Lost on Parkway: Theodore Kitz and the Treasure Chest

Here’s a lost saloon that once captured the essence of the eastside. It stood at the southwest corner of Parkway and Monroe.

The southwest corner of Parkway and Monroe, circa 1977.

It was built in 1908 to house the saloon and grocery of Theodore Kitz. But the seed of it was planted decades earlier by his father. This is one of those stories where you have to know the father to understand the son. The father’s name is Frank Kitz.

Brass Horns and Lager Beer
Frank Kitz was born in 1834 in the city of Duisdorf, in Germany's Rhineland. When he was 19 he sailed away from his homeland with his parents and siblings. The Kitz family landed in New York on June 3, 1853. They settled for a short time in Hoboken. Then they moved to Toledo. In 1856, they arrived in Oshkosh. They were here to stay.

Oshkosh in the 1850s.

Frank married a German immigrant named Elizabeth Victoris. Frank was 22, Elizabeth was 23. A year hadn’t passed before Elizabeth gave birth to their first child. They would have 11 children in all. Ten would survive infancy.

Frank worked a series of disparate jobs to support them. He did stonework. He made soap. He played his cornet at receptions and parties. For a few years, he was the teacher at Oshkosh’s German Catholic School. His own children were part of the class.

Frank Kitz with his students at the German Catholic School, circa 1868.

In 1874, Elizabeth gave birth to her ninth child; their fifth son. They named him Theodore. When Theodore was five, the family moved into a large, wood-framed building at the northwest corner of Merritt and Monroe in the old Fourth Ward. Frank converted it into a combination saloon, grocery store, and concert hall.

Most of the first floor was taken up by the saloon and grocery. The second floor became Kitz Hall where the neighborhood came to hear music and celebrate. The children slept in cubbies scattered throughout the building. Frank Kitz formed a brass band. Kitz Hall was their venue.

The 14-piece Frank Kitz Band. The man in the back row standing next to the
Horn and Schwalm Lager Beer sign appears to be Frank Kitz.
The photo is believed to have been taken in front of his saloon at Merritt and Monroe, circa 1883.

A late-night fire broke out there in 1883. Frank and Elizabeth barely managed to collect all of the children before the entire place filled with smoke. The concert hall and stage were destroyed. What was burnt was rebuilt. The band played on.

Theodore Kitz was raised in that flowing, convivial atmosphere of food, music, and beer. It was the ethnic eastside encapsulated. The Kitz saloon was on one side of the street and St. Mary’s Catholic Church was on the other. The surrounding neighborhood included tight-knit clans of German immigrants. Those days and nights left a lasting impression on Theodore. He would devote himself to recreating the ways of life that informed his childhood.

Looking east down Merritt. The former saloon, grocery, and music hall of Frank Kitz is
shown on the left. A portion of St. Mary’s Catholic Church is seen at the opposite corner.

Frank Kitz sold his saloon and grocery in 1886. He moved the family into a home up the street at the northwest corner of Parkway and Monroe. Frank switched gears again. He built a beer bottling plant on the new property. Theodore Kitz was 13 when he quit school and went to work helping his father bottle beer.

A rare, surviving specimen from the beer bottling plant of Frank Kitz.

Kitz & Head
When he was 19, Theodore went out on his own. He made money as a trunk maker and as an itinerant musician. In three years, he had banked enough to start a business. Theodore would follow in his father’s footsteps with rigid precision.

In 1897, Theodore opened a grocery and saloon at the southeast corner of Parkway and Monroe. He was in partnership with a man named Herman Head. Like Theodore, Head was born in Wisconsin to parents from Germany. Head was eight years older than Theodore. For the last few years, he had been running a saloon at the corner of Parkway and Grand (it still stands, now it’s the Electric Lounge).

A token good for a glass of beer at the Kitz and Head Saloon.

Both men were well-known in the neighborhood. That familiarity counted for much among the German-speaking people of the Fourth Ward. Their saloon/grocery acted as a nucleus for the neighborhood. Come closing time, Theodore would walk across the street and fall into one of the open beds at his father's home on the opposite corner. It was almost like old times.

The former Kitz and Head saloon and grocery at the southeast corner of Parkway and Monroe.

The saloon/grocery wasn't Theodore’s only pursuit. He was becoming well known in Oshkosh as a musician. Like his father, Theodore played the cornet. Around the turn of the century, he joined the Arion Orchestra. It was Oshkosh's premier concert band. Theodore would become the Arion’s conductor.

The Arion Orchestra at the turn of the century.
Theodore Kitz is the dark-haired man standing in the middle of the back row.

Theodore got his first major jolt in 1902. His partner, 35-year-old Herman Head, contracted winter cholera and died suddenly. Theodore hired family members living in the neighborhood and kept the saloon and grocery running. He wasn’t just getting by. He was flourishing. The next step would be to marry one of the German-speaking girls from the Fourth Ward. This time he didn’t follow the script.

Ted and Nellie
Theodore was seeing a woman eight years younger than him. Her name was Nellie McCarthy. Her parents were Irish immigrants. The McCarthys did not speak German and they were not flourishing. Nellie and 10 other members of the extended McCarthy family lived on the northside in a rented home shrouded by the exhaust of manufacturing plants. Nellie worked as a timekeeper in one of the nearby factories. Theodore was going to take her out of there.

