The Saloons, The Reverend, and the Wicked City of Oshkosh

Sunday, September 30, 1900... 

Rev. George D. Lindsay mounted the pulpit and began preaching on the wickedness of Oshkosh. Lindsay was the pastor of Oshkosh's First Presbyterian Church. His sermon was nothing the congregation hadn't heard before. Outsiders had been spewing this sort of drivel at Oshkoshers for close to 50 years.

Rev. George D. Lindsay

Lindsay had come to Oshkosh two years earlier from Galena, Illinois having served as a pastor there. Upon leaving Galena, Lindsay wrote that his "call to Oshkosh is attended by so many indications of divine Providence that I could not refuse it."

His messianic zeal may have been coming across a little too harsh on this particular Sunday. Lindsay eased up for a moment on the talk of wickedness. He told his parishioners that he had never lived in a more beautiful place than Oshkosh or in a city more pleasantly situated. He said he would be content to spend all the days of his life here.

Home base for Lindsay in Oshkosh, the First Presbyterian Church
at the corner of Church and Division streets.

But Lindsay hadn't been delivered onto Oshkosh to indulge in its beauty. "Oshkosh has a reputation for wickedness," he said, getting back on track. "Manufacturers do not care to remove their institutions here when they know that their mechanics will be subject to temptations that can be avoided in other places. Men do not wish to remove to Oshkosh with their families when they know that their sons and daughters will be tempted in ways that are not open in some cities."

Oshkosh’s population grew by 50% during the city’s peak saloon years of 1885-1912.

Where others saw a thriving city, Lindsay saw an infestation of rot. And the source of Oshkosh's rot was obvious to him. It was the saloons.

Ironically, this is where Lindsay’s sermonizing finally makes contact with reality. Amidst the jumble of his raving, he delivered a nice, concise description of how the typical Oshkosh saloon of 1900 was laid out. The Reverend will now lead us on a saloon tour. His words come to us via the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern of October 1, 1900. Imagine yourself stepping off Main Street and passing through the swinging doors...

MODERN OSHKOSH SALOON
"Mr. Lindsay described the modern Oshkosh saloon. First, he said, there is the place where cigars are sold."

Cigars and bottled goods for sale in the anteroom of the
Oasis Sample Room, at what is now 416 N. Main.

 "Then a partition behind which is the bar."

The barroom at the Zayat Saloon at what is now 224 N. Main.

"After that, behind another partition, is a place where men may sit and play cards and drink."

The club room in the Little Cozy Sample Room, a former saloon at what is now 216 N Main.

 "After that, comes another place where men may meet women and drink wine and liquor."

The gathering room with a back entrance at
the White Seal Saloon, in what is now the 300 block of N. Main. 

The partitioned saloons Lindsay describes were cased in long, narrow spaces. You had to pass through the length of one room to reach the next. The map below is from 1903 and illustrates the shape of Nic Stein's saloon at what was then 138 N. Main (now part of the 400 block). Stein's place was near the northeast corner of N. Main and Washington.

The red dot is above the entrance to Nic Stein's Saloon on
the east side of N. Main Street just north of Washington; Circa 1910.

The rectangular floor plan can still be seen in many Oshkosh taverns. The southern half of Oblio's – it was called the Schlitz Beer Hall when Lindsay was doing his thing – presents a good example. The long, narrow, main room leads to a separate space at the back of the building where there once was a club room. That space had a separate entrance off an alley that's now part of the parking lot behind Oblio's.

Oblio's Lounge, 434 N. Main St.

The backside of Oblio's from what used to be the alley.

Which brings us back to Rev. Lindsay. He despised those alleyway entrances. He referred to it as the “alley evil”.

Lindsay's bombast was undermined by the admission that he knew there was no hope of abolishing saloons in Oshkosh. The American-born reverend said there were too many Irish and German here for that. "We may abominate the saloon," he explained, "but the majority of the people want it and it is therefore going to remain."

The Bohmerwald saloon at the corner of 9th and Knapp, circa 1900.

Yet somehow all that wickedness had to be contained. Lindsay had a plan: regulate the saloons into submission. He graded his proposals as "not too puritanical."

Lindsay said all the saloons should be confined to a single, isolated district where the cops could patrol them continuously. There should be NO neighborhood taverns. Each of the remaining saloons would be allowed just a single entrance with NO doorway to the alley. NO chairs or tables would be permitted. NO free lunches served. NO card playing. NO alcohol served on Sundays or election days. NO remaining open into the wee hours. "Ten o'clock is an hour when all decent people should be in bed," he quivered.

Poor Lindsay. They'd have none of this in Oshkosh. He ended his sermon on a wistful note.

"Mr. Lindsay once more paid a beautiful tribute to the city of Oshkosh and concluded with the observation that if the saloons could be placed under the restrictions he had enumerated it would be almost a paradise. A place where he would be content to spend the remaining days of his life in contentment and pleasure."
   –Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, October 1, 1900.

It was not to be. Lindsay left Oshkosh two years later. He moved on to a church in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. But his hatred for saloons never left him. Lindsay was arrested in 1916 for his anti-saloon agitation in Marion, Indiana. He had relocated there in 1907 after quitting the church.

George D. Lindsay died in 1946 in Sarasota, Florida. Sarasota had been a dry town for more than a decade when Lindsay arrived there in 1925. Let's hope that made him feel a little more at home.

A photo of George D. Lindsay taken during his Sarasota days.