Taverns of the Old West Side

The taverns of the old West Side were home to a post-Prohibition social scene that welcomed people from every part of Oshkosh. West Algoma, as it was often called, was no longer an isolated community of Volga Germans. Two of the city’s most cherished taverns formed a gateway into the neighborhood.

Gordy’s Bar on the left and Repp’s Bar on the right at the east-end entrance to the old West Side.

On the north side of the street was Repp’s Bar. Alvin Repp was born on the West Side in 1910. He was the son of Volga Germans who migrated from Russia. His father had worked at Paine Lumber. Alvin did not follow. He skipped through a string of jobs until September 1943, when he took a loan and bought the Bass Tavern at the northwest corner of Oshkosh Avenue and Rainbow Drive. The Repp family would run that bar for the next 75 years.

The Bass Tavern circa 1943, when Alvin Repp purchased the property. Alvin’s son Alan stands in the foreground. Happy John’s Tavern is visible on the left.

Happy John’s saloon was across the street. It was built by the Oshkosh Brewing Company in 1903. “Happy” John Wawrzinski ran the place for almost 30 years. In 1945, Gordon Guetzkow stepped in. Gordy was born in 1915 and raised on the east side of Oshkosh. He was working as a bartender when World War II took him away. When he got back he got hired on at Happy John’s. Gordy bought the business in 1946. He renamed the place after himself four years later.

Gordy’s Bar at the southwest corner of Oshkosh and Sawyer.

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.

West of Sawyer, on the north side of the 1200 block, was the strip. A tight grouping of four taverns and two beer depots. The photo below shows the West Side strip at its peak, circa 1952.

1) Gordy's Beverage Mart (just the west edge of the building appears in this photo)
2) Felda’s Bar
3) Vic’s Arcade
4) The Arena Tavern
5) West End Beverage
6) Wenzel Heinzel’s Tavern

1) Gordy's Beverage Mart
Gordy Guetzkow of Gordy’s Bar bought this property in 1950. It was home to the West End Beverage beer depot then. Gordy pushed that business out and, in 1951, put in Gordy’s Beverage Mart. In the old days, this place was owned by Louis W. Tyriver. A meat market occupied the ground floor. Tyriver’s LWT Hall was on the floor above. Both were icons of the West Side in the early 1900s.

The white building with the extended awning is LWT Hall, which later became Gordy’s Beverage Mart. 1922.

2) Felda’s Bar
This was another Louis W. Tyriver legacy. Tyriver opened the first saloon at this spot in 1914. He sold the bar in 1941 to Henry Felda. a Volga German who migrated from Russia. After Henry died in 1947, the bar passed to his brother Fred Felda. The picture below was taken during Fred’s tenure there in 1953. The lubricated group out front were members of Felda’s West Algoma Brush Club.

3) Vic’s Arcade
This was the old Morasch speakeasy. George Morasch and his son Adam went legit after Prohibition. They called their now-legal bar the Forty-Second Rainbow Tavern. The name came from the celebrated infantry division composed of an ethnically diverse group of Americans, much like the West Side itself. Vic Elmer, who grew up in the neighborhood, took over in 1951 and changed the name to Vic’s Arcade. In 1953, he partnered with Norm Kulibert and renamed it Vic & Norm’s Bar.

Vic & Norm’s Bar, 1953.

4) The Arena Tavern
The Rahr Brewing Company built this saloon in 1912. That same year, a Volga German from Russia named Henry Lautenschlager migrated to Oshkosh. He began running the tavern in 1950 after years of working at Paine Lumber. His son, Henry Jr., was a partner in the business. Young Henry was better known as Wimp.

Fight night, June 5, 1952, at the Lautenschlager’s Arena.

5) West End Beverage
Arnold Wesner moved his West Side Beverage to this spot in 1951 after being booted from his original location by Gordy Guetzkow. Wesner was a beloved figure on the old West Side. He was a first-generation American, the son of Russian immigrants. His beer depot was known for having the best prices in Oshkosh. You’d buy a case of beer and Arnie would hand you a couple of extra bottles to go. He was there for almost 20 years.

Arnold Wesner and a 71-inch sturgeon, February 1955.

6) Wenzel Heinzel’s Tavern
Heinzel came out of Prohibition with his zeal and speakeasy intact. He was among the first in Oshkosh to acquire a tavern license when beer and light wine were legalized in April 1933. Heinzel was there for almost 50 years. He finally hung up his apron in 1953 and leased the bar to Canadian-born Rheinhold “Mickey” Weitz. The place was called Mickey’s for the next 30 years.

Mickey’s Bar, 1969.

The West Side Undone

The first sign of the West Side’s undoing was posted in 1957. The neighborhood’s main street had been called West Algoma Street since the 1880s. That name was lost in a flurry of city-wide street renaming. The West Algoma signs were removed. The new signs said Oshkosh Avenue.