Nellie McCarthy.

Theodore began laying the groundwork for their future. In March of 1904, he bought the property at the southwest corner of Parkway and Monroe. The house on that lot faced the broad side of his grocery. It would soon face a wrecking crew. Then he set his sights on a house on the north side of Parkway. This one faced directly into his saloon. He got that property in July. Two months later, he and Nellie were married. They moved into the house facing the saloon. Their wedding home still stands at the northeast corner of Parkway and Monroe.

The former home of Theodore and Nellie Kitz.

Theodore had a lease on the building containing his saloon and grocery. He wanted out of that. He wanted his own place. It was why he had bought the house facing his grocery. His plan was to rip that house down and build a new place there for his business. But his land grabs had cut into his finances. He needed investors. He went to the people who spoke his language.

August Horn (left) and Charles Rahr.

August Horn and Charles Rahr were the barons of the Oshkosh beer scene. They'd been in the beer business before Theodore was even born. They had done business with his father. Horn was president of the Oshkosh Brewing Company. Rahr was owner of Oshkosh's Rahr Brewing Company. Theodore borrowed $2,500 from each man (for a total of about $150,000 today).

As part of the deal, Theodore agreed to sell Oshkosh Brewing Company beer and Rahr beer in his saloon. It was an unusual set of contracts. Normally, brewers would lend money this way only if they were assured exclusive rights to a saloon's beer sales. Theodore's new saloon would be the exception to the rule.

A set of ads from a 1910 edition of the Journal of the Travelers’ Goods
and Leather Novelty Workers’ International Union.

The Lay of the Land
In the image below, the property designated as A was the Kitz and Head saloon/grocery. Theodore operated that business on his own from 1902 until 1908. B became the home of Theodore and Nellie Kitz. C was the home (and former beer bottling plant) of Frank Kitz, Theodore’s father. D was the location of the new saloon/grocery Theodore opened in 1908.

Everything was set. But the opening had to be pushed back. In October 1907, Nellie gave birth to their first child, a girl named Ruth. A few weeks later, Theodore came down with an acute case of pleurisy that nearly killed him. He wasn't well enough to get around again until the first of the year. By the spring of 1908, his health had returned and he was in the new place.

The building was two stories constructed of brick. There was ornamental molding along the roof line and thick stone beams above the windows. Panels of sheet glass exposed the interior of the grocery in the east wing of the building and the saloon on the west. The new Kitz place became the social hub of the neighborhood. For decades, this would be where his neighbors came when they needed food, or a beer, or conversation, or just to get away for a while. It was their home away from home.

The former saloon and grocery of Theodore Kitz in the early 2000s.

The appearance was modern. The intention was not. Theodore had created an homage to his childhood. His father had launched his saloon/grocery in the 1870s. The concept was already falling out of fashion then. Some thirty years later, it was an anachronism. There were still a few saloon/grocery combos left in Oshkosh, but they had come out of that earlier era. Nobody was doing this kind of thing anymore. Theodore’s father had watched it materialize from his porch across the street. One can only imagine his thoughts.

Playing Hard
On May 1, 1913, Nellie gave birth to their second child. It was another girl. They gave her Nellie's middle name, Helen. Nellie died seven days later from complications of her daughter's birth.

Only Theodore knew the essence of his grief. He buried himself in music. While Nellie was pregnant, he had made arrangements for the Oshkosh Military Band to play a concert under his leadership in Menominee Park. Then Nellie died. Theodore still honored the commitment. On the Sunday evening of June 23, he played for more than two hours to a crowd estimated at over 5,000. When he finally put down his horn it was so dark that people had a hard time finding their way out of the park.

The massively attended June 23rd concert was followed by calls for improvements to Menominee Park that included lighting and a new bandstand. The postcard here shows the updates that were later made.

For the next year, Theodore remained constantly busy. He continued to run both the grocery and saloon while also promoting and leading the exceptionally popular Oshkosh Military Band. In September of 1914, he added the directorship of the Oshkosh Normal School Orchestra to his schedule. All the hustle left little time for his young daughters. They were, most likely, being tended to by family members living in the neighborhood.

Later that fall, Theodore married for a second time. He was 40-years-old, as was Mary Dettlaff. Before their marriage, she had been working as a “sales lady” at Heymann's department store downtown. She came from one of those eastside, German-speaking families. It was just as it was supposed to be. Mary's relationship with Theodore's daughters would become contentious. But she seemed to have a good effect on him. They went to Chicago for a short honeymoon. When they returned Theodore dialed down his frenzied pace.

He took on his first partner since the death of Herman Head 14-years earlier. Theodore had known Henry Erbes for years. Erbes lived in the neighborhood and had a pedigree nearly identical to Theodore's. Erbes would run the grocery and Theodore would tend to the saloon. It appears the arrangement worked well. Nevertheless, it all came undone in 1920. It wasn't their fault. For people like Kitz and Erbes, almost everything went to hell that year.

Drying Up
The march to Prohibition was fueled by bigotry. Central to the prohibitionist's project was the “Americanization” of Americans who had maintained their ethnic identities. Criminalizing their behavior was a tool for accomplishing that. On January 17, 1920, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. Selling alcohol was made illegal. Oshkosh’s ethnic Germans were nearly unanimous in their rejection of the new law. Theodore wasn't with them on this one.

