Speakeasies of the Old West Side

The old West Side was considered a village unto itself when Prohibition arrived in 1920. The Fox River and Sawyer Creek formed a border separating the neighborhood from the east and south sides of town. But there were bridges to span that boundary. What had not been bridged was the contempt held by others towards the West Side’s Volga Germans.

Looking northwest at what is now the intersection of Sawyer Street and Oshkosh Avenue, the hub of the West Side. The neighborhood was also commonly referred to as West Algoma.

The West Side’s immigrant community was German by ethnicity. But they had been living in the Volga region of Russia before coming to America in the early 1900s. Many in Oshkosh believed that George Paine recruited the Volga Germans as scab labor. Paine had refused to rehire the workers who walked out of his mill during the riotous strikes of 1898. The Volga Germans were given those jobs. A schism was inevitable.

Paine’s Veneer mill, circa 1914, at the southeast corner of Oshkosh and Sawyer. The lighter building near the upper right of the frame is Happy John’s Saloon (later Gordy’s Bar).

The street names and addresses of the old West Side have changed over the years. For the sake of clarity, I’ll use the current street names and addresses in this post.

Two decades later, the hostility towards the Volga Germans remained. Their South Side neighbors called them “Rooshins” and “peasants.” The Volga Germans called the South Siders “Bohunks.” The one resentment they could all unite around was their hatred for the dry law. Like most others in Oshkosh, the West Siders revolted when liquor became illegal in January 1920. There were five saloons in the 1200 block of Oshkosh Avenue. Each of them became a speakeasy.

Flooded speakeasy row in 1922. Looking west from Sawyer Street at what is now the 1200 block of Oshkosh Avenue. 

It was an excellent place for a speakeasy. A little out of the way, but easy to get to. The police showed limited interest in patrolling the area. And in no time, the West Side was awash in white mule; the hard-kicking moonshine sold on the street and in the speakeasies along Oshkosh Avenue.

It took just five months for the West Side to become notorious for its illegal liquor trade. The blatant defiance brought federal agents to town. The first place they took down was Fred Brunner’s speakeasy and distillery at the gateway to the West Side.

The site of Fred Brunner’s speakeasy and distillery. Built for Louis Tyriver in 1903, this later became Repp’s Bar, as seen here on the right.

Fred George Brunner was born in Russia in 1885. He left for America in 1909 and joined the others of his tribe on the West Side. He worked at Paine Lumber for a few years before quitting to get into the saloon business. In 1916, Brunner became an American citizen. He signed a pledge renouncing his allegiance to the Emperor of Russia and affirmed that he was neither a polygamist nor an anarchist. Then came 1920 and the dry law. Alcohol anarchism was suddenly all the rage.

Brunner got busted for selling homemade, 74-proof moonshine on a Thursday night in May 1920. In a backroom, the agents uncovered his “big copper” still, several more gallons of moonshine, and several gallons of alcohol from a stripping run ready for redistillation. The feds hauled Brunner to Milwaukee. He stood before Judge Ferdinand Geiger and declared his guilt. Brunner got a $50 fine (about $800 today). He paid up and caught a train back to Oshkosh to reopen his speakeasy.

Brunner was among the Volga Germans whose assimilation was expedited by bootleg liquor. Along with him was a younger generation born in Oshkosh whose parents had migrated from rural Russia. The elders clung to their conservative ways, intent on maintaining their distinctive culture. But their kids wanted to be hip. They wanted to be American. And when Prohibition began, there was nothing more hip on the West Side than a hip flask full of white mule.

The symbol of independence. A Prohibition era hip flask.

Young West Siders congregated on the street, passing the flask, in front of Louis Tyriver’s LWT Hall. The hall was the site of dances and concerts that brought in young people from every part of Oshkosh. The older crowd was appalled. “The stories told by residents of that neighborhood vary, but some of them are sensational in the extreme,” said the Daily Northwestern. A letter to the paper claimed that “the booze flows as freely as water. Young men come with stocked hip pockets, and mere boys of 16 and 17 are drunk.”

Ernst Westphal’s West Algoma Market, circa 1919. The building was owned by Louis W. Tyriver. The upper floor was home to LWT Hall. This later became an adult books store. The building to the left, with a Peoples Beer sign on the corner, was the New Star Saloon. It became a speakeasy run by Henry Gorr.

Meanwhile, speakeasy drinking on the West Side grew ever more vigorous. The feds returned again and again trying in vain to put an end to it. All five of the speakeasies in the 1200 block of Oshkosh Avenue were busted at one time or another. And each promptly reopened.

After they hit Fred Brunner’s place, federal agents returned in 1922 to invade Henry Gorr’s speakeasy. Gorr was another Volga German who came to Oshkosh from Russia. This place would rack up four busts in all during the dry years.

