 |
| What was once known as the Laus Block at 576 & 578 North Main Street. |
But this story isn’t about candy. It’s about what happened after a part of that building was leased to a trio of scofflaws and how they used it as a clubhouse for their underworld adventures. This story begins with the death of Joe Laus.
 |
| Joesph Laus. |
Laus had been making candy in Oshkosh ever since moving here from Milwaukee in 1879. He’d come to the right place. If a city is known by its appetites, then alcohol and candy would be the cravings that explain 1890s Oshkosh. With a population of 27,000, the city supported 120 saloons and 25 confectioneries. Joe Laus thrived here. Right up until he died in 1925.
His children inherited the business and the building. The candy company occupied the north half of the Laus Block, what is now 578 N. Main. The south half – 576 N. Main – was vacant. The Laus kids kept the candy shop running, but then did something Joe Laus would never have done. Two months after their father died, they leased the adjoining space to three young men who wanted to open a soft drink parlor.
Maybe the Laus kids were supremely naive. Or maybe just careless. In Oshkosh, “soft drink parlor” was synonymous with speakeasy. Having an illegal booze dive next door to the home of the Caramel Nut Sucker was no way to sell candy.
 |
| Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; June 23, 1926 |
The perpetrators of the speakeasy were Arvin “Dick” Schrader, Herb Koeck, and Roman Schwartz. Dick Schrader was the oldest of the bunch and, initially at least, the ringleader. He was a 26-year-old baker and World War I vet. Schrader’s wife was Herb Koeck’s sister..
Herb Koeck was a 19-year-old Southside fighter. He grew up in his father’s saloon at the corner of 6th and Knapp. He was better known as Battling Herb. Koeck quit school at 15 and began his boxing career about a year later.
Rounding out the trio was Herb Koeck’s unlikely best friend, an Eastsider named Roman Schwartz. He had been an honor student and noted athlete before he started running with Koeck. Schwartz was 17 when he quit school in 1923. That summer, Koeck and Schwartz tried walking to California. The trek gave them plenty of time to talk about what they'd do when they got back to Oshkosh.
The Green Front Inn
You had to get a $50 license to run a soft drink parlor in Oshkosh. Dick Schrader put in the application and moved into the apartment above 576 N. Main. And at the end of June 1925, the Green Front Inn was open for business.
There were approximately 90 speakeasies in Oshkosh that summer. That figure doesn’t include the countless beer flats and blind pigs hidden in private homes throughout the city. Competition among the illegal booze merchants was fierce. Koeck, Schrader, and Schwartz hit upon something novel to make their place stand out: boxing.
 |
| Battling Herb Koeck (left) and Young Shaw. |
Battling Herb and Young Shaw were Oshkosh’s two most popular boxers. Battling Herb had a mauling style. His attack described as tiger-like. Young Shaw, whose real name was Bill Schraa, was a headhunter. A devastating puncher who could “deal out dreamland wallops with either paw.” On more than one occasion Shaw broke bones in his hands while hammering an opponent’s skull.
Koeck and Shaw trained in a make-shift gym squeezed in at the rear of the speakeasy. The fighters would go through their paces and then spar for a few rounds with different opponents. It became a popular attraction, and the Green Front Inn became the headquarters for Oshkosh boxing fans. On fight nights, they’d gather and get lit, then head out the back door and slide down the block to catch the latest boxing card at Armory B.
 |
| Armory B at the north east corner of Merritt and Jefferson; the home of boxing in Oshkosh in the 1920s. |
The Green Front Inn was the talk of the town by the fall of 1925. It was one of the few Oshkosh speakeasies to receive press coverage for something other than being raided. Which led to it being raided.
On the Thursday evening of October 29, a squad of state Prohibition agents swept in and ordered everyone out… except for Dick Schrader. The mop squad found more than a dozen bottles of moonshine. Schrader was arrested and taken away to spend the night in jail. His first call was to attorney Richard “Romeo” Laus, son of the late Joe Laus of candy company fame. The Green Front Inn gang would keep Romeo busy for some time to come.
Two months later, the Green Front Inn got busted again. The dry squad returned on December 28, 1925 to find Battling Herb Koeck taking a break from his training with a bottle of moonshine. Koeck went the same route as Schrader: a night in jail as prelude to a lengthy court battle where every shred of state evidence was disputed. The flimsy denials paid off. Both cases were eventually dismissed.
The Kindermann Cabinet
The Green Front Inn had become a symbol for the freewheeling liquor trade in Oshkosh. The attention presented a significant downside. State Prohibition agents were now determined to bring the place down. Koeck, Schrader, and Schwartz had never been careful. Their only concession to the dry law was to stow their stockpile of moonshine in a coal bin just outside the back door. Inside the speakeasy, caution was thrown to the wind. Now, they had to do better than that.
 |
| The rear entrance and back yard of the former Green Front Inn. The coal bin where moonshine was hidden was just outside the lower door on the left. |
What they needed was a spot inside the speakeasy where they could conceal the booze when they were pouring drinks. There was a Southside carpenter who specialized in this kind of thing. John Kindermann was known among Oshkosh bootleggers for his architectural subterfuge. His masterwork was the underground distillery in his own backyard near 7th and Sawyer. The dugout was accessed through a secret door in his basement. It was the most elaborately concealed moonshine plant in Oshkosh.
Kindermann was hired to build a hidden compartment in the Green Front Inn. He devised a plan for a tall, hidden cabinet built into a wall between the bathroom and the barroom. The cabinet would be accessible through a concealed hatch. With the hatch closed, the cabinet full of moonshine would be undetectable.