In the 1920s, ethnic Germans remained numerous in the neighborhood surrounding Theodore’s saloon and grocery. Shown here are members of the Pueppke family. Gottlieb and Henrietta Pueppke migrated from Germany in the 1860s and built their home on Monroe Street. This photo was taken in the early 1920s. Theodore’s building is seen in the background.

In 1920, Theodore dutifully closed his saloon. Kitz and Erbes tried to make up for the lost revenue by opening a lunch counter. It flopped and their partnership fell apart. After that, Theodore had a change of heart.

A speakeasy had opened on the other side of Monroe, in what had been Theodore's first saloon. It was the push he needed. In 1922, Theodore took out a license to sell soft drinks and reopened his bar as a speakeasy selling wildcat beer and bootleg liquor. Just like most other Oshkosh saloon keepers had done two years earlier.

Still, it wasn't the same. And it never would be. He spent less and less time running the bar. Often, he had others taking care of it for him. The situation was ideal for the sale of illicit goods. The bar was tucked away in a residential area beyond the prowl of federal agents. Local police had no interest in enforcing the law. The neighbors themselves formed a wall of protection. Theodore was family to them. This was their place.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, Theodore got a liquor license and returned to operating legally. It hardly mattered. He was drifting away. He had already given up on the grocery side of the business. He leased that portion of the building to a series of different grocers. They would come and go.

In 1936, Theodore quit the saloon side. He leased the tavern to Richard Hayes who had lived in the neighborhood and had been running a tavern on Wisconsin Street. Hayes died on the job two years later. Nobody seemed to stick at the old Kitz place. The tavern’s name would change with every new operator. It was Hank’s, Johnny’s, George’s, Pete’s, Milt’s, and on and on...

An ad for the tavern from 1952 when John “Schnock-eyes” Neustifter was running it.

The neighborhood was changing, too. The old ways fell away as the neighborhood's ethnic identity faded into the dull horizon of post-war consumer culture. As late as the 1970s, though, there still remained a sense of community around the tavern. As one neighbor recalled, “You could take children there for a pop and there would always be people from the neighborhood there playing cards. It was really a family gathering place.” That spirit of congeniality was permanently stomped out in 1995.

Busted
On August 28, 1995, a new nightclub named the Treasure Chest went into business at the old Kitz place. Opening night climaxed with a brawl involving a lead pipe, a hammer, and at least one semi-conscious patron being carried off by police. But it wasn’t the violence that got people excited about the Treasure Chest. It was the women dancing there. They were bare-chested.

The Treasure Chest, late August 1995.

A topless bar in the midst of a residential neighborhood would be problematic enough. But a topless bar next door to the new Boys and Girls Club was more than some could stomach.

In 1993, the Boys and Girls Club had moved into a new facility near the southeast corner of Parkway and Broad. Next door was the former Kitz place, now called the Stepping Stone Saloon. The club and the nightclub coexisted with minimal discord. Then came the Treasure Chest and all those topless women.

"It was a shock," said Dan Thorn, who lived on Parkway. "Our main concern is with the kids. A lot of kids will be walking by this place." Dick Rouser, who also lived nearby, told a reporter, "I don't know if anything can be done to stop this, but we're sure not going to welcome them to the neighborhood."

They were appalled that the Oshkosh Common Council hadn’t stopped it from happening. The council had unanimously approved the Treasure Chest's request for a liquor license. The application had specifically stated that the club would feature topless female dancers.

"Personally, I didn't read (the application)," said Oshkosh Mayor Richard Wollangk. "Would it have been better if we discussed it and let the neighbors know it was coming? Would they have felt better? I don't know."

While city officials contemplated their inadequacy, folks in the neighborhood got busy. Children were allegedly being sent into the bar at the direction of their parents as part of an unauthorized sting operation. Calls to police grew so numerous that Police Chief David Erickson addressed the neighborhood, telling people there that the false reports had to stop. “I have a real big concern if you use our department to harass this business,” Erickson warned them.

Their target was Treasure Chest manager Russ Wilson. The Menasha native had no interest in pacifying the anger of his new neighbors. Wilson could be exceptionally crass and sometimes hideously comical. When a reporter asked him about the concerns of those living nearby, Wilson replied “They have nothing to fear. I don't run into very many perverts in here.” He touted his experience saying the Treasure Chest wasn’t the first strip club he had opened. "It's a good way to make fast money," Wilson said.

Russ Wilson

The rancor grew. In September a crowd from the neighborhood packed into the Boys and Girls Club for an airing of grievances. They lashed out at city officials. But their most caustic venom was spent on Russ Wilson. After several testy exchanges, an angry neighbor asked him if he’d like to have his children living next door to a topless bar. Though he had no children, Wilson assured her that he would never allow it. “I could afford to live in a better neighborhood than this,” Wilson explained.

The uproar persisted for almost a year. The caught-napping Common Council tried to redeem itself by hastily passing a new ordinance making it nearly impossible for a business of this type to ever again open in Oshkosh.