Henry Gorr’s speakeasy under the red arrow, 1923.

On that same 1922 trip, the feds busted Joe Riedy for running a speakeasy in a former saloon owned by Rahr Brewing. This speakeasy was the target of multiple raids during Prohibition for liquor violations.

The former home of Joe Riedy’s speakeasy with the red star, shown circa 1951. The property was still owned by the Rahr family when this photo was taken. As of April 6, 2025, this building still stands at 1226 Oshkosh Ave.

Next door to Reidy was a blind tiger, a bootleg booze lounge inside the home of George Morasch. He was a Volga German who came to Oshkosh from Russia in 1903. Morasch seems to have made enough money selling drinks in his living room to afford a wholesale remodel of his dive. In 1927, he converted his home into a “soft drink” parlor. Morasch was busted again and again. But he remained resolute even after the Winnebago County District Attorney threatened to padlock his door. The city finally stripped Morasch of his soft drink license in 1932. So Morasch put the business in his son’s name, got a new license, and reopened.

The Morasch speakeasy later became Vic’s Arcade show here with the red star.

The saloon built by Miller Brewing in 1897 at the northeast corner of Oshkosh and Fox was also converted into a speakeasy. It was run by Wenzel Heinzel, a hard-drinking Austrian immigrant and longtime West Side saloon keeper. Heinzel’s drinking habit and liquor selling continued unabated throughout the 13 years of Prohibition.

The darker building in the middle of the photo shows Heinzel’s speakeasy in 1922. This was later known as Mickey’s, Mr. Z’s, Frank’s Place, and finally General Lee’s.

On the south side of the 1200 block was Happy John’s Buffet, a former saloon built by the Oshkosh Brewing Company at the corner of Oshkosh and Sawyer. When the nation went dry, Happy John’s remained wet. But ever so discreetly. The Happy John crew managed to elude the feds until 1931.

Happy John’s shortly after the repeal of Prohibition.. Later known as Gordy's Bar.

The dry-law farce ended in 1933. The West Side's outsider status had also ended. People from all parts of Oshkosh ventured there during the dry years to escape the repression of Prohibition. And they kept coming after Prohibition was repealed. The speakeasies became taverns, and the West Side strip became a hub for the city’s social life.... I’ll have that part of the story posted here next Sunday morning.

Special thanks to Dan Radig, Bob Bergman, and Randy Domer, all of whom helped with the photos used in this post.

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.

Bare Bones 1895 Bock

The Oshkosh Brewing Company released its first Bock Beer 130 years ago. To commemorate the anniversary, Bare Bones Brewery will release a replica of that original Bock this Saturday at the brewery’s taproom when it opens at noon. 1895 Bock is a rich and malty, dark-amber beer that delivers a warming 6.2% ABV.

This was a beer they were eager to make. The Oshkosh Brewing Company was created on March 21, 1894, from the merger of Oshkosh’s three largest breweries: Horn & Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery, John Glatz and Son’s Union Brewery, and Lorenz Kuenzl’s Gambrinus Brewery. The three breweries had already produced their 1894 Bock Beers before the merger was finalized. Those Bocks were released under the pre-merger names of the individual breweries.

The day after the OBC merger was finalized, John Glatz & Son ran this notice for their Bock Beer in the Daily Northwestern. They begin by taking a shot at Pabst for its endless yammering about its award at the 1893 World’s Fair. The Glatz boys then get down to the business of sermonizing upon the high quality of their own beer; something they were never shy about.

By the end of 1894, the three breweries had settled into their new collective identity and were ready to brew some Bock. For the 1895 season, OBC brewmaster Lorenz Kuenzl created a hefty Bock that approached Doppelbock territory. It was a more potent and darker version of the Chief Oshkosh Bocks that OBC became famous for in the post-Prohibition era after 1933.

The recipe for the Bare Bones version of the 1895 Bock was drawn up by Jody Cleveland, head brewer at Bare Bones, and myself. We built the recipe using Oshkosh Brewing Company logbooks and other research into the brewery's practices during the period. No living human has ever tasted the 1895 Bock brewed by OBC, so it’s impossible to say how closely this beer resembles the original. But we’re betting it’s pretty damned close.

1895 Bock will be available on draught and in a commemorative can with a design that includes artwork from the period. Prost!

Saloons of the Old West Side

It used to be called the West Side. But that name was lost 50 years ago. Also lost is the social life that thrived there. The heart of the old West Side – often called West Algoma – ran along Oshkosh Avenue from the Fox River to Fox Street. Even the street names are not what they were. What’s left is a stripped patch of land. Here’s a glimpse at what no longer exists…

Looking west down the 1200 block of Oshkosh Avenue, circa 1951.

Here is what it became...

