Sunday, July 6, 2025

Oshkosh’s Bathtub Bootleggers

Stories about Prohibition are too often over-populated with flashy gangsters like Al Capone or Bugs Moran. But in Oshkosh, those stories never rang true. Here, the war against Prohibition wasn’t fought by gangs with guns. It was waged by homebrewing amateurs with “alky cookers” and crock jars making bootleg liquor for their friends and neighbors.


What they made went by all sorts of names: Moonshine. White Lightning. White Mule. Bathtub Gin. Some made wine. Many made beer. Their basements were chambers of distillation and fermentation. They sold their goods to supplement their working-class income. There were hundreds of such people in Oshkosh. They began with the dawn of Prohibition in 1920 and continued until the dry law was recalled in 1933. This city was crawling with bathtub bootleggers. Folks like these…

Dove Street Donker
Moonshine was just a side hustle for Ted Donker. His main gig was cutting wood at Paine Lumber. In his free time, the Netherlands-born Donker ran a low-key distillery in his home on the old West Side of Oshkosh. Donker’s place is still there.

The former home of Ted Donker, at 1109 Dove Street.

Donker’s bootlegging was more discreet than most. He didn’t take the risk of selling his booze on the underground market. Donker’s moonshine appears to have been made for a specific customer: his father-in-law, George Morasch.

Morasch had converted the living room of his home on Oshkosh Avenue into a blind tiger, an illegal bar, where he sold drinks to people from the neighborhood. Oshkosh was peppered with places like this. Drinkers felt less exposed to arrest when partying in a neighbor’s living room than they did at a speakeasy.

Morasch’s home and blind tiger (indicated by the arrow) is seen here in April 1922. This later became the site of Tiger’s Den Bar, 1224 Oshkosh Ave. The lot is now vacant. Photo courtesy of Bob Bergman.

Ted Donker’s bootlegging came to an end on the Saturday afternoon of February 3, 1923. He was home from work, cooking up another batch of white mule when the cops arrived. They caught him in flagrante delicto with two barrels of fermenting mash and two gallons of finished moonshine. Donker was carted off to jail. The following Wednesday, he faced the judge and confessed his guilt. Donker paid a $250 fine and headed back to his job at Paine Lumber.

Bruette’s Blind-Sided Tiger
Peter Bruette had been a saloon owner before Prohibition. He bailed out after the dry law hit, and opened a micro-mart at his home, which still stands.

Peter Bruette’s former home, 514 W. Lincoln Ave.

You couldn’t fit much of a store in such a small space. But selling coffee and cigars wasn’t the point. Bruette needed a pretext for all of the people traipsing in and out of the place. His home was a blind tiger where he sold homemade wine for 15 cents a glass, or about $3 in today’s money. That was a bargain, especially after Prohibition inflated the cost of alcohol.

Home winemaker’s like Bruette often used Grape Brick to make their wine. One brick produced a gallon of wine. Grape Brick was readily available in Oshkosh during Prohibition.

Bruette’s wine room was raided in 1926 after one of his customers ratted him out. Matthew Paulick had gotten stewed at Bruette’s dive on a Saturday night in January. The cops found Paulick later that evening stumbling down Parkway looking for his home, which happened to be on Waugoo. Once in custody, Paulick spilled his guts. The cops then headed to Bruette’s house and caught him red-wine-handed.

Bruette appears to have struggled with the art of ​​vinification. One of the wines confiscated at his house measured just 1.7% ABV. Another came in at an exhilarating 17.3% ABV. The unpredictable quality may have accounted for the low price.

Kinderman’s Cave
A Southside carpenter named John Kinderman took the underground booze scene in Oshkosh to another level. His moonshine was actually produced under the ground. Kinderman had carved out a subterranean cave behind his home on West 7th Avenue. He then built an addition to his house over the secret cavern. It concealed one of the largest home-based distilleries in Oshkosh.

Kindermann’s former home at what is now 1131 W. 7th Ave. The red arrow points to the addition Kinderman built over his secret cellar.