All the while, people in the neighborhood continued hounding Wilson. He seemed puzzled by the hostility. “If people didn’t like what I do here, I wouldn’t make any money,” Wilson mused in December of 1995. He buckled five months later.

“I’ve had enough,” he said on May 20, 1996. “I don’t need this anymore.” Wilson said business had been good, but he couldn’t stand dealing with the neighbors and their harassment. Wilson skipped town and the Treasure Chest closed.

Lost
The owner of the real estate was Thomas Sosinski. He was the grandson of Theodore Kitz. Sosinski had inherited the property in 1988. The mistake of leasing it to Wilson proved ruinous. Now, he owned a shuttered bar that had no chance of ever being granted another liquor license.

Sosinski sold the property to the Boys and Girls Club three months after the Treasure Chest closed. The building was converted into a teen recreation center. It was torn down in the summer of 2007.

A recent photo of the southwest corner of Parkway and Monroe.

The demolition coincided with the building's centennial. Nobody noticed. Those who might have remembered were long gone. Theodore was long gone, too. He died at Mercy Hospital three days after Christmas in 1946. Theodore Kitz was 72 years old.

"For many years he had operated a grocery and tavern at the corner of Monroe Avenue and Parkway... The deceased was prominent in Oshkosh musical circles... Mr. Kitz had conducted the old Military, Arion, and Acme bands. At one time his musical group was composed of 25 members, 17 of whom were members of the Kitz family… Internment will be at Riverside cemetery"
   - Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, December 28, 1946.

Theodore Kitz
1874-1946

Oshkosh's Lager-Beer Revival

Oshkosh began as a lager-beer town. Our first breweries were established in 1849 by German-born brewers who filled their barrels with the cool-fermenting lager beers they had learned to brew in their homeland. Those beers were embraced here. Lager styles of beer would remain predominant in Oshkosh until the end of the 20th century. Then craft beer came along. And that meant ale.

With the launch of Fox River Brewing in 1995, ale brewing supplanted Oshkosh's history as a center for lager-beer production. The difference between the two families of beer comes down to yeast, time, and flavor.

Ale is fermented with yeast that prefers warm temperatures; usually around 66º Fahrenheit. Ale is a quick brew often going from kettle to glass in 14 days or less. The process tends to produce a beer with a fruitier flavor profile. Lager, on the other hand, is made with yeast that thrives in a cooler environment; about 50º Fahrenheit. After fermentation, a lager is typically matured for a month or more at temperatures close to freezing. It leads to a beer with a “cleaner” taste allowing the more subtle aspects of the ingredients to shine through.

Lagers have earned a reputation for being more difficult to brew. That's one of the reasons it tends to be ignored by craft breweries. But that's beginning to change. According to Nielsen, a market research firm, the production of craft lagers grew by more than 9% last year, making it among the fastest-growing segments of the beer market. The primary contributors in Oshkosh to that increase have been Bare Bones Brewery and Fox River Brewing.

This month, the two breweries will underscore the trend with the release of a collaboration beer named The Fox and the Hound, a golden-hued, hop-forward lager that will be available at the taprooms of both breweries. For Drew Roth, head brewer at Fox River, and Jody Cleveland, head brewer at Bare Bones, the beer presents an opportunity to demonstrate how compelling a good lager can be.

"I think there's an expectation that lager is just one thing," says Cleveland. "A lot of customers think of it as something that's always light and not very flavorful. It's nice to show that this type of beer can be more than that."

Roth says that at Fox River, that realization is already taking place. "Our customer base is one that still very much gravitates towards darker beers and they tend to understand that a beer like our Oktoberfest is a lager," he says. "So, there's already some knowledge among our customers that lager doesn't necessarily have to be fizzy, yellow beer."

Drew Roth (on the left in dark shirt) and Jody Cleveland brewing The Fox and the Hound.

Cleveland and Roth took a decidedly craft-beer approach when they developed the recipe for The Fox and the Hound. It's an all-malt beer brewed with American malts and Grungeist hops, a proprietary hop grown in Germany. A post-fermentation "dry-hop" addition was used to highlight the notes of peach and passion fruit that Grungiest brings. It's a technique not usually associated with lager-beer brewing.

"We've learned that we really like to dry hop our lagers," Roth says "A little bit of dry hop goes a long way in this sort of beer and it really does amp it up a notch." The approach may be somewhat novel, but it's indicative of the evolution of lager brewing here. Both Roth and Cleveland began their careers brewing ales. That background informs their approach to making lager beers.

"I did not even like lager beer for a long time," says Roth. "I went into craft beer as an IPA hop head. At the time it was really hard to find good lagers. It wasn't until I was in Eau Claire and had Lazy Monk's beer that I started thinking, alright this is pretty good. After that, I went back to homebrewing for a while and immediately started brewing lagers."

Cleveland followed a similar path. "When I started homebrewing, all I wanted to brew was brown ale," he says. "But gradually I started doing lagers and then ended up brewing it quite a bit, mostly historic styles and beers that had been brewed in Oshkosh before craft came along. Now, it's my favorite type of beer, so I would prefer to brew that."

At Bare Bones, Cleveland makes the only year-round lager produced in Oshkosh. The brewery's Oshkosh Lager is an homage to the sort of lagers that were widely produced in Oshkosh for most of the 20th century. "The fact that these beers are selling well helps me justify brewing more of it," Cleveland says.