A week after Herb Koeck’s bust, Kindermann went to work building the secret chamber. He was toiling in the early morning hours, when both the candy company and speakeasy were closed. Kindermann was there when a cop walked by the Green Front Inn just after 3 a.m on the Tuesday morning of January 5, 1925.
 |
| Officer Elmer Ludwig squeezed in a motorcycle sidecar. |
Elmer Ludwig was the city’s pioneering motorcycle cop. But he had to walk the beat when it was too cold for cycling. He was also one of two sharpshooters on the force. Scouting a deserted Main Street in the frozen wee hours was a step down from the sort of excitement he liked. This morning, though, was different.
Ludwig noticed a faint light coming from the back of the Green Front Inn. He saw a man moving around in the dim glow and assumed it was a burglar. Ludwig ran around the corner, down Parkway and to the back of the building. He pounded on the back door, demanding that it be opened. Through a window, he spotted Kindermann heading for the front door. Ludwig took off after him.
The cop raced around the corner and saw Kindermann running south down Main Street. Ludwig chased after him on the icy street, shouting for him to stop. Nothing doing, Kindermann kept running. Ludwig couldn’t keep up. He pulled out his pistol and fired a warning shot. Kindermann was getting away. Ludwig took aim and fired again.
The bullet went through Kindermann’s right leg, shattering his fibula. The carpenter went down hard in the parking lot of the Gibson Tire Company. Ludwig called in for help. Kindermann was scooped up and carted to the hospital. John Kindermann recovered. The Green Front Inn went on life support.
 |
| A 1926 drawing of the Gibson Tire Company at what is now 537 N. Main. |
 |
| The former Gibson Tire Company, now the Gibson Social Club, and the approximate spot where Kindermann was shot. |
Punching Out
The shooting and secret moonshine cabinet made for splashy news in the afternoon paper. The uproar pushed Dick Schrader over the edge. Six wild months at the Green Front Inn was all he could take. Schrader signed off and moved out.
That left Herb Koeck and Roman Schwartz. Neither had yet turned 21. That alone should have excluded them from getting the permit required to keep the place open. Except it didn’t. A few lies later, the license was transferred to 20-year-old Battling Herb Koeck. Battling Herb wasn’t quite living up to his name anymore.
A boxer training in a speakeasy may have been novel, but it wasn’t especially productive. Koeck had been struggling in the ring ever since the Green Front Inn opened. In December 1925, he was knocked out by a Milwaukee boxer named Joe Ortez. It was the last time Koeck would get a main event bout. Battling Herb Koeck was never the same.
 |
| Joe Ortez and the card for Battling Herb Koeck’s last main event, December 11, 1925. |
Things were going no better at the Green Front Inn. The city council unanimously rejected Koeck’s application for license renewal in 1927. So Roman Schwartz applied for it. After some debate, the license was granted. And that didn’t sit well with state Prohibition officials.
State agents raided the Green Front Inn again in February 1928. They dug six pints of moonshine out of the coal bin and arrested Roman Schwartz. The agents must have been disappointed not to find Herb Koeck there. The raid, clearly some time in the making, smacked of retribution. That same evening, the same squad of agents arrested Koeck’s brother Martin at his home on Seventh Street, and Koeck’s father, Joe, at his speakeasy on Sixth & Knapp. Martin was making moonshine. Joe was serving it. They all went to jail.
 |
| Joe Koeck’s speakeasy at the north east corner of Sixth and Knapp, circa 1928. Now home to the 1890 Pub & Bistro. |
Romeo Laus was back in court with another client from the Green Front Inn. But State officials weren’t going to let Roman Schwartz slip through the cracks like Schrader and Koeck had. After six hours of deliberation, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Schwartz was able to avoid jail time by paying $600 in fines (about $11,000 in today's money). It was the end for the original Green Front Inn.
Roman Schwartz moved to Fond du Lac and declared bankruptcy. He got a job as a janitor and was never arrested again. Schwartz remained in Fond du Lac until his death in 1956 at the age of 50.
Arvin “Dick” Schrader returned to the speakeasy business in 1929. After a bitter fight, the city council narrowly agreed to grant him a license for a former Main Street saloon that had been called the Phoenix House in its heyday. Schrader managed to avoid getting busted there. He remained in the tavern trade in Oshkosh for the rest of his working life. Dick Schrader died in 1982 at the age of 83.
 |
| The Phoenix House Hotel and Saloon which became Schrader’s speakeasy in 1929. The lot is now occupied by the Sideyard at Peabody’s |
Battling Herb Koeck returned to his father’s speakeasy at 6th and Knapp and continued pouring moonshine. He got busted again in 1931. And, again, he managed to beat the charges. He remained in Oshkosh, usually working as a bartender, until 1945 when he moved to San Francisco. He died there in 1951. Herb Koeck was just 45 years old.
 |
| Battling Herb Koeck, circa 1950. |
The Green Front Inn wasn’t quiet for long. In April 1928, a new speakeasy went in. The place was raided once more in 1931. When Prohibition ended in 1933, the former Green Front Inn became a legal bar named the Colonial Tavern. The last bar there was Snookum’s, which closed in 1980. The photo below is from the late 1960s, when it was Ted’s Place with a Chief Oshkosh Beer sign over the entrance.
The former speakeasy at 576 N. Main is now home to the 920 Tattoo Company. No boxing. No moonshine. But there’s a green front once again framing the stores of the old Laus Block. An unwitting nod to the roaring Green Front Inn.
 |
| The 920 Tattoo Company at 576 N. Main, formerly the Green Front Inn. |
 |
| The roof-line mural on the south wall of the former Green Front Inn. |
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.
