Then and Now: Thanksgiving and Beer in Oshkosh

November 1936. Prohibition has been consigned to the past. Beer has been legal for three years. The trip to the beer depot seems normal again.

People in Oshkosh are getting ready for the Thanksgiving feast. They’re stocking up on beer. Most of what they buy is brewed locally: Chief Oshkosh, Peoples Beer, Rahr's Elk's Head.

The Oshkosh Brewing Company places an add in the Northwestern trying to sway people towards their brew.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, November 24, 1936

This fine beer makes good food taste even better… It blends… A whole day of enjoyment… the thoughtful hosts way of saying “Good Cheer.” I love that!

Let’s jump ahead to 1955. Otto’s at 16th and Oregon is offering Thanksgiving specials on beer from all three Oshkosh breweries.

Let's take a short detour. Here's what Otto's looked like back in the day...

Here's what 1528 Oregon St. looks like today...

The local-beer tradition gradually faded. It was extinguished in 1972 when the last of Oshkosh’s breweries failed. Now it's returning.

This weekend I was out running around doing what a lot of Oshkoshers have always done this time of year: picking up beer to share with their friends and family on Thanksgiving. I came home with these....

When I was carrying them into the house, it dawned on me that I’d never done this before. I had never gone out to buy beer for Thanksgiving and come home with 6-packs of Oshkosh-brewed beer. It felt good doing that.

I write all this stuff about Oshkosh beer history, but I’m observing it from a point off in the distance. It can be somewhat alienating. Walking into the house with those sixers the other day was the exact opposite of that. There was no separation. I was doing something that was once common here. I was bringing home Oshkosh beer for the holiday.

That used to be a thing taken for granted. It shouldn’t be. Like the ad says, that’s something to really be thankful for.

Then and Now: The Parading Oshkosh Beer Cans

In 1949, the Oshkosh Brewing Company began canning its beer. The first type of can used by OBC was a crowntainer, a can with a seamless body and funnel-shaped spout. Initially described as a “metal bottle” crowntainers were introduced in 1939 by the Crown Cork & Seal Company.

Here’s a look at an OBC crowntainer.

Here’s how those cans looked from the top.

To help introduce the new package, OBC made a large replica of the can for the brewery’s float in the 1949 Oshkosh Fourth of July Parade. Here’s that float coming down Oregon Street near 8th Avenue.

When the parade was over the can was taken to the home of OBC executive, Lorenz “Shorty” Kuenzl on Bent Avenue. Here’s Shorty’s 14-year-old son John Kuenzl posing with the can.

John Kuenzl would later be a driver for OBC and eventually become president of Lee Beverage of Wisconsin, a beer distributorship based in Oshkosh. Here he is again with his friend Dick Oaks (of the Oaks Candy family).

Earlier this year, the Society of Oshkosh Brewers was asked to take part in this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which took place Saturday on Main Street in Oshkosh. Inspired by the OBC float of 1949, the SOB's parade entry was in keeping with the club's ethos of "Upholding Oshkosh's Brewing Tradition." Instead of doing a single can, though, the SOBs decided to do a six-pack of cans, each adorned with a classic Oshkosh beer label.

Here's the full SOB parade crew just before the start of the parade.

SOB cans parading down Main Street.

Here the cans are piled high in Oblio's after the parade.

A few more shots of the SOBs.

Here's my John Kuenzl reenactment.

Finally, here's a very brief video of the SOB cans executing their crowd-pleasing, figure-eight, six-pack formation.

Much thanks to Kay Kuenzl-Stenerson who was a great help with this post. Also thanks to Chris Bauer, Correen Redlin, and Dick Waltenberry for their pictures posted here.

Then & Now: From Paine Lumber to Fox River Brewing

A couple of pictures. The photo on top was taken just about 100 years ago. The camera was facing northeast from the Congress Ave. bridge. The image it captured shows the Paine Lumber Company. The lower photo was taken this past Wednesday from about the same vantage point. It shows the Fox River Brewing Company Restaurant and Taproom.