Roth shares that view. "I mean you have to brew what sells," he says, "and right now the lager beers are selling, so we're going to continue making them. I personally like them a lot, so I'm not disappointed about brewing more of them."

The Signal

The Signal was a temperance newspaper launched by Byron E. Van Keuren in 1884. Van Keuren was an Oshkosh lawyer and an "unswerving prohibitionist." His newspaper was an eight-page weekly crammed full of complaints about drinking. That act didn't play well here. Yet, the Signal hung on for 13 years until it finally folded in 1897. In the end, it was being printed at the First Methodist Church at the corner of Merritt and North Main. 

That same space is now occupied by Wagner Market and enough beer to float those old readers of The Signal.

Ruby Owl 1908

Here's what 1908 looked like if you were in the place that’s now home to Ruby Owl Taproom at 421. N. Main Street.

In 1908, this was Peter Kolb's candy and ice cream shop. Kolb had been in the candy business with John Oaks (of Oaks Candies fame) before going solo in the summer of 1907. His shop was done up in red and white and described as "The most handsomely appointed confectionery in the Northwest... The store, with its opalescent lamps, its huge mirrors and its elegant marble fountain, has the atmosphere of a real Parisian bon bon shop."

The cabinetry and fixtures were made by Brand and Sons on Ceape. The dining areas, where Kolb served light lunches, had 24 tables with a total seating capacity of 120. The view in the shot above is looking west and you can see a few of those tables in the back beyond the arch.

Unfortunately for Kolb, things didn't work out. He went bankrupt in 1909 and skipped town shortly thereafter. There's an all together different vibe in that space these days...

Two Brewers. Four Years. Five Pictures.

I don't remember how this started. I know there was no long-term plan. But here we are... 

About this time every year since 2017, I've been taking a picture of Ian Wenger and Zach Clark of Fifth Ward in front of the tap handles at their brewery. It's become a habit that coincides with Fifth Ward's annual anniversary party, which happens again this weekend. So we've added another round. Here's our little trip down memory loss lane.

This first one comes from Fifth Ward's opening night four years ago.

Ian Wenger (left) and Zach Clark; November 12, 2017.

November 7, 2018.

November 4, 2019.

November 10, 2020.

October 28, 2021.

Those Barrels at Fifth Ward

Fifth Ward Brewing Company will celebrate its fourth anniversary on Saturday, November 13 at the brewery's South Main Street taproom. The annual event has grown into a showcase for Fifth Ward's barrel-aging program. This year will bring that into focus with the brewery releasing five barrel-aged beers over the anniversary weekend. They are among the most complex beers ever produced by an Oshkosh brewery.

"We got into barrel aging three years ago," says Zach Clark, who co-owns Fifth Ward with Ian Wenger, where they share the brewing duties. "We're at a point now where it's coming together in a really good way."

Zach Clark of Fifth Ward during a tour at the brewery.

In the world of craft beer, three years is an eternity. But there's no way to rush this sort of thing. The concept sounds simple. A finished beer is racked into a used spirits barrel where it matures and takes on qualities of the barrel and the liquor that had resided there. The actual execution, though, is much more involved.

It all starts with a recipe, or in this case several recipes. "It's never just brewing one batch of beer, putting it into a barrel, then coming back 12 months later and saying here's a barrel-aged beer," Wenger says. "We'll brew three or four completely different recipes, each with a specific quality in mind. One might be dryer and another sweeter. Another might be stronger with more bitterness."

"It's about trying to get the right balance," Clark chimes in. "We're always keeping in mind what we want the finished product to be. In the end, when we get to the blending, we have to have those different flavors to work with to get what we're looking for."

The recipes may be the least of it, though. These are process-driven beers. And it's a process unique to itself. The deviations begin upstream with the wort - the sugary liquid coaxed out of a mash of malted barley and water. For most beer, the wort is boiled for 60 to 90 minutes.

"With these beers, we'll go with a 13 or 14-hour boil," Clark says. "We're trying to thicken the wort, so we boil it down until it’s reduced to the volume we want."

"And you really need that super-long boil to caramelize some of those sugars," Wenger adds. "You need that for color, too. We want that dark-brown, cappuccino-like foam."

Fermenting a wort so thick with malt sugar is no less of a challenge. "With that kind of viscosity you need to pump in a lot of oxygen so the yeast can survive and stay healthy," Clark says. "Otherwise it will just quit on you. We literally have to pump oxygen into the tank during the fermentation to keep it going."

At the end of fermentation, the beers are dark behemoths that can be as strong as 14-percent alcohol by volume. Into the wooden barrels it goes. Over the past year, Clark and Wenger have been working with approximately 40 oak barrels. Their first use was in the production of spirits such as bourbon, rye whiskey, or tequila. About a third of those filled this year at Fifth Ward have been holding bourbon for the past 10 years. Each barrel is topped up with 53 gallons of beer. Then the waiting begins.

The back half of the brewery is the barrel cellar. Stacked four high, the barrels rest in an environment where the Wisconsin weather will add another layer of complexity. "In the summer the barrels up on top will get to be over 85 degrees," Wenger says. "And in winter it will get much colder back there than it does in the front of the building. They go through quite a range of temperatures."

