I remember him and his buddies driving around in their Buicks every Monday to make their collections at the saloons. They’d go over to his place, sit in a booth and put the money in a big pile in front of them. Then they'd start counting it."
Butch set up several more wildcat breweries, always keeping one in reserve in case raids closed the others. "He’d pay the guy who owned the land to keep the brewery there, and also to take the rap if they got caught," Cyril said. "If they got sent to the House of Corrections in Milwaukee, Butch would pay him well for the time he spent there. I think about a hundred bucks a week."
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| The backside of Butch’s speakeasy, 1924. |
By the close of 1926, Butch had outgrown his speakeasy. The brewing business was too profitable to bother with anything else. In the wake of Butch’s success, John Demler reconsidered his respect for the law. He tried going back behind the bar. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. Demler’s license application was summarily rejected, likely due to the notoriety the place had obtained during Butch’s tenure.
Nonintoxicating
The 50-year-old saloon at 6th and Ohio languished as the dry years dragged on. The Oshkosh Brewing Company still owned the property, but wanted out. The brewery found a buyer in 1927. George Utecht was running a speakeasy a block away at what is now 413 Ohio Street. The Utechts had been there since 1892. They were an essential part of the Sixth Ward’s unique culture.
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| The former Utecht saloon at 413 Ohio. Now Anjie's Bar. |
George Utecht leased the building at 6th and Ohio to Earl Sommerfeld. He converted it into an ice cream parlor. It was a flop. The business was sometimes viable, but mostly not. Sometimes open. Often not.
The place didn’t come alive again until the spring of 1933. In April, low alcohol beer – up to 4% ABV – was reclassified as nonintoxicating and, therefore, no-longer regulated under the dry law. Sommerfeld immediately grabbed a beer license and re-lit the drinking lamp. The saloon rose from the dead once again. Its best years were coming…
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| Earl Sommerfeld’s Rialto Tavern at 6th and Ohio. Leaning against the window is the future owner, John Lemberger. |
This is the second in a series of three posts about the history of this tavern and its signifigance to the old Sixth Ward of Oshkosh (the first in the series is HERE). I hope to have the final post in this series completed in early April.
You can contact me at OshkoshBeer@gmail.com to receive an email notification when I publish a new post. Your email address will never be shared or sold.
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