Edward Paine with his sons Charles and George opened their first lumber mill in Oshkosh in 1853. It evolved into the Paine Lumber Company, which became the world's largest manufacturer of wood sashes and doors. At its peak in the 1920s, Paine Lumber was the largest employer in Oshkosh with more than 2,000 workers.

Crippled by the stock market crash of 1929, Paine Lumber closed in 1934, then reopened in 1937. In 1959, the company was sold to Louisville's General Plywood Corporation, which closed the plant again in 1971. Local investors re-opened the mill in 1972, but the company went bankrupt ten years later. In 1982, most of the mill was the demolished. The River Mill Condominiums, shown at the far left in each of the images is the only portion of the factory remaining.

In 1995, the Fox River Brewing Company and Fratellos Restaurant was built upon the vacated grounds of the old mill. The brewery and restaurant opened on December 15, 1995. It was the first brewery launched in Oshkosh in 82 years. Fox River is now celebrating the 20th Anniversary of its opening.

Vestiges of the Paine Lumber Company remain. The current Oshkosh Door Company traces its lineage back to the original Paine Lumber Company.

The row houses built by Paine Lumber in the mid-1920s as homes for millworkers still stand along Summit Ave.

And the former Paine Thrift Bank on Congress Ave. is now the offices of the Supple Group, the parent company of Fox River Brewing.

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking a lot about Fox River Brewing. If all goes well, I'll show you why here next Monday.

In the meantime, here's something cool... Fox River has been posting its tap lists on its website. If you click the beer names on the list, most will open the brewmaster's data sheet for the beer. If you're into digging down into the guts of a beer, these data sheets are amazing. I wish more breweries would do this sort of thing. Check it out right here.

Then and Now: Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery

Here we have a couple of pictures of the same building. We'll be looking east from Doty St. just south of W. 16th Ave. The first shot isn't dated, but appears to have been taken in the late 1880s when it was Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery. The picture immediately below it was taken yesterday afternoon. It's now the home of School Stationers Corporation. Built in 1879, this is the oldest intact brewing structure in Oshkosh.

Over the years I've somehow managed to sidestep posting anything here resembling a thorough overview of this brewery. Time to fix that. Here's a chronology of the lead-up and significant events related to Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery.

1851
A 25-year-old German brewer named Leonhardt Schwalm emigrates from his native Saxony. He settles in Winnebago County in the Town of Nekimi.

1852
At the age of 17, August Horn emigrates from Bavaria with his parents Gottlieb and Barbara Horn. The family establishes a farm south of Oshkosh in the Town of Black Wolf.

1858
Schwalm opens a saloon on the south side of Oshkosh in the old 3rd Ward (the precise location remains unknown). An early advertisement for the saloon announces that Schwalm is serving “Excellent Lagerbier,” which he had “Attentively” made.

1862
Schwalm leases the Lake Brewery from Anton Andrea. He produces beer there until 1865.

1865
October: Schwalm purchases four lots south of what is now W. 16th Ave. between Doty and S. Main St. He begins planning his brewery in Oshkosh. It will become the first full-sized production brewery in Oshkosh to be located south of the river.

November: Leonhardt Schwalm purchases the Butte des Morts Brewery from his brother Louis Schwalm.

December: Schwalm sells the Butte des Morts Brewery to Frederick Bogk.

1866
The Schwalm Brewery on the south side of Oshkosh is producing and selling lager beer. There are now six breweries operating in Oshkosh.

The Original Schwalm Brewery

Schwalm sells half his interest in the brewery to August Horn. The two are related by marriage. The brewery is known early on as the Schwalm and Horn Brewery.

August Horn

1870
More than twenty people often reside at at the brewery, including the 15 children of the Horn and Schwalm families. The staff of brewery workers share living quarters with the two families.