The street names and addresses of the old West Side have changed over the years. For the sake of clarity, I’ll use the current street names and addresses in this post.

When that 1950s picture was taken, the old West Side was already old. Webster Stanley had set up his shanty nearby in 1836. Stanley’s shanty was at the landing of a ferry that had been carrying folks across the river since 1831. The ferry was replaced by a floating bridge in 1850. By then, the West Side had its first saloon. The bar was in the Eagle Hotel near the corner of Oshkosh Avenue and Fox Street.

An 1867 illustration of the West Side. The tall building at the center is the Eagle Hotel.

The West Side saloon scene bloomed in the early 1900s. It coincided with the arrival of immigrants from Russia. People here called them Rooshins. They were ethnic Germans whose ancestors had migrated to Russia’s Volga River Valley in the 18th century. A century later, they were hounded out. Hundreds of them headed for the West Side, where they established a colony that blended their folkways into the stew of Oshkosh.

The Rooshins were outsiders. Their dialect, their customs, and their clothes set them apart. They were considered foreign even by others of German ancestry. Their cultural isolation was compounded by their location. They were separated from the South Side by Sawyer Creek, and from the North Side by the Fox River. In typical Oshkosh fashion, the inevitable integration was fostered by saloons. It began with a saloon built in 1897 by Miller Brewing at the northeast corner of Oshkosh and Fox.

The tall building on the right is the saloon built by Miller Brewing as it appeared in 1920. On the left is the same building in the 1990s.

The Miller place was run by two West Siders: Lew Rickard and Lew Schwanske. The neighbors called it the LuLu Saloon. The LuLu did well enough, but it prospered after Louis W. Tyriver took it over in 1901. LW Tyriver was 41 years old and born in America. His parents were German immigrants. He’d been working at Paine Lumber and living on the West Side before going behind the bar at the Miller Brewery Saloon. He was there when the Volga Germans arrived. Tyriver’s saloon became the West Side’s first home away from home.

September 9, 1901.

Tyriver’s success caught the attention of the Oshkosh Brewing Company (OBC). Oshkosh’s largest brewery wasn’t about to concede its home turf to a saloon owned by Miller. In September 1902, OBC bought the vacant lot at the southwest corner of Oshkosh and Sawyer. The brewery announced it would put a saloon there. LW Tyriver responded in kind. He bought the empty lot kitty corner to OBC’s new property. The race was on.

An early 1903 map with the proposed sites of Tyriver’s saloon (green rectangle) and the Oshkosh Brewing Company saloon (blue rectangle).

OBC brought in a veteran South Side saloon keeper named “Happy” John Wawrzinski to launch its new bar. But Tyriver beat OBC and Happy John to the punch. Tyriver opened his new saloon in the second week of March 1903. Happy John's opened three weeks later. Each was a showcase saloon. They looked like mirror images of one another. Their turrets were the gateway to the burgeoning West Side.

This photo from the early 1950s, shows the gateway to the West Side. The saloon on the right was built by Louis W. Tyriver. It later became Repp’s Bar. The saloon on the left was the Oshkosh Brewing Company saloon run by Happy John Wawrzinski. It later became Gordy’s Bar.

 Inside the saloon built by OBC and run by Happy John Wawrzinski. Happy John stands behind his bar wearing a bow tie and white apron.

Happy John spent the next 30 years behind that bar. His name would remain attached to the tavern until 1950. LW Tyriver was never so settled. In 1905, Tyriver sold his new saloon to Pabst Brewing. He ran the place for three more years and then jumped into a new set of West Side adventures.

Outside the saloon Tyriver built and sold to Pabst. This photo was taken circa 1909 when it was operated by Clemens Hintzke. This saloon later became Repp’s Bar.

There were now three brewery-owned saloons in the 1200 block of Oshkosh Avenue. A fourth was added in 1912. Rahr Brewing of Oshkosh bought the open lot at 1226 Oshkosh Avenue in September 1911. The brewery built a saloon with an upper apartment and an attached storefront. The new Rahr barroom was outfitted with an oak bar and back bar built by Robert Brand and Sons of Oshkosh.

Brand and Son’s “The Grant” model, installed in the Rahr saloon in 1912.

Joe Riedy, who had been a bartender at the Miller Brewery saloon on the corner, moved a couple doors east to run the Rahr bar. He called it the Center Buffet. Riedy and his wife, May, lived upstairs. A barbershop went into the attached storefront. For 30 cents, you could get a trim and a frothing mug of Rahr beer. The photo below was taken almost 100 years after the saloon was built. The large windows at street level were boarded over by then.