Kinderman was a Bohemian immigrant who took to bootlegging shortly after Prohibition began. By the time he was busted in May 1925, he was producing moonshine in quantities few could match. But the raiding squad was stumped when they invaded his home. The only hint of Kinderman’s crime was the rank odor of moonshine brewing.

One of the cops kept sniffing around. His nose led him to the crawlspace under the new addition to the home. Poking his nightstick into the ground, the cop heard the rap of wood on wood. He brushed away the dirt to find a hatch into Kinderman’s booze crypt. Down below, he spotted a doorway into the basement under the original construction. The investigator pushed open the door and saw his stunned fellow officers staring back at him.

The Oshkosh Police Force during the early years of Prohibition.

Kinderman had disguised the doorway into his secret chamber by sawing concrete blocks in half and securing them to the door from the cave side with screws. The blocks fit seamlessly into the basement wall, flawlessly concealing the passageway. One of the cops later called it “The most perfect piece of bootleg camouflage ever discovered in Oshkosh.” It wasn’t perfect enough.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, May 5, 1925.

Stashed inside the cave was a whopping 70 gallons of moonshine and a 40-gallon still. Kinderman was hit with a $500 fine (about $9,000 today). John Kinderman gave up on moonshine, but he didn’t leave the racket. His singular talent for building secret spaces brought him to the attention of other bootleggers. But that’s a story for another day.

Living next door to John Kinderman was a fellow bootlegger named Frank Schneider. The former Schneider home at 1127 W. 7th Avenue is shown on the left.

The Moonshine Wunderkind
Kinderman’s next-door neighbor had whiskey ambitions, too. But Frank Schneider couldn’t squeeze a distillery into his cramped life. He was working 60-70 hours a week at Paine Lumber and living with his wife and their eight kids in a 900-square-foot home (one bathroom). Schneider solved his dilemma by finding an accomplice who could provide him the space to realize his illegal aspirations.

His collaborator was Joe Paulus. Like Schneider, Paulus was a Bohemian, Czech-speaking immigrant. He also worked at Paine Lumber. More importantly, Paulus had an old, roomy home near the lonely south end of Knapp Street.

The Paulus home circled in red at what was then the nearly desolate end of Knapp Street just north of 18th Ave. The area has since filled in substantially. Click the image to enlarge it.

Schneider built a still and set it up at Paulus’ house. Finding time to operate the thing, though, seems to have been an issue. Luckily for Schneider, Joe Paulus’ son Frank took an interest in what his father’s weird friend was cooking up in the basement. By 1922, possibly earlier, 15-year-old Frank Paulus was running the still. He may have been Oshkosh’s youngest moonshiner.

Young Frank made the moonshine. Old Frank peddled it. But Schneider was somewhat less careful than his teenage counterpart. Police got wind of the operation in early 1923 and secured a warrant to search the Knapp Street home. Young Frank was busy brewing up another batch when the cops came calling at 10pm on Saturday, January 27, 1923.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, January 29, 1923.

Police quickly determined that Frank Schneider was driving the operation. He was slapped with a $250 fine. The case against Joe Paulus was dismissed. Fifteen-year-old Frank was put on probation. And so ended the promising career of the precocious bootlegger.

No Escape
Prohibition resistance was in Frank Penzenstadler's blood. He was the sixth child from a hard-drinking, saloon-owning family of Bohemian immigrants. With the arrival of the dry law, he slipped into moonshining. It was the natural thing to do.

The Penzenstadler family of Oshkosh. Frank appears in the back row on the right. His father, Edward, is seated in front of him. Edward ran a saloon at the northwest corner of 9th and Knapp. In the back row on the left and wearing a bow tie is John Penzenstadler who operated a saloon at the southeast corner of 9th and Ohio. Photo Courtesy of Janet Wissink.