Time is another influence. A full year of aging isn't unusual. "The youngest we've ever pulled was at five months, but that's not ideal," Clark says. "That's not enough time to create the flavors we're looking for."

At the end of September, the barrels employed for this year's batch of beers were brought out of the cellar for a tasting to determine the blends that will create the final beers. It's a heady art, akin to a painter mixing colors to create a specific hue. "We want to hit that right balance using the different qualities coming out of the individual barrels," Clark says.

Wenger pulling samples from the barrels.

"They're all components at that point," Wenger says. "You're looking for the best flavor and you have to build it out of those separate parts."

The extensive process produces a remarkably rich and nuanced beer. Big Willy Style – a blended, barrel-aged barley wine that will be released at the anniversary celebration – has booming notes of bourbon, vanilla, burnt sugar, oak, and raisin. At 16-percent alcohol by volume, it's stronger than most wines and has a depth of flavor that seems inexhaustible.

Until recently, that’s not the sort of beer you'd expect to find in a can. But this year, for the first time, Fifth Ward will release these beers in 16-ounce cans. "It's really what our customers are expecting now," says Wenger.

Both Clark and Wenger are intent on growing their barrel-aging program. "We could probably get this up to 200 barrels," says Clark. "But right now we just don't have the tank capacity to fill that many. We're working on that. This is still just the beginning."

The Life and Times of Silvo Fenn

In 1882 Silvo Fenn traveled 4,000 miles to make a new life for himself in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

A young Christian Frederick Silvo Fenn.

He was born on June 7, 1864, in Saalfeld; a mining town at the edge of the Thuringian Slate Mountains in central Germany.

The Saalfeld of Silvo Fenn’s youth.

The details of Fenn's life in Germany have been lost. What is known is that while in his teens he was trained as a brewer. He appears to have been eager to abandon whatever else his early life entailed. Fenn left Germany when he turned 18. He traveled north to Bremen, boarded the S.S Oder, and was gone. They had a phrase for what he was doing. Fenn was passing into eternity.

The S.S. Oder.

Fenn was two weeks at sea. He wasn’t alone. Ernst Lang, an 18-year-old brewer from Saxony, became his traveling companion. They deboarded together when the Oder reached New York City on October 13, 1882.

Fenn and Lang headed west. They stopped when they reached Oshkosh. On the south side they met August Horn, who had come to America from Bavaria 30 years earlier. Horn hired both of them to work at his brewery.

August Horn.

Horn & Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery was launched in 1865 by German-born brewer Leonhardt Schwalm. A year later Schwalm brought in his brother-in-law August Horn. Then, in 1873, Schwalm died unexpectedly. The entire brewery burned to the ground six years later.

The original Horn & Schwalm Brooklyn Brewery in the 1600 block of Doty.

August Horn had a new, much larger brewery built. Leonhard Schwalm's son Theodore stepped in to take over his dead father's role in the brewhouse. But Theodore's all-consuming alcoholism soon rendered him incapable of much of anything. That’s when Fenn and Lang arrived.

Silvo Fenn went to work in the brewhouse. He also bunked there for his first year or so in Oshkosh. Ernst Lang moved into the house next door to the brewery. Lang’s job was to coax Oshkosh saloon owners into buying the Brooklyn Brewery’s beer. Horn’s brewery began hitting its stride. By 1889 the Brooklyn Brewery was selling more beer than any other brewery in Winnebago County.

The new Brooklyn Brewery, built after the 1879 fire.

Time spent hawking beer in Oshkosh saloons made an impression on Ernst Lang. He quit the brewery and in 1889 opened a saloon at the northeast corner of 6th and Oregon. Lang took Leonhard Schwalm's daughter Hannah with him. The couple moved into the apartment above their saloon. They were in the heart of the Morgan Company complex. Thirsty workers were drawn to their bar night and day. Lang’s place was an immediate success.

Ernst Lang's saloon (on the right) at the northeast corner of Oregon and sixth.

Fenn, meanwhile, settled into the life of an Oshkosh brewer. In the spring of 1886, he married Anna Ritschke, who with her family had come to Oshkosh from Germany in 1871. Silvo and Anna had their first child a year after their wedding. Anna had another child, two years after that. And just about every year or so thereafter there was another. They would have seven kids in all.

In 1889, the Fenns bought an empty lot on Doty Street and built a home. The property was sold to them by Frederick Voelkel. He lived next door at the corner of Doty and 17th where he had run a saloon and white-beer brewery. Fenn’s neighbor to the north was a beer salesman for the Brooklyn Brewery. Across the street was the brewery where they worked and the mansion of their boss, August Horn. Fenn was fully immersed in the south side brewing scene.

 The Fenn family home at what is now 1663 Doty Street. The house still stands.

The August Horn home built in 1879 at 1662 Doty Street.

There was no rest in Fenn. He also worked as a finisher at Buckstaff, in addition to his job at the brewery. In 1892, Fenn took on another project. He began bottling beer.

Beer bottling in the 1890s was a messy affair. The Brooklyn Brewery, like many other American breweries, wanted nothing to do with it. The process was slow, laborious, and involved a senseless taxation protocol. It just wasn't worth the bother. But some people were willing to pay a premium for bottled beer. So a host of independents stepped in to fill the void.

