Long before trendy gastropubs, tony taprooms and multiscreen sports bars, drinkers imbibed at the neighborhood tavern.
That still happens in “Brew City” Milwaukee, whose oldest bars may lack frills and hype but make up for it with quirks and personality.
Owners are proud caretakers of local history, even though they may not bother with a website or advertising. Hours of operation are fluid. Think homey, not buffed. Addresses are often in a residential area, rarely an entertainment district.
Many were “tied” houses — each linked to one brewer’s products exclusively — until Prohibition put an end to these business relationships. The Uptowner, a Schlitz-only bar by 1891, morphed into a pharmacy that sold whiskey as medicine. No other Milwaukee tavern has been in business longer, without interruption; 1032 E. Center St.
Semantics matter. The oldest tavern is the stately Landmark 1850 Inn, 5905 S. Howell Ave., a purportedly haunted stagecoach stop with ornate woodwork, leaded glass, embellished tin ceilings and a cash register that needs a stiff cranking to open. Lovers of ghosts and crispy-thin pizza find their way here, as do flight crews on layover at Milwaukee’s international airport, across the street.
Milwaukee Food & City Tours highlights stops like this on the Pre-Prohibition Historic Bar Tour, for $60.
Another option is to explore on your own. Here’s where:
Valley Inn
Don’t be alarmed to see police officers at this spot at 4000 W. Clybourn St., between Miller Park and Miller Brewing Company. Manager Barbara Orban, a culinary school grad with a “Property of Milwaukee Police” sweatshirt, is from a law-enforcement family.
Mellow country music plays as cook Theresa Damato fills grill orders. The women’s sidekick is a tall mannequin whose attire and accessories change with the seasons.
Soups to potato chips are house-made. Meats come from Bunzel’s, a four-generation butcher shop, 5 miles away. Rotating specials include tender pot roast sandwiches.
Portions are generous. The pudgy Valley Bomber, shredded beef and cheese on grilled garlic French bread, arrives with a steak knife standing in it.
Valley Inn, in the same family for two generations, is the last bar in the secluded enclave of Piggsville. You’ll find it under the Wisconsin Avenue viaduct in the flood-prone Menomonee Valley. Flooding drove other businesses away, but a tight-knit neighborhood remains.
Puddler’s Hall
Look for free music here on Tuesday nights, but not in the bar, where TVs are quietly tuned to sports. Milwaukee Guitar Club gathers in the attached dance hall for its weekly jam.
Musicians sit around pushed-together tables while dipping into thick folders of sheet music, strumming and singing. They ignore a stage whose backdrop is a mural of iconic Milwaukee architecture.
Patrons come for the twice-monthly blues jam and shows by traveling musicians. Others are here for team trivia on Mondays, table tennis on Thursdays and cribbage whenever. Parents in the trendy Bay View neighborhood bring their kids for playtime on the first Sunday of the month.
The 1872 tavern at 2461 S. St. Clair St. was a Pabst tied house and union hall for Milwaukee Iron Company puddlers (those working with molten metal).
“You would have seen the stacks from here,” says owner Casey Foltz. Condos are slowly replacing cottages from that era.
He co-owns Foltz Family Market, 3 miles north. Pizzas from the market (made by a brother) are popular fare at Puddler’s. So are $1 grilled cheese sandwiches (3-8 p.m. Tuesdays) and the free “Puddler’s Hall ruined my life” bumper stickers.
Wolski’s Tavern
The owners of the oldest family-run tavern in Milwaukee are historically resourceful.
Bernard Wolski opened the Miller tied house in 1908, five years after buying a badly damaged building at an excellent price. He used logs to hoist and roll the structure a few blocks to East Village, his modest Polish neighborhood.
More than a century later, great-grandson Bernie Bondar — Bondarenko, actually — is sharing lunch with a stranger. “You like corned beef?” he asks. “Then you’ll love this — pickled beef tongue. Twenty-one days in the brine.”
The tasty sandwich is not for sale because Wolski’s has no food menu. Just free popcorn, free dartboard play — and a free beer when showing a tour coupon from Lakefront Brewery, less than a mile away.
Customers who stay until it’s lights out get an “I closed Wolski’s” bumper sticker, a rite of passage for four decades of young adults. The souvenir is printed in batches of 25,000, enough for two years, and the tradition began after rugby players demanded a reward for their patronage.
Long gone are other East Village businesses. Only Wolski’s remains, at 1836 N. Pulaski St., and little has changed, from the antique cash register to the carved bar with stained-glass insets. Tacked to the ceiling are flags from around the world, including a handmade Polish flag.
Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall
Music begins here around 7 p.m. Wednesdays, not in the roomy dance hall but on a little stage near the entrance at 1920 S. 37th St.
A drummer and accordion player start with waltzes. Couples take a spin between tables and the bar counter. Owner Andy Kochanski lights a log cabin incense burner. Shots of Jezynowka (