Frank’s day job had him cutting stone for Wenrich’s Granite Works on Main Street. His nights were devoted to his avocation: cranking out liquor in his home at 737 W. 5th Avenue. His fountainhead was a 10-gallon still that he made from a wash boiler.

A wash boiler still similar to that used by Frank Penzenstadler.

By 1922, Frank was known well enough in illicit booze circles to have drawn the attention of federal agents. Most often, they were occupied with syndicates and speakeasies. But Frank was among the unlucky dozen they went hunting for when 13 feds crashed into Oshkosh on the Friday evening of January 6, 1922.


The feds got Frank, along with his still, and 12 gallons of pure moonshine. He paid a $250 fine. Then he went home and built a 12-gallon still.

A year later, the county sheriff was hunting him. Frank was caught again at his home in the summer of 1923. He had more than 50 gallons of high-test moonshine there. Frank was in deep shit. The second offense and the quantity of liquor meant jail time. He slipped out the back door while the deputies were rummaging through the home he shared with his wife, Adeline, and their six children.

Frank went on the run, holding out for two weeks before giving himself up. They gave him four months of hard labor at the abhorrent county workhouse. It did not go well. Frank became unhinged about a month into his sentence. He was moved to Oshkosh’s Northern State Hospital for the Insane.


Frank was released from the asylum about six months later. His frame of mind had not improved. He seems to have believed that Adeline betrayed him in some way. He was bent on retaliation. Frank got back to the city in late March 1924 and immediately attacked his wife. Adeline saved herself by hitting him with an iron. Frank was arrested and thrown back in jail.

He was back on the street a couple of days later. Adeline took pity on him, and the two reconciled. But six months later, he was gone for good. Frank died of tuberculosis on October 8, 1924. A bad end for a troubled man.

Sacred Heart Cemetery. Oshkosh.

Last Call
Frank’s bitter end wasn’t the ordinary route out of Prohibition. Ted Donker’s life after moonshine was far more typical. He and his wife, Matilda, raised six kids at their Dove Street home where he used to run his still. He was employed as a woodworker in Oshkosh for 48 years. Donker died in 1956 at the age of 73.

John Kinderman returned to carpentry, working for many years as a cabinet maker at the Radford Company. He lived to the ripe age of 92. He and his wife, Mary, had four children. His secret cave might still be there.

Peter Bruette and his wife, Anna, raised their three kids in the former blind tiger where Pete sold his wine. Following his arrest, Bruette took a job at Oshkosh Trunks and Luggage. He passed away at age 63 in 1947.

Frank Paulus, the teenage bootlegger, turned 18 and got married three days later. He and his wife, Lucy, had eight kids. Paulus worked at Morgan Door as a supervisor for 40 years. He was an avid reader and liked to hang out at his cabin in Richford. He was 90 when he died in 1997.

Frank Paulus, the teenage bootlegger, later in life.

The Prohibition adventures of people like Pete Bruette and Frank Paulus were consigned to the past. These folks were often reluctant to share their stories. As the years went on, it became evermore difficult for them to explain their arrests and criminal past to a younger generation who couldn't possibly understand what that period had been like. The days of bootleg booze were left to fade away.


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Sunday, June 8, 2025

Moonshine on the Frog Farm



Prohibition began in 1920... But there was no chance America would go authentically dry as long as there were places like Oshkosh and people like Frank Kinderman. Oshkosh was too attached to its drinking culture to let it go. And Frank Kinderman was incorrigible, dedicated to nothing but defiance.

Southside Hooligan
Frank Kinderman was born in 1896. His parents were Bohemian immigrants who settled in Oshkosh in 1889. Frank was the sixth of their 10 children. The Kindermans were Southsiders. Their home was on Iowa Street in the old 9th Ward.

The former Kinderman Home, 1650 Iowa Street.