An ad from the Oshkosh Labor Advocate of November 3, 1893.
Silvo Fenn listed among the bottlers of the Brooklyn Brewery’s beer.

Fenn wasn’t the first independent beer bottler in Oshkosh, but his operation would grow to be the most successful and enduring. Early on, he worked from his home. He'd buy kegs of beer from the Brooklyn Brewery, haul them across the street, and drain their contents into bottles by hand.

Then he had to peddle that beer. Sunday was the best day for it. Fenn would load a wagon full of beer bottles and go trolling through town. The sound of those bottles on a beer wagon was unmistakable. When the wagon came clattering the chime of the jingling glass was as distinctive as the music of an ice-cream truck. It brought people running.

The Brooklyn Brewery was growing prodigiously. Fenn was one of three bottlers for the brewery’s beer. His domain was the south side. Working at the brewery gave him a leg up on the others. August Horn was among the first business owners in Oshkosh to have a phone installed. If a call came in for bottled beer, Fenn was there to take it.

In 1894, Horn combined the Brooklyn Brewery with two other Oshkosh breweries to form the Oshkosh Brewing Company (OBC). The merger created one of the largest breweries in Northeast Wisconsin. Fenn became OBC's primary independent bottler.

An early ad for the Oshkosh Brewing Company that appeared in the Wisconsin Telegraph,
a German-language newspaper published in Oshkosh. Fenn is listed on the right
under “Aus Flaschen gefüllt von” identifying the beer bottlers for the new brewery.

Fenn’s bottling operation had completely outgrown its makeshift beginnings. He borrowed money – and probably advice – from Christian Elser who, before his retirement, had been the bottler for Glatz's Union Brewery. The bottling plant Fenn built behind the family home was the largest of its type in Oshkosh.

Detail from a 1903 Sanborn Map of Oshkosh. Fenn’s Bottling plant is at
287 Nebraska (now 1664 Nebraska). His home is shown at 52 Doty (now 1663 Doty).

The separation between his work and family life was non-existent. For example: in 1896 Fenn’s three-year-old son Sizzo spotted him behind the house sorting beer kegs. The toddler waddled over and...

The father hurled a heavy oaken keg to one side and the child received the full effect of the blow. He was crushed to the ground and picked up by the parent for dead. Medical assistance was summoned and it was found that the infant was suffering a long, deep scalp wound, a fractured skull, and a right leg broken in two places between the knee and the instep. His chances for recovery are considered doubtful.
     – Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, August 6, 1896

Sizzo survived. It wasn’t his last brush with an early death. He took a stray bullet to the neck while out hunting in 1933. That didn't stop him, either. Sizzo lived to be 98.

Sizzo Fenn on the left in 1929. At the time, Sizzo was the secretary for
the Oshkosh Pure Ice Company where this picture was taken.

Silvo Fenn finally quit his job at the brewery and went full-time into bottling beer. It still wasn't enough. He began getting help from Robert Nachtrab who had recently moved from a farm in the Town of Nekimi and into the house next door. By 1898, Fenn and Nachtrab had formed a partnership. Nachtrab focused on beer sales. Fenn focused on getting all that beer into those bottles.

The early Fenn and Nachtrab bottles were manufactured in Illinois, Indiana, and Milwaukee. They were pint-sized with the surnames of the bottlers embossed on the face. The blobbed top was sealed by a porcelain stopper held in place by a wire hinge and cuffed with a rubber gasket. A box of 12 pints went for about 50 cents (approximately $16 today).

The bottling houses in Oshkosh operated like ad hoc saloons with beer flowing freely from bottles and kegs. It annoyed the saloon keepers to no end. Unlike the bottlers, the saloon men paid a hefty licensing fee for the privilege of slinging their suds.

In November 1908, Fenn was ratted out and arrested. He was charged with selling liquor without a license at his bottling house. Fenn pleaded guilty and paid a $50 fine (about $1,450 today). After that, he ponied up the $200 licensing fee and continued pouring beer for his guests.

From the 1908 Oshkosh City Directory.

The business continued to grow. Family help was in constant rotation at the bottling plant. And by 1910, Fenn and Nachtrab had hired two additional full-time employees.

The Fenn and Nachtrab bottling plant, circa 1911, at what is now 1664 Nebraska.
The left (northern) portion of the building behind the beer barrels contained the ice house where
beer was stored both before and after bottling. The opposite wing housed the bottling line.
Fenn’s home can be seen through the opening at the end of the driveway.

From left to right: Hank Ritschke, Silvo Fenn’s brother in law. Laurence Nachtrab, Robert Nachtrab’s son. On the horse is Ernst Fenn, Silvo’s son. Silvo Fenn is in the white shirt with suspenders. Oscar Rand, an employee of the bottling plant, has his arms crossed. An unidentified youth, possibly Sizzo Fenn, wears a hat slanted on his head. Robert Nachtrab is in bib overalls at the extreme right.

They were working on borrowed time. Independent bottlers like Fenn were falling by the wayside. Breweries were warming to the idea of taking their bottling in-house. For the Oshkosh Brewing Company, that time arrived in 1912. When Fenn walked out onto the front steps of his home that spring he saw this looming over him....