1872
Brewery worker Leonard Schiffmann dies after falling into a deep vat of boiling wort at the brewery.

1873
Leonhardt Schwalm dies unexpectedly. He is 45 years old. His cause of death isn't revealed in the reports of his passing. The Schwalm family remains involved in the brewery's operations.

1878
The brewery has come to be known as Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery. It is the second largest of the six breweries operating in Oshkosh producing 1,366 barrels of beer. The Glatz Brewery is the largest producing 1,530 barrels of beer.

A sign at the entrance to Charles Raasch's Main St. Saloon in Oshkosh advertising Horn and Schwalm's beer

1879
The brewery and its store of beer are destroyed by fire. Horn & Schwalm post no production for the year. Following the fire, a new brewery is built at the same location. Constructed of brick, the brewery is 45 x 65 feet with three stories above ground and a large beer cellar below. It has an annual capacity of 3,500 barrels. It is described as the best-equipped brewery in Wisconsin outside of Milwaukee.

The stone-arch entrance to the beer cellars is still intact

A fire insurance map of the 1879 brewery

Leonhardt Schwalm's 21-year-old son, Theodore Schwalm, becomes co-proprietor of Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery.

1883
Theodore Schwalm is placed under Guardianship due to his excessive drinking. He is 25 years old.

1885
The Brooklyn Brewery helps to launch Oshkosh’s Anti-Prohibition Association.

A tornado hits the brewery. The brewery's barn and several of its outbuilding are destroyed. The brick brewery built six years earlier goes unharmed.

Aftermath of the 1885 tornado

1888
Theodore Schwalm dies. Death is attributed to his damaged liver. His widow, Sophia Schwalm, becomes the brewery's co-proprietor with August Horn.

Theodore Schwalm

Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery begins a period of rapid expansion. Production increases to approximately 10,000 barrels annually.

1891
Expansion of the brewery continues. Capacity is increased to 20,000 barrels.
The Brooklyn Brewery becomes the first brewery in Oshkosh to use mechanical refrigeration.
This is now the the largest brewery in Oshkosh. Its beer is being exported to counties in the surrounding area.

1893
The panic of 1893 coupled with increased competition from Milwaukee breweries wreaks havoc for Oshkosh brewers. Horn & Schwalm enters into an agreement with the Glatz Brewery and Kuenzl's Gambrinus Brewery to fix prices on beer sold in Oshkosh. During this period, such price fixing schemes are legal.

1894
Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery merges with the Glatz Brewery and Kuenzl's Gambrinus Brewery to form the Oshkosh Brewing Company. August Horn is named the brewery's first president.

Can you pick out the Brooklyn Brewery within this image?

1894-Today
After the 1894 merger, this facility continued in operation. It transitioned into a bottling plant and offices following the construction of a new brewery on the property in 1912. After the closure of the Oshkosh Brewing Company in 1970, ownership of the property changed several times before being purchased by Robert Stauffer in 1986. The property is currently owned by Robert Stauffer, Jr.

Want more? In the past, I've posted a number of stories relating to Horn & Schwalm on this blog. You can find those here.

Then & Now: From Gemütlichkeit to Ohio Street Station

A couple of photos of the same building at the northwest corner of 9th and Ohio Avenue. The images are separated by 116 years.

This first picture is from 1899. It shows the building when it was a saloon and grocery store owned and operated by Joseph J. Nigl. Down below we’ll get into who some of those folks are standing in the doorway.

And here’s how the place looked this past Saturday.

This spot is central to the beer history of Oshkosh. It all starts with a family of German immigrants named Nigl.

In 1872, Joseph Nigl Sr. moved his family from their Bavarian home to America. They arrived in Winnebago County in 1876. In 1881, Nigl purchased the lot where Ohio Street Station now stands.