Frank was living there when he was 14 and dropped out of school. He had learned to read and write, but there was little else they could do for him. The classroom didn’t engage his inclinations. He liked to prowl the night and get into things. The Southside was full of scenes to investigate: Railroad yards, lumber yards, breweries, factories, the back doors of saloons…

He developed a taste for petty crime. Breaking windows, stealing cases of beer from box cars, trespassing… that kind of thing. He was an infamous delinquent with a stack of arrests by age 16. He earned 20 days in the county workhouse, then a term in reform school, and finally, a two-year stay at the Wisconsin Reformatory in Green Bay.

Breaking rocks at the Wisconsin Reformatory, circa 1914, about the time Frank arrived there.

Between detentions, Frank worked as a frogger for Emil R. Neuenfeldt, the father of Oshkosh frogging. Neuenfeldt sold frog legs to restaurants and hotels throughout the Midwest. He had a frog farm near 7th and Sawyer but also relied heavily on local “froggers” to supply his merchandise. Guys like Frank fished frogs from practically every backwater within 25 miles of town.

Emil Neuenfeldt with cigar and frog.

Frank was out of the reformatory and working for Neuenfeldt when he was drafted in 1918. He landed a spot in the Naval Reserves, a unit established in anticipation of America’s entry into World War I. Frank shipped out that summer, but the war ended that fall. He returned to Oshkosh and frogged. He used his military money to buy a Ford Roadster that could do about 45 mph if he really pushed it. Frank pushed it.

He was 23 now. A man of medium build with blonde hair and blue eyes. He wooed a Southsider named Clara Metko. They were married at Sacred Heart in September 1920. In July 1921, Frank and Clara had their first child, a girl named Anna. Ten days later, they signed a land contract on a home and lot at what is now 1017 Knapp Street. Frank immediately put a frog farm there.

1017 Knapp Street. Behind the home a now abandoned track for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad framed the west edge of the triangular lot.

The Frog Farming Bootlegger
Frank had his own business, a family, and the legit appearance of someone making his place in the world. But the impression was misleading. He was bootlegging by the fall of 1921, if not earlier. The frog farm worked as a conduit into a booming underground liquor scene. Some of the restaurants Frank sold frog legs to also operated as speakeasies.

A Prohibition-era ad for the Bohmerwald when it operated as speakeasy at the southeast corner of 9th and Knapp, one block north of Frank’s frog farm.

Oshkosh in 1922 was already awash in bootleg beer and booze. With a population of less than 35,000, the city was home to approximately 90 speakeasies. This had always been a drinking town. The local police had little interest in disrupting that culture – dry law or not. Federal and state Prohibition officials were far less tolerant.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, January 7, 1922.

A company of 13 Prohibition officers landed in Oshkosh on the Friday evening of January 6, 1922. They raided twenty places in all, most of them speakeasies. Frank Kinderman was caught in the dragnet. At his frog farm, the dry-squad found two gallons of moonshine packaged for sale and 200 gallons of mash for future distillation. The officers dumped the liquor, confiscated Frank’s 10-gallon still, and hauled him to jail. One of the feds said it was “just a start of the cleanup” they were planning for Oshkosh.

Frank waived his hearing and pleaded guilty to the charge of manufacturing and selling illegal alcohol. As a first-time offender, he wasn’t looking at jail time. But the conviction relieved him of $250 (about $4,750 in today’s money). Saturday morning, Frank was back home with his family and frogs.

Woodshedding
At least one of the speakeasies raided that night in 1922 was connected to Frank’s operation. The Wisconsin Club Saloon at the northeast corner of 5th and Ohio had been converted into a speakeasy when Prohibition began. Adolph Novotny had a hand in both this place and the aforementioned Bohmerwald speakeasy. Novotny, a 37-year-old Bohemian immigrant, was in cahoots with Frank.

Players Pizza & Pub, formerly the home of the speakeasy at 5th and Ohio.

Neither Novotny nor Frank was unnerved by the 1922 raid. The frog farm distillery was back in the news a year later.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, January 10, 1923.

This time was different. This time, the raiders were Oshkosh cops. It was a duty they were reluctant to perform. But the persistent complaints of neighbors could not be ignored. Discretion was never part of Frank’s style.