1226 Oshkosh Avenue, circa 2007.

LW Tyriver left the Pabst saloon, but he hadn’t left the neighborhood. In 1911, he ran for alderman of the 12th Ward representing the West Side. Tyriver won in a landslide. The expense report he filed with the city showed that he spent $32.40 on his campaign. All of it but $2.40 went for beer and cigars. Tyriver was a single-issue politician. He was fed up with the rickety bridge that crossed the Fox River to the West Side. Tyriver made a nuisance of himself at common council meetings until he got what he wanted.

The new bridge over the Fox River built in 1912.

There had been problems at the Pabst saloon ever since Tyriver left. The trouble started with young Clemens Hintzke. He was 23 when he began running the bar in 1909. Hintzke had a special friend, a much-discussed woman named Lorena Dyer. There were allusions that Dyer was involved in sex trafficking. The connection led to Hintzke’s name being dragged through the mud. Dyer was with Hintzke when his persistent tuberculosis flared up on a January evening in 1911. Hintzke had a coughing fit that killed him. His family members stepped up to keep the saloon open. But the relentless bickering of his parents made the place no fun. Pabst booted the entire crew in early 1912. The brewery wanted LWT back.

Tyriver returned for a short stint at the Pabst saloon. But he had no intention of remaining a publican for a Milwaukee brewery. In February 1914, Tyriver bought an empty lot across the street from Happy John’s OBC saloon. By the summer of 1914, the beer was flowing at Tyriver’s new bar. The four other saloons on the block were owned by breweries. Tyriver’s independent status was confirmed by the beer he sold. It was from the independent Oshkosh brewery that had opened the previous summer.

August 29, 1914, the grand opening of Tyriver’s new saloon with beer from Peoples Brewing.

Louis W. Tyriver was entwined in the social life of the West Side. His saloons were an entry point into the new world for Oshkosh’s Volga Germans. The connection deepened in 1915. Tyriver bought the building next to his saloon and converted the upper floor into LWT Hall, a space for neighborhood gatherings. It was where the West Side held its dances, political rallies, meetings, weddings, and any other assembly uniting the community.

Tyriver’s LWT Hall is the white building at the center of the photo. His saloon was the smaller building next door on the left.

There were five saloons in the 1200 block of Oshkosh Avenue in 1919. There was a grocery store, a meat market, a barber shop, a candy store, a shoe store, and a drug store. It was the West Side’s Main Street. A year later, the community was betrayed by a minority of rank bigots who forced through the first constitutional amendment aimed at restricting personal liberty. The betrayal was Prohibition. The cruelest provisions of the dry law were aimed directly at immigrants and the working class. Folks like those of the old West Side.

I’ll post the next chapter of this story here next Sunday.

A word of thanks to Dan Radig who helped with a number of pictures used in this post.

Send me an email at OshkoshBeer@gmail.com to receive an email notification when I publish a new post. Your email address will never be shared or sold.

Talking Robert Brand and Sons

I recently made a short video with Mike McArthur from the Oshkosh Public Library about Robert Brand and Sons, an Oshkosh company that became famous for outfitting saloons throughout the Midwest. And without further ado...

The Fond du Lac Comeback

Fond du Lac’s 88-year drought is coming to an end. This morning Lyle Hari of Fond du Lac Beer is brewing the first batch of commercial beer made in Fond du Lac since 1937.

Lyle Hari, March 18, 2025.

Lyle has Oshkosh roots. He was the first brewer at Bare Bones when it opened in 2015. The Fond du Lac Beer Company taproom is slated to open this May.

Here’s more about the history of beer in Fondy.

Peoples and the Chief

The Oshkosh Brewing Company closed in 1971. The brewery quickly sold its brands – including Chief Oshkosh – to its neighbor across the street, Peoples Brewing Company. These two display ads were issued by Peoples shortly after the sale.

If you’d like to read more about Chief Oshkosh Beer going to Peoples follow this link.

Mr. Sweet's Impossible Dream

At the turn of the century, Oshkosh was known everywhere as a city full of saloons and soaking in beer. Into the swamp stepped an itinerant preacher named Sylvester Sweet. 

A drawing of Sweet from 1904.

Sweet moved to Oshkosh in 1901 to become pastor of the Second Baptist Church on Ninth Avenue (it no longer stands).

Second Baptist Church. Looking southwest from 9th & Nebraska streets. Courtesy of Bob Bergman.

Sweet quit the church three years later over a money dispute and then ran for mayor as a Prohibitionist. He promised that, if elected, he would purify the city. Oshkoshers showed little interest in being purified. More than 6,000 votes were cast. Sweet received just 121 of them. He moved away a short time later. 

Talking Wisconsin Beer with David Knuth

Dave Knuth of Knuth Brewing recently started a podcast. He asked me to sit in with him for this latest episode to talk about some local beer history. The video of that chat is below, or you can watch it in its larger format here.