Nigl established a grocery store and saloon here in what would become the heart of Oshkosh’s “Bloody” 6th ward. His son, Joseph Jr. assumed ownership of the business in 1890. Both father and son are seen in the 1899 photo. Joseph Sr. stands at the left wearing a hat and white shirt with suspenders. Jospeh Jr., known as J.J., appears in the middle of the photo wearing a white shirt. He’s flanked by his six children. J.J. Nigl’s wife had died earlier in the same year this picture was taken.

The saloon J.J. Nigl operated here, came to be known as the Gemütlichkeit, a German word that has no exact English translation. Coziness, friendliness and good cheer come close. In a neighborhood populated with German and Bohemian immigrants, the saloon’s name was indicative of the strong sense of ethnic identity that prevailed in the area. Here’s a German language ad for the Gemütlichkeit from 1902.

Any translation I’d attempt would result in butchery, but in general the ad highlights the saloons low prices, free lunch, bowling alley, and “Exquisite wines, liquor and cigars.” Nigl was also selling the beer of the Oshkosh Brewing Company. But that was going to change.

By the early 1900s, Nigl and other Oshkosh saloon owners found themselves increasingly at odds with the Oshkosh Brewing Company, which had come to dominate the Oshkosh beer market. Nigl led a revolt against the brewery that culminated in the opening of Peoples Brewing Company of Oshkosh in 1913. The link between Peoples Beer and the tavern that operated here endured for more than 50 years. Here’s an example. This is a photo of the saloon from the 1940s when it was run by Alois “Punky” Nigl.

The tie between Peoples Beer and the saloon was all but lost by the time Peoples Brewing closed in 1972. During the 1970s, the ownership and name of the tavern changed several time before becoming Ohio Street Station in 1980.

The tavern is currently owned by Randy Syvrud, who purchased the property in 2007. If you’ve been by Ohio Street Station recently you may have noticed the sign in the window advertising that the tavern is up for sale. If the next owner decides to change the name, I have a suggestion: the Gemütlichkeit.

Then and Now: Barely & Hops

Here are a couple shots of the same building taken approximately 50 years apart. As always, click any of the images you see here to enlarge them for a better view.

The top picture was taken in the mid-1960s when The Butternut Baking Company made its home at 663 N. Main St. Oshkosh. The photo below it was taken yesterday morning in the rain. It shows Barley & Hops Pub, the current business at this address.

The building was constructed in the summer of 1900. The first resident was William Kienast. He and his family operated a saloon there named The Turf Exchange.

By 1915, Kienast was long gone and The Butternut Baking Company was in. The bakery remained in this location until 1965. After Butternut bit the dust, the building housed a bike shop and, for a short time, a church. Then in 1983, the Patti K. Lounge opened here. The place has been a tavern ever since.

In the winter of 2001, Nate Stiefvater established Barley & Hops at this location. Stiefvater has done much to bring the building back to life. If you’ve been down N. Main recently, you might have noticed the new beer garden that’s taken over the parking lot beside the building.

Back in the Butternut days, that lot was occupied by a stable for the bakery’s delivery team. Here’s a picture showing what that looked like circa 1916.

A couple years, ago Stiefvater began developing a plan for his beer garden. Here’s the original concept for the space. This was drawn up last summer.

Here’s a better look at the near finished result.

An interesting thing happened when they began construction of the beer garden. While digging up the parking lot they came across these two buried under the asphalt.

The clear, soda bottle once belonged to James Laing, a bottler of beer and soda in Oshkosh during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The brown, beer bottle is a blob top from the Oshkosh Brewing Company. This type of bottle used a porcelain stopper instead of cap. OBC used these bottles beginning in 1894 and into the first decade of the 1900s.

It’s hard to believe these bottles survived. Are they remnants from the days when William Kienast was here and The Turf Exchange was in full blush? That could very well be!

For more on the history of this building check THIS out.

Then and Now: Fenzl’s Saloon & Jeff’s on Rugby

Here’s a composite of two photos taken at the same location in Oshkosh about 120 years apart. For a better view, click on the image.