The cops came knocking at his door with a search warrant on the Wednesday afternoon of January 10, 1923. Frank wasn’t home, and Clara refused to let them in. The Oshkosh police were unaccustomed to this sort of work. Instead of executing their warrant, they went back to the station for instructions. Meanwhile, Clara called Novotny and told him there was trouble.

Novotny rushed over and, along with a frogger named Otto Thoma, began getting rid of the evidence. They hid the main still and a barrel of moonshine in a woodshed next door to the frog farm. They dumped most of the mash down the sewer. Novotny was still at it when the cops returned. They arrested him and scoured the frog farm. They found what they were after in the woodshed. A sample drawn from the barrel of moonshine measured 94 proof.

Frank was arrested later that day and indicted the following morning. Police claimed the equipment and volume of contraband amounted to “the largest seized here by officers of the law in a long time.” He was charged on counts of possession and production of illegal liquor and as a repeat offender. This time he was facing jail time. Six months minimum.

But Frank was doing well enough now that he could afford the best lawyer in the racket. Frank B. Keefe was the favored counsel of Oshkosh’s hardcore bootleggers. The trial was set for the courtroom of Judge Arthur Goss. The judge knew all about Frank. Goss had presided over Frank’s criminal past and his initial induction into the penal system.

Judge Arthur Goss.

Goss gaveled the court to session and Keefe went straight for the cops, mocking their bumbling raid. Goss was flabbergasted when the jury returned a not-guilty verdict. He sent the jury back to their chamber with a new set of instructions. They reemerged with a new verdict: guilty. Keefe called for a mistrial. Goss, incensed by the chaos in his court, rejected the motion, slammed Frank with a $500 fine, and sent him to jail for six to ten months.

Keefe promised to take the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but it appears he quickly struck a deal. Frank was out of jail in a matter of days. He remained untamed. A few weeks later, Frank was busted in his roadster for speeding down High Street at 42 mph.

Betrayal
In September 1923, Clara gave birth to their second daughter. Despite having two children and two convictions, Frank remained oblivious to the potential consequences of bootlegging. Or most any other consequences. He racked up more speeding tickets and was busted for poaching in the waterways of Green Lake County. He kept the frog farm sputtering along while doubling down on his moonshining efforts. He built a bigger still and expanded his distribution.

The reckless ambition was fueled by his drinking. Like many bootleggers, Frank was a little too fond of his product. His boozing appears to have tipped over into alcoholism around 1925. Clara couldn’t stand it anymore. She filed for divorce in 1926. Oddly enough, their marriage was temporarily saved by another raid.

This time it wasn’t the Oshkosh police on an unwanted errand. This raid was arranged by Frank B. Keefe, the new Winnebago County District Attorney.

Frank B. Keefe

The former favorite of the bootleggers had won the D.A. slot in the November 1926 election. A month after being sworn in, the man who knew all of Frank’s secrets sent a team of sheriff’s deputies to the frog farm on Knapp Street. Everything went as planned.

Frank’s distillery was flowing when the deputies barged in on a Friday afternoon in early February 1927. They found five gallons of finished moonshine ready for packaging, another eight barrels of mash on deck, and according to Sheriff Walter Plumber, “a large number of jugs in sacks, evidently on hand for delivery.” The wellspring was an elaborate 30-gallon still that could kick out 10 gallons of white lightening a day. A day like that would net over $100; more than $2,000 in today’s money. Tax-Free.

Keefe never said a word about his previous involvement with Frank. He said he began his investigation after receiving complaints about bootleggers at the frog farm. “The case revealed that Kinderman has been engaged in the illicit liquor traffic on an elaborate scale,” Keefe said. As if he hadn’t already known that.