Completed in 1912, the new brewery of the Oshkosh Brewing Company.

OBC had been doing at least some of its own bottling since 1894. With the completion of its new brewery in 1912, the company decided it was time to do away with the independent bottlers and take that business for its own. Things had changed. The burdensome tax laws had been streamlined and bottling technology had improved considerably. OBC's new brewery had a pipe running from its tanks to a bottling line in the old Horn and Schwalm brewery. Fenn had known this day was coming.

OBC began terminating its bottling agreements. Fenn and Nachtrab were the only bottlers to survive the culling. The others were given the less lucrative option of becoming distributors for OBC's beer. Fenn's long relationship with the brewery may have been what saved them. But the old ties that had bound the Southsiders were fraying. August Horn, the first president of OBC and Fenn’s early benefactor, had died in 1904. His successor, William Glatz, was not the sentimental type when it came to the beer business.

William Glatz

Fenn didn’t seem especially concerned about remaining in the good graces of Glatz. OBC had been the dominant player in the Oshkosh beer market for close to 20 years. The first formidable challenge to that dominance came in 1913 when Peoples Brewing began making beer just a stone's throw away from the OBC plant. Glatz was furious. He publicly railed against the upstart brewery that had been funded, in part, by Oshkosh saloon keepers. Fenn rubbed salt in the wound. He began distributing the new brewery’s beer.

It could have been a ploy to gain leverage. If it was, it worked. Within a year, Fenn dropped Peoples from his portfolio and was back to dealing and bottling OBC beer exclusively.

By the end of 1915, Fenn and Nachtrab had become the only independent beer bottlers still operating in Oshkosh. That distinction wasn’t theirs for long. In 1916, Fenn's bottling agreement with OBC ended. Like all the others, Fenn and Nachtrab were relegated to distribution. It was time for Fenn to bow out.

He hung around just long enough to enjoy one last beer bash. The old battle over Oshkosh saloons being open on Sundays had reignited. Sunday had always been the big day for beer drinking in Oshkosh. The local dries had been throwing fits about it for decades. In early 1917, the anti-fun crowd momentarily gained the upper hand forcing Oshkosh saloons to close on the Sabbath. Suddenly, the services of people like Fenn were in high demand. The old beer wagons were loaded up for another round.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, January 1, 1917.

That was the last hurrah. In July 1917, Fenn dissolved his partnership with Robert Nachtrab and quit the beer business. Nachtrab tried to keep the distribution operation afloat. He partnered with Ernst Berndt, who had been working for them since 1910. But with Prohibition on the horizon, there was little chance of the business surviving. It closed in 1919.

Fenn took a job as a fireman at the Deltox Grass Rug Company. His world had been upended. His entire adult life had revolved around beer. All of that was made illegal when Prohibition arrived in 1920. The bottling plant that he had built in his backyard sat vacant. The big brewery across the street that he had helped to make a success was turning out soda water and a dispirited, non-alcoholic brew named Pep.

Fenn decided to get away for a while. He had two sisters still living in Germany. He hadn’t seen them in 40 years. His flight-plan was similar to the one that had taken him to America. He headed north to catch a boat across the Atlantic. Fenn boarded the Empress of Scotland at the Port of Quebec on May 30, 1922. He was going home.

Silvo Fenn’s 1922 U.S. passport photo.

Fenn returned to Oshkosh in the late summer of 1922. He went back to work at Deltox. He quit that a few years later and took a job as a watchman at Gould Manufacturing. He retired in the early 1930s. Prohibition was about to be repealed. Fenn was 69 years old when it finally happened. Beer was legal again, but that world was just a memory for him now.

On December 12, 1944, Silvo Fenn died from a heart attack at his home on Doty Street. He was 77 years old. Fenn was survived by his wife, three sons, and two daughters. Silvo Fenn is buried in Peace Lutheran Cemetery.

Silvo Fenn’s weathered headstone.

End Notes
Oshkosh's independent beer bottlers were a fascinating and group. I've written a two part survey about them that can be found here: Part 1 / Part 2.

About five years ago, Oshkosh bottle collector Steve Schrage mentioned that I ought to write a longer piece about Silvo Fenn. I’ve been intending to do that ever since. The push that got me going came this summer from Tim Fenn, Silvo Fenn’s great grandson. Tim was a great help in making this piece happen. He also supplied several of the pictures in this post.

Thanks also to Bob Bergman, Matt Hostak, and Steve Schrage. Each of them helped me out with this in various ways.

Fifty Years Ago...

The Oshkosh Brewing Company ceased production 50 years ago today on October 18, 1971. With that, Peoples Brewing became Oshkosh's sole brewery. It was the first time since 1849 that Oshkosh was home to just one brewery. Two weeks after the closing, it was announced that Peoples Brewing had purchased the brands of the Oshkosh Brewing Company and would continue producing Chief Oshkosh Beer. Peoples Brewing would close a year later in November 1972.

Wildcat Breweries of Oshkosh | Librarian Learns

Prohibition was the law in the 1920s, but in Oshkosh the beer never stopped flowing. It was made by wildcat breweries in almost every part of the city. Here’s a video Michael McArthur of the Oshkosh Public Library and I made where we check out a few of Oshkosh’s wildcat brewery sites.