Two years later, Felda’s Bar was torn down. Fred Felda sold his saloon to Mueller-Potter Drugs in July 1959. Mueller-Potter was in the store next door. Felda’s was demolished to make way for an expanded drugstore.

Felda's & Mueller - Potter, before and after. This later became Accu Com Inc.

Oshkosh was pushing further westward now. In 1966, the city annexed Westhaven, a 160-acre housing development cut from farm fields west of Highway 41. It was the seed for what would be the new West Side. And over the next two decades, the old West Side went from being a distinctive community to an indeterminate middle ground. A place passed through to get somewhere else.

The neighborhood had not been designed with automobiles in mind. The intersection of Oshkosh and Sawyer was too constrained. The city wanted to ease the congestion and began acquiring properties in the 1200 block of Oshkosh Avenue. One by one, the old taverns were eliminated.

In 1974, the City of Oshkosh purchased Gordy’s Bar, the old Happy John's place. The building was demolished to create a wider berth at the intersection of Oshkosh and Sawyer. It didn't help.

Demolition of Gordy’s, 1977.

The tight sense of community that set apart the West Side was rapidly eroding. With the erosion came the decline of the neighborhood’s tavern culture. By the 1980s, the disintegration was undeniable. Some of the taverns were falling into disrepair. Turnover occurred ever more frequently. The strip was getting seedy. LWT Hall became an adult bookstore. Vic’s Arcade had turned into Tiger’s Den, an unlikely integration of a strip joint and bait shop.

Clearcutting began in the latter half of the 1990s when the former Tiger’s Den and West End Beverage buildings were torn down. The photo below shows the 1200 block of Oshkosh Avenue, circa 1998, following the demolition of the old West End Beverage. A red car is parked where that building had stood. The bar with the Pabst sign is Den Again, previously home to Tiger’s Den and Vic’s Arcade. This building was demolished soon after the photo was taken (click photo to enlarge it).

At the end of the block was the tavern that Miller Brewing built in 1897. It had been called Mickey’s since 1953. On the side of the building were painted plywood caricatures of Mickey Mouse hoisting a beer. In 1989 Edythe Horn, who then ran the tavern, got a letter from Walt Disney lawyers demanding that the caricatures be taken down. Down they went. In 2001, the city issued a "Raze & Remove" order stating that the building had become "dangerous, unsafe and unsanitary, and otherwise unfit for human habitation." Down it went.

Edythe Horn and the drinking Mickey’s, 1989.

The 2001 demolition of the bar.

In 2014, the Oshkosh Redevelopment Authority issued a blight designation for the site where Louis W. Tyriver opened his West Side social hall in 1915. Its best days had long since passed. The dilapidated building was demolished in 2016.

The former LWT Hall. Burning in 1984 and shortly before its demolition in 2016.

Repp’s Bar was still there and it was still in the family. After Alvin Repp died in 1968, his son Alan took over. Alan Repp made that bar his life’s work.

Alan (left) and his father, Alvin Repp, in 1966.

Repp’s Bar had always stood out among the West Side taverns. Built by Louis W. Tyriver in 1903, the tavern with its eye-catching turret had been a West Side beacon. But the turret had been removed and the tavern was now a prelude to a dead zone. Inside Repps, though, the spirit of the old neighborhood was still intact. Standing behind his immaculate bar, smiling as always, Al Repp was glad to tell you what it used to be like.

“It was really family then,” Repp recalled in 2017. “Lots of kids. Everyone would come in. It was a place for meeting. We had all kinds. Germans. Polish. Rooshins. It was pretty closely knit. There were families here. These were neighborhood bars. There were six bars on this block. They all had their different personalities. But it all changed. Night and day. You can’t compare it.”

Repp's, circa 1949.

The City of Oshkosh acquired Repp’s in 2018. A year later, the 116-year-old tavern was torn down.

March 19, 2019.

All this destruction is in the service of a proposed traffic pattern. A route that allows people to quickly glide through the forgotten West Side on their way to some other place.

The proposed traffic pattern for the intersection of Oshkosh and Sawyer.

There’s just one tavern left to remove.

1226 Oshkosh Avenue, 2007.

This is the saloon built by Rahr Brewing Company in 1913. The building underwent extensive remodeling in 2008, an improvement that left it unrecognizable. It is the last of the old West Side taverns. It’s being taken apart as I write this. Inside was a showpiece bar built for the saloon by Robert Brand and Sons of Oshkosh. The piece was recently removed to Kaukauna by a company that salvages and sells antiques.

The renovated 1913 backbar built by Robert Brand and Sons.

The building will soon be gone. And with it will go the last public space once inhabited by the social life of the old West Side.

1226 Oshkosh Avenue; April 9, 2025.

This is the third in a three-part series of stories.

Part 1: Saloons of the Old West Side

Part 2: Speakeasies of the Old West Side

Part 3: Taverns of the Old West Side

Thanks again to Dan Radig for help with photos used in this series. Thanks also to Jim Backus, Bob Bergman, and Randy Domer for additional photo help.

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