At least Frank didn’t have to stand in front of Arthur Goss again. He drew Judge Daniel McDonald, whose affiliations were of a decidedly anti-Prohibitionist bent. Frank knew the score and pleaded guilty at his initial hearing. The judge went somewhat easy on the three-time loser. He fined Frank $800 (more than $14,000 today) and sentenced him to six months in the notoriously vile county workhouse. It could have been worse. McDonald could have sent him away for years.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, February 5, 1927.

River's End
Frank got out of jail as the summer of 1927 was dimming into autumn. He was at a dead end. The frog farm had perished. He was 30 years old with two kids and a wife who despised him. Bootlegging was out of the question. He finally resorted to the sort of work he had always avoided. He got a job as a laborer at the Badger Lumber plant on Campbell Road.

A sanding room at Badger Lumber.

He lost his job at Badger and then he lost his wife. Clara divorced him in March 1929, blaming the split on Frank’s habitual drinking and his inability to support the family. She said Frank had beaten her numerous times while he was drunk. Clara got the kids and the house.

Frank was going down at a steady clip. He lived at his parent’s home on Iowa Street and drifted along working sporadically at menial jobs. In 1932 he slipped back into the illicit liquor scene. He began bartending at a speakeasy on Wisconsin Avenue. The place was run by a couple of bootleggers, Butch Youngwirth and Eddie Kollross.

Frank was 35 now and hooked up with a 23-year-old named Ella Schneider. Ella knew the life. Her father had been a Southside bootlegger and may have been connected with Frank when the frog farm went wet. Ella got pregnant in the summer of 1932. She and Frank were married in December. Their child was born three months later.

Frank and Ella’s son, Dennis Frank Kinderman; March 23, 1933 - January 29, 2022.

A few weeks before Dennis was born, Frank ruined his setup with Butch and Eddie. He got drunk and broke into their speakeasy on a Monday night in February 1933. Frank knew where they hid the money. He got $133 and was arrested two days later. He pleaded guilty and begged for mercy, saying his family was dependent upon him. There had to be some raised eyebrows in the courtroom when the judge said he would take “the previous good record of Kinderman” into account. Frank was let go with four years probation and a promise to stop drinking.

That, of course, was a promise Frank could not keep. On the Sunday afternoon of April 23, he was out with his older brother John and a bootlegger named Ralph Metko; a cousin to Frank’s ex-wife, Clara. They were drinking and decided to go fishing off a barge moored on the Fox River in front of the Cook & Brown Lime Company.

Cook & Brown on the north shore of the Fox River between the Main and Jackson street bridges.

Something happened on that barge that was never explained. There were conflicting reports. One said Frank and his brother John were grappling when they fell into the river. Another claimed Frank was talking about “ending it all” and then clutched John before they tumbled off the barge.

In any case, they both went into the water. Ralph Metko used a pole to help John back onto the barge. Frank, who was said to be a superior swimmer, went down and never came up. John and Metko waited about five minutes and then called the cops. Police dragged the river and 30 minutes later came up with the body. Frank Kinderman, age 36, was pulled from the water onto the dock and pronounced dead.

Recent aerial view with a red oval marking the approximate location of Frank Kinderman’s drowning.

The matter was brushed aside despite the peculiar death and the inconsistent stories.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, April 25, 1933.

Was it murder? Suicide? Or was it just a drunken accident? Each seems plausible. By the spring of 1933, there was no place left for Frank. Prohibition was being repealed. The bootleggers were being made redundant by the return of legal liquor. Frank had always been a spectacular failure when trying to live a “normal” life. Despite his arrests, bootlegging was the only pursuit where he achieved anything like success. But those days were gone. Frank’s time had passed.

Riverside Cemetery. Frank Kinderman; November 21, 1896 - April 23, 1933.


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Sunday, May 4, 2025

Bar Crawling with Robert Brand

The Robert Brand & Sons Company built almost everything needed to outfit a saloon: bars, backbars, screens, cigar and liquor cases, booths, ice boxes... Brand was to Oshkosh’s drinking culture what William Waters was to our architecture. The company never got the recognition Waters did, but like Waters, Brand’s legacy is still with us.