Big Ed's House of Pleasure

Bagnio | bäˌnyō

1) A brothel.
2) A bath or bathing house.
3) A prison or slave quarters in the Ottoman Empire.

Big Ed Sanford’s Bagnio was not a bathhouse. And it was far from the Ottoman Empire. Big Ed's Bagnio was on Evans Street in Oshkosh and embodied the first definition of the word.

Ed, Big Ed, Eddie… She wasn’t born that way. These were names she took up after she moved to Oshkosh. When she was making a new identity for herself. When she was burying her past. Eddie didn’t just bury the past. She danced all over its grave.

Big Ed began life as Sarah Dieter, born in 1861 on an isolated farm in Waupaca County. Sarah was 17-months old when her father left to fight in the Civil War. He was discharged four months later after he came down with pneumonia. The Army shipped Private Dieter back to Wisconsin. He got home just in time to die. He left his wife, Emeline, little Sarah, and 10-month-old twin daughters named Blanche and Geneva. Emeline sold the farm and moved them to nearby Auroraville where her husband was buried.

When Sarah was 14, she was made pregnant by her 19-year-old cousin named John Shannon. On Christmas Day 1875, Sarah gave birth to their child, a boy she named Dewey. Dewey was the maiden name of Sarah’s mother and John Shannon’s mother. Dewey may have never known the true circumstance of his birth. All his life he told people he was born in Oshkosh.

Sarah Dieter married John Shannon in the spring of 1878. The union was merely a formality. Nonetheless, Sarah had a new name. She was Mrs. Sarah Shannon now and about to leave dreary Auroraville behind her.

Old Auroraville, in southeast Waushara County.

Sarah Shannon, her baby Dewey, her mother Emeline, and her twin sisters moved to Oshkosh in early 1879. Sarah lived apart from her family. She boarded with a family of strangers in a cramped home on Elmwood Avenue, behind Kaehler’s Brewery. Baby Dewey and the others lived about a mile away on Fulton Avenue. Sarah got a job making shingles at J.L Clark’s mill on the river. It was a miserable job paying starvation wages. She endured it for about a year. Then she disappeared.

From 1881 through 1883, Sarah went without leaving a trace. The only hint of her whereabouts were the uncollected letters addressed to her at the Oshkosh Post Office. This is when she remade herself. When she reappeared, she was Ed Sanford. Or Big Ed, or Eddie, depending on the day. She had shaved two years off her age and had established herself in the Oshkosh underworld as a prostitute. Big Ed was a big success. On March 1, 1884, she bought a home on credit near the corner of Evans and Parkway and made it her bagnio. Big Ed became infamous there.

The Evans Street neighborhood, 1877. The red square indicates the location of Big Ed’s Bagnio.

This section of the old Fourth Ward was the outskirts of town in 1884. Evans Street was a dirt road that cut through a sparse neighborhood and dead-ended at Irving. Lots of open land. This was about to change, but it was a good place for a bagnio when Big Ed arrived there. Her site was secluded enough to afford privacy yet easy to reach from the business district and downtown saloons.

Big Ed’s Bagnio was one of at least eight houses of prostitution operating in Oshkosh in 1885. A healthy number for a city with a population of 20,000. Eddie’s was the second brothel on Evans Street. The first was launched by Annie Jones almost two years earlier. The Jones house trafficked in young runaways and was a constant source of scandal. Despite the odium, Jones endured. Her bagnio survived until about 1908.

Big Ed was less brazen, more cunning. She was arrested so often that she must have become numb to the routine. But she never played it that way. The other sporting women tended to treat their court dates like a farce. When asked to state their name, they'd respond with something suggestive like Kitty Reddy or Augusta Prong. Big Ed was different. An 1886 appearance before Judge Charles Oellerich was characteristic. “Eddie Sanford, you are charged with keeping a house of ill-fame,” the judge scolded her. Big Ed responded by bursting into tears.

“I don’t see why my house should always be picked out for an example,” Big Ed pouted and wiped away tears. “I am sure we are just as quiet and orderly as can be. There won’t be any sporting women in town tonight. They are all leaving now so they won’t have to pay any fines. I don’t care anyway, but I don’t think it's fair to always pick on me.” A trio of her fellow sporting women were also in court that morning. They looked on in amusement as Big Ed reached into her stocking, produced a roll of bills, and peeled off her fine: $28.25 (about $950 in today’s money).

The sensitivity wasn’t entirely an act. Big Ed was haunted by her infamy. In the summer of 1885, she attempted an escape with an overdose of morphine. The druggist assured her that the pills were “sufficient to send a person out of this world.” Not quite. But it took her more than a week to recover her faculties. While she languished, her notoriety grew. Stories circulated that she’d been jilted by a young man she’d lavished money upon. Eddie later denied the rumors. She said the rash deed was triggered by a cocktail of poor health, a fit of the blues, and her desire to quit the life she’d been living. Big Ed’s dark night of the soul passed. And she went right back to work.