The picture on the left was taken sometime between 1891 and 1894. The photo on the right was taken a week ago. Both show the property at 1005 Rugby St. in Oshkosh, which is now home to Jeff's On Rugby.

The earlier photo shows the building when it was Joe’s Sample Room, a saloon owned and operated by Josef Fenzl. He was born in Unterzassau, Bohemia in 1858. Fenzl migrated to America while in his late 20s and in 1890 purchased the lot where he launched his saloon in 1891.

There’s a couple of details in this photo, I want to point out. Notice that a sign for Kuenzl’s Lager Beer has been painted on the front window of the saloon. Kuenzl ran the the Gambinrus Brewery in Oshkosh and, like Fenzl, was a Bohemian expat.

On the corner of the building is a sign for Horn & Schwalm’s Stock Lager. The dark beer many of the men in the photo are hoisting looks as if it could be a stock lager. This was an unpasteurized beer served from wooden kegs that was popular in saloons.

The horses you see here are pulling a beer wagon from Horn & Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery. At this point in time, the Brooklyn Brewery was the largest brewery in Oshkosh.

Here’s a closer look at a portion of the photo showing more detail. As always, click the image to enlarge it.

Obviously, Fenzl was serving at least a couple of different beers. That would indicate that his wasn’t a tied house. But that would change. In 1906, Fenzl sold this building, where he and his family also lived, along with all of his saloon fixtures to the Oshkosh Brewing Company. Fenzl then leased the property from OBC. The deed/lease, included a couple of major restrictions.

It is provided as a part consideration of said lease that Joseph Fenzl shall at all times handle exclusively the product of said Brewing Company.
        - From a Warranty Deed dated May 29, 1906

The other major stipulation (I’ll spare you the droning legalese) was that for the next five years Fenzl couldn’t operate or be associated with another saloon within five blocks of this one.

That’s about as tied up as a saloon keeper could get. In exchange for the agreement, Fenzl was paid $1,000 and was obliged to pay OBC $300 a year rent.

That means that for $25 a month Fenzl had both his home and business provided for. That $25 would be worth about $700 today. How many tavern owners doing business now might take that offer were it made to them? More than a few, I’d guess.

The arrangement appears to have suited Fenzl well enough. He stayed put for the next 10 years operating what was now a tied house and selling no other beer than that of the Oshkosh Brewing Company.

OBC held onto the property until 1922 when the brewery sold it to Gustave Jeschke. By then Prohibition had been the law of the land for two years. In need of cash, the struggling brewery was looking to deal off some of its former saloon properties. But even though OBC couldn’t make beer at this point, they couldn’t resist adding a restriction to the transaction. The stipulation bound Jeschke “to use and sell the products manufactured by the Oshkosh Brewing Company when same can be legally sold.” Kind of sad, actually.

One more picture. This one is from 1977 when it was Sonny’s Tavern.

Did you notice the Old Style sign? How’s that for irony? It gets better. The Old Style sign was put up by Lee Beverage. The owners of Lee Beverage had once been part owners of the Oshkosh Brewing Company. It goes 'round and 'round...

For more on the tied houses of Oshkosh, check out last Monday’s post.

Then and Now: The Oshkosh Brewing Company

Click the image for a better view.

The top photo shows the Oshkosh Brewing Company, ca 1915.
The photo beneath it was taken yesterday at the same location: the east side of Doty St. south of 16th Ave.

The tall building in the forefront was the brewery of the Oshkosh Brewing Company. Construction of the brewery began in 1911 and was completed in 1912. The Oshkosh Brewing Company closed in 1971. The brewery was demolished in 1986.

The building in the background was built in 1879. A portion of that building remains. It had formerly been Horn and Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery. It became part of the Oshkosh Brewing Company when the business was incorporated in 1894. After completion of the new brewery in 1912, the older building was converted into a bottling plant and offices.

For more on the Oshkosh Brewing Company and the history of beer and brewing in Oshkosh, visit the Oshkosh Beer Timeline.