The Brand Company nameplate that appeared on much of its work.

In Randy Domer’s new book, Remember When, I have a chapter on the history of Robert Brand & Sons. You can pick up a copy of Domer’s book at his presentation this Wednesday, May 7 at the Oshkosh Public Library (more on that here). 


I thought now would be a good time to take a look at Brand’s lasting imprint on Oshkosh. And how that imprint is fading.

The Brand Company plant at the southwest corner of Ceape and Court streets, circa 1917.


Robert Brand was born in ​​Dundee, Scotland, in 1840. He was seven when he came to America with his ship-building father. The Brand family settled in Janesville. Young Robert followed his father into the carpentry trade. He built boats and cabinets and coffins. Brand was also a musician. His first visit to Oshkosh came in 1860 when he was touring with the Bower City Band of Janesville. Brand said the Oshkoshers welcomed him with “good fellowship” and a bottomless flute of champagne. He never forgot it. In 1867, Robert Brand moved here and began building boats.

Robert Brand, circa 1880.

Brand’s company would go on building boats in Oshkosh for nearly 40 years. But by the 1880s, the firm was getting better known for its interior work. Saloon interiors became a specialty. One of Brand’s early saloon clients was an English immigrant named William Englebright. His upscale ale house at the southwest corner of North Main and Algoma was outfitted by Brand to include a back bar tattooed with decorative scrollwork. Those furnishings no longer exist.

That’s the case with so much of Brand’s work. The first wave of barrooms designed by Brand has been lost. Unlike the architect Waters, Robert Brand and his sons, William and Robert Jr., worked in a medium that got little respect. The interior design of a saloon was beneath the consideration of Gilded Age tastemakers. Luckily, saloon-hopping journalists in Oshkosh had an eye for such things. The opening of the Brand-designed Senate Sample Room on Washington Avenue caused a Daily Northwestern reporter to gush with appreciation…


“It is a work of art in every respect. Immediately upon entering this place one is attracted by its exquisite beauty. The prevailing colors and tints, all harmonize and blend in making a happy and charming whole. The woodwork is of African mahogany, and the marble was quarried in the Alps. The electric light shades have an olive green tint and the remainder of the lighting fixtures are of oxidized brass. The four columns supporting the main fixtures back of the bar are in the Italian renaissance, Corinthian. It is no idle boast to state that the Senate is the most handsome place of its kind for many miles distant from this city.”
     – Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, March 28, 1903.

A Brand bar that reflects the description by the Daily Northwestern reporter, with a four-column back bar in the Corinthian style.

The “exquisite beauty” of the Senate Sample Room is long gone, replaced by a parking lot.

There are some survivors, though. Brand designed the interiors for many of the neighborhood bars that were being established in Oshkosh in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These saloons tended to be less elaborate than their Main Street counterparts. But Brand’s work in these places remained distinctive. A model called The Grant was especially popular among Oshkosh’s smaller saloons.
The Grant.

The Grant wove a bundle of influences into a compact frame. The design juxtaposed Ionic and Corinthian motifs and was laced with the ornamental scrollwork that had become the company’s signature. Two variations of the Grant model remain in use in Oshkosh. Here’s the version at Bob’s Trails End, 500 Merritt Ave.


There’s also a Grant at HQ Bar & Grill, 1309 Oregon Street. This was formerly a Rahr Brewing tied house. Rahr often used the Brand company to equip its saloon properties.

HQ Bar & Grill.

On Oshkosh Avenue was another Rahr Brewing tied house outfitted with a Grant. This saloon was built in 1912 and was most recently known as the Tipsy Otter, which closed in 2024. Earlier this year, the back bar was salvaged and restored by the Harp Gallery of Kaukauna. Here’s a recent shot of that piece…


In Butte des Morts, Jimmie's White House Inn is home to the area's best-kept Brand & Sons saloon work from the early 1900s. Most of the wood fixtures at the White House Inn came out of the Brand factory on Ceape Avenue.