Big Ed’s twin sisters, Blanche and Geneva, followed their sister into the sex trade. Whatever modesty Big Ed possessed was entirely lacking in Blanche and Geneva. They were known professionally as “The Twins.” They dressed exactly alike and operated in tandem as Birdie and Delia Fox. Their manager was a degenerate pimp named Richard Eighme. Birdie (Blanche) eventually married him.

In July 1886, The Twins bought a seven-room, two-story home at the southwest corner of Irving and Evans, just down the block from Big Ed. They were going to turn it into a brothel. The neighbors flew into a moral panic after getting wind of the plan. They formed a neighborhood committee and quickly succeeded at driving The Twins out. The property was sold back to the original owner, and The Twins split for the south side, where they established an odious fleshpot known as The Cottage.

Fresh off their success at expelling The Twins, the neighborhood committee went after Big Ed. The group circulated a petition and then brought it to the common council demanding the eradication of whoredom on Evans Street. Big Ed toyed with them. She circulated a counter-petition that collected more signatures than the petition attached to the complaint filed against her. The neighborhood committee got even less cooperation from the city attorney. He dismissed their complaint.

Eddie’s relationship with local officials tended to be cozy like that. The police were often tolerant, though they drew the line at her flat refusal to take out a license for the bottled beer she sold to her visitors. She knew how to curry favor with the cops when required. In late 1886, she put them on the path of a pair of safe crackers who’d been committing robberies across the state. While visiting Big Ed’s Bagnio, they talked up their exploits. After they left, Big Ed tipped off the local police. The duo was captured shortly thereafter. The cops repaid the favor. Big Ed went more than a year before her next arrest.

By 1887, Big Ed had arrived at a place rarely reached by women in her line of work. She ran a respectable house catering to the venereal appetites of temperate people. In three years, she had managed to pay off the property that was home to her bagnio. The neighborhood was filling in, but her new neighbors seemed to more or less accept her. And aside from the arrests for selling liquor without a license, the police were tending to look the other way. The Daily Northwestern crowned her “one of the queens of the demi-monde” and a “woman of considerable education.” That was easy to believe, but in fact, she had almost no education.

Beyond the house on Evans Street, though, her life was always up for grabs. Big Ed’s son, Dewey, was being raised by her mother, Emeline Dieter, in a home on Jefferson Street. Her sisters Blanche and Geneva often resided there as well. As the Fox Twins, they were a constant on the police blotter. Their pimp, Richard Eighme, was usually there with them. Emeline Dieter had tried to drive Eighme away from her daughters. She attacked him with a cane in 1888. Eighme retaliated by punching the 59-year-old woman in the face. He got 20 days in jail. It went on and on like this.

In 1889, Dewey was 14 and going to public school. He may have not yet known that Big Ed was his mother. Or maybe he didn’t want to acknowledge that. Dewey was using Dieter as his last name when his mother passed away.

Big Ed died unexpectedly from an undiagnosed heart ailment on Sunday, March 10, 1889. She was nine days shy of her 28th birthday. There was talk of sending her remains to Auroraville to be buried in the Pine Grove Cemetery next to the father she never knew. That did not come to pass. She was buried in Riverside Cemetery on March 12. A single rose is etched onto each side of her obelisk-shaped marker. Engraved on the face of the marker, under the name Sarah Shannon, is her Big Ed age: 26 Yrs.

Riverside Cemetery.

Big Ed’s Bagnio wasn’t closed for long. It appears The Twins moved in almost immediately after her death. They still lacked the class of their older sister. Six months after the death of Big Ed, her former neighbors on Evans Street were back on the warpath. They went to the city council again for help, claiming the home had become the frequent scene of “midnight orgies.” This time, they got action. The Twins were again driven away from Evans Street.

Big Ed’s mother, Emeline, was appointed caretaker of her estate. The court also gave her guardianship of Dewey. Emeline and Dewey moved into the home on Evans and remained there until 1899. There was no more trouble. Dewey grew into adulthood in the house that had been his mother's brothel.

In 1896, a church was built next door to the home. The lurid history of that corner had already faded away.

The dedication of St. Paul's Evangelical Church, October 18, 1896. The church was remodeled in 1908.

Blanche and Geneva put The Twins to rest. Geneva married a boxer named George Finney and moved away. Blanche never left the sporting life. In 1898, she was shot to death by a jealous lover, a florist named George Miles. The murder occurred at the home on Jefferson Street. Blanche was 37 and still known to all as Birdie Fox. Her killer went free.

After Blanche’s death, mother Emeline and Dewey moved to Kenosha, where they lived with Geneva and her husband, the boxer. Emeline died there in 1908. Dewey, whom she had raised, was out of the picture by then and using Shannon as his last name. Dewey was married in 1910. He and his wife never had children. Dewey Shannon died in Kenosha in 1961 at the age of 85.

At the northwest corner of Evans and Parkway, everything is, of course, very different. Solutions Recovery, an addiction rehab group, purchased the former St. Paul's Church and its parish buildings in 2007. The church was left to rot and, in 2015, was torn down. In 2023, Solutions Recovery built an addition to its main facility, which sits directly atop the spot where Big Ed’s Bagnio once stood. The past can be such a curious prelude.

Solutions Recovery

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The 50-Year Club

Oshkosh had more than 90 taverns in 1975. All but a few of them are gone. Some were condemned and knocked flat. Others went broke and were turned into another kind of business. A bunch of them were sold and given new names sometime after 1975.

Outside of Tosh’s on the old Wisconsin Strip. Tosh’s is among the taverns of ‘75 that didn’t survive.

There are just 12 left from the class of 1975. Twelve taverns that had the same name and address in 1975 as they do in 2025. It’s time for a bar crawl. Here, in order of seniority, are the 12 members of Oshkosh’s 50-Year Club.

#1 Jerry’s
1210 Ceape

This is the oldest bar of the bunch. In fact, Jerry’s appears to be the oldest existing tavern in Oshkosh. The tavern’s lineage stretches back to April 1878, when Herman “Onkle” Heinze received the first license for a saloon at this location. Heinzie’s Saloon also featured a bowling alley that ran along the east side of the building.

Jacob Wenzel purchased the saloon in December 1883. This picture was taken around that time.

The saloon became known as Jerry’s in 1911 when Gustav “Jerry” Wesenberg took over. The tavern is now in its fourth generation of family ownership.

Gustav “Jerry” Wesenberg in front of his bar, circa 1960.

#2 Acee Deucee
1329 Oregon

Acee Deucee was built in 1876 for Anton Koplitz. He was a German-born farmer living in the Town of Black Wolf. The place began as a grocery store run by his sons Anton and Edward. In early May of 1878, Edward purchased a liquor license and began the transition from grocery to saloon. There has been a bar here ever since.

The Theodore and Frank Koplitz Brother’s Bar, circa 1900.

The bar became Acee Deucee in 1944 after Jimmy Pollnow moved out of his bar at 1301 Oregon. He took the Acee Deucee name with him. Pollnow relocated a block south to 1329 Oregon, which has been the home of Acee Deucee ever since. This is the Southside's longest-lived tavern.

#3 Oblio’s
434 North Main

Oblio's resides in a building designed by Oshkosh architect William Waters. Its construction was completed in late 1884. The following spring, the first saloon opened here. It was called the Schlitz Beer Hall and operated as a tied house owned by August Uihlein, the chairman of Schlitz.

Main Street Oshkosh 1887. The sign for the Schlitz Beer Hall can be seen at the upper right corner of the photo.

The Oblio’s name came in 1974 when Mike Hottinger and Jon Voss bought the business. They took the name Oblio from musician Harry Nilsson. He was on acid when he was visited by thoughts of a strange boy named Oblio. Nilsson turned his hallucination into the main character of his 1970 concept album The Point!

I guess you had to be there.

#4 Mabel Murphy’s
701 North Main

June 14, 2021.

The first bar at the northwest corner of Main and Irving was opened by Albert Thom in 1890. He had groceries in front and liquor in the rear.

Thom's Grocery and Saloon, circa 1891.

It became Mabel Murphy’s in 1974. But the Mabel’s you see there now is an altogether different model. The old bar burned to the ground in 2019. The new Mabel’s reopened on the same plot in June 2021.

Early morning, May 7, 2019.

#5 Houge’s
51 West 7th

Gottlieb Luhm launched the first saloon at the southeast corner of 7th and Nebraska in 1889. He called it the Third Ward House. Above the saloon, Luhm ran a boarding house occupied by Southside factory workers. In the early 1900s, the saloon was owned by Rahr Brewing of Oshkosh and operated as a tied house.

Henry Kossel behind the bar. He became the proprietor of the saloon in 1912.

In 1956, Carl Houge bought the property and put his name on it. Hogue tore down the old saloon in 1966 and replaced it with the current building. It’s been Houge’s for 74 years.

#6 Trail’s End
500 Merritt

Trails End in the mid-1960s.

Back to the east-side for another institution still going strong. What is now Trails End got started in 1892 when young John Steir opened the first saloon here. He hooked up with the Oshkosh Brewing Company three years later and turned it into a tied house.

Van’s Tavern in the early 1930s. Bill Vandenberg bought the bar in 1923 and ran it for nearly 40 years.

The bar became Trail’s End in 1960. This may be the best-known tavern in Oshkosh. It’s been made famous by the hot dogs they’ve been serving there for the past 100 years.

Bob Winkelman of Bob’s Trails End. Winkelman has had the bar since 1985.

#7 Nigl’s
556 West 9th

The lot at the northeast corner of 9th and Ohio was purchased by the Oshkosh Brewing Company in January 1897. About six months later, OBC opened a tied house on the property, with a dancehall above and a saloon below. The Nigl name became attached to the saloon in 1900. It looked nothing like the building you see there now.

Nigl’s Saloon, circa 1900. The seated man in the white shirt is the proprietor, Joseph Nigl, Sr. His son, Joseph Nigl, Jr., stands in a light-colored shirt next to the children. Nigl, Jr operated the tavern across the street at the northwest corner of 9th and Ohio.

Joseph Nigl Sr. retired in 1901. His spot behind the bar was taken by his 21-year-old nephew, Alois Nigl. Alois was there for the next 30 years.

Behind the bar at Nigl’s, 1914. Alois Nigl is on the left, the shorter of the two men.

Fire, rebuilding, and remodelling have shaped this place into what it is today. But 125 years later, it’s still called Nigl’s. No other tavern in Oshkosh has retained its name for as long as this place has.

#8 The Stadium
301 Knapp

Joseph Suda bought the vacant lot at the southwest corner of 4th and Knapp in 1904. A few months later, he got a loan from saloon owner Herman Steckbauer and began building. In 1906, Suda opened his own saloon there.

A photo from the early 1900s. “Suda’s Tavern” is written on the back. Photo courtesy of Dan Radig.

Harold Koeck took over in 1941 and named it the Stadium. In 1996, it was renamed TG’s Bar. That name stayed until 2004 when it went back to being the Stadium. Hence the sign saying “Back Again” that hangs over the door today.

#9 Jockey Club
24 East Gruenwald

The early history of this Nordheim tavern would have been lost if not for the crimes committed there. For example, we might not know that there was a saloon at this spot in 1910 if the owner, George Davis, hadn’t been busted for selling booze to minors. And we wouldn’t know that Davis ran it as a blind pig in 1911 if he hadn’t gotten caught selling liquor without a license. His son, Luther Davis, took up the family tradition. Luther was busted for running a speakeasy there in 1924. The following year, Wisconsin Governor John Blaine pardoned him. This place was always special.

The 1960s, when George Genal ran the Jockey Club. Photo courtesy of Dan Radig.

The Jockey Club name was pinned to it in the summer of 1932. It was still a speakeasy. The bootleg booze was so lucrative that the Jockey Club offered free fish fries on Saturday nights. Crime pays. In 1933, Prohibition ended, and so did the free fish. The Jockey Club went legal, and the outlaw romance faded. But the Jockey Club remains.

#10 Leroy’s
701 Knapp

Thee Leroy’s Bar.

The home of Thee Leroy’s Bar was built for Leo Schmutzer in 1909. Schmutzer started off there selling shoes and such. That business went nowhere. So 1914, Schmutzer took out a liquor license and turned the place into a saloon.

It became Leroy’s Bar in 1949 when Leroy Youngwirth took over. Leroy ran the bar until 1991. He passed away nine years later. But Leroy is not forgotten. He was one of those old-school Oshkosh tavern keepers who could be simultaneously awful and wonderful. His name still hanging above the door is the type of tribute he would have appreciated.

Leroy Youngwirth.

#11 Parnell’s
2932 Fond du Lac Road

Some may object to Parnell’s being classed as a tavern instead of a restaurant. The objection is overruled. There’s too much tavern history here to cross Parnell’s off this list. This place goes back to at least 1938 when Herbert Lemke opened a classic, rural-route tavern here.

The bar became Parnell’s in the summer of 1974.

August 8, 1974.

Since then, Parnell’s has grown into something akin to a supper club. But the tavern is still at the heart of this place, so it belongs in our 50-Year Club.

#12 Kelly's
219 Wisconsin

At just 50-years old, here’s the baby of the bunch. Kelly’s was born in January 1975. It emerged from the bones of a gas station.

The former occupant at 219 Wisconsin.

Kelly’s is the lone bar on this tour that has had just one name over the course of its history. When Kelly’s opened, it joined a bracket of other taverns that formed the Wisconsin Strip: Tosh’s, Andy’s Library, My Brother’s Place. All of those have been bulldozed. Kelly’s is the sole survivor.

Hipsters on the Strip in the 1970s.

That’s the Oshkosh 50-Year Club. There are few cities our size with so many enduring taverns. This would be a great bar crawl. Don’t wait too long. Even the best of them can slip away…

Al Repp behind his bar in 1966.

Al Repp closing his bar for the last time in 2018.

Repp's 2019

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