Jimmie's White House Inn.

Jimmie's White House Inn.

Brand’s work wasn’t confined to the Oshkosh area. By the early 1900s, the company sent most of its saloon furnishings to Schlitz Brewing in Milwaukee. Schlitz parceled out the pieces among its nationwide network of tied houses.

That wing of the business crashed in 1920 with the onset of national Prohibition. But Brand & Sons survived. The company was never solely reliant on the saloon trade for its solvency. It also produced wooden interiors for banks, municipal buildings, and commercial spaces.

Oaks Candy Corner, 1200 Oregon Street, presents an excellent example of Brand’s Prohibition-era output. Designed and installed in 1927, the interior of Oaks was modeled after “the taverns of old.” These are transitional pieces, but the earlier influences are evident. It retains the feel of the saloon work that preceded it.

Oaks Candy Corner.

Brand & Sons jumped back into the taverns when Prohibition ended in 1933. The classical motifs and scrollwork were abandoned. A more modern, art-deco influence now predominated. The new look was in full force for the 1935 Brand remodel of the Peacock Bar and Restaurant near the northeast corner of Main and Washington. The winding, 36-foot cocktail bar was a symbol of a new era.


There is no better-surviving example of Brand’s bar work from the 1930s than the back bar at Oblio’s, 434 N. Main Street. This former Schlitz tied house was remodeled and re-equipped by Brand in 1936.


More than 110 taverns opened in Oshkosh within a year of Prohibition ending. Most of them were saloons before 1920. Many needed updating. Brand went on a tear, re-outfitting the old sample rooms and bringing them up to date.

In 1939, Brand went to work on an east-side tavern at the corner of Rosalia and Winnebago. This place dates back to 1888. Today, the name is Woodchuck's Bar & Grill. Its Brand-built back bar is now in its 86th year of service.

November 17, 1939: the grand reopening of Luck’s Tavern (now Woodchuck’s) after it was re-equipped by Brand & Sons. Brand often sponsored ads in the Daily Northwestern to promote its latest work.

Woodchuck's Bar & Grill.

In 1940, Brand built a new bar for the tavern that is now Andy's Pub & Grub on 9th Avenue. The curving lines, mirrors, and lighted sconces are typical of Brand’s work through the 1940s.

Andy's Pub & Grub.

At Boot’s Saloon on the corner of Merritt and Boyd, there’s a bar that is almost certainly a Brand piece. It displays all the traits of the company’s post-Prohibition work.

The back bar at Boot’s Saloon.

For every surviving Brand bar in Oshkosh there are probably a dozen that have been lost. Some might recall the Brand bar inside the Columbus Club at 1821 Jackson. The building was demolished in 2012 to make way for a mound of corporate blight named Dollar Tree. At least the bar was saved. It was sent to a buyer in Roswell, Georgia.

The departed Columbus Club's Brand bar.

Recreation Lanes opened on South Main Street in 1939 and was equipped with a Brand bar. The bar was removed after the tavern and bowling alley closed in 2017. The Brand fixtures ended up in the taproom at Cercis Brewing in Columbus, Wisconsin. Cercis closed earlier this year. The bar and the building it is in are currently for sale.

The Recreation Lanes bar at Cercis.

Bar furnishings made of particle board coated with veneer and formica became commonplace in the 1950s. The synthetics were low cost compared to Brand’s custom woodwork. The company’s tavern work dropped off. Brand couldn’t compete in a market where customers were willing to settle for something that looked like this…


The last bar shipped out of the Brand factory was made for the Pioneer Inn in 1965. A year earlier, Robert Brand & Sons had been sold to Chadwick Manufacturing of Coleman, Wisconsin. Chadwick closed the Oshkosh facility in 1967. In 1968, the plant was torn down. An office building and parking lots are there now.

217 Ceape Avenue.

But the work of the craftsmen who plied their trade there remains. Oshkoshers gather around it daily. It’s an overlooked yet enduring piece of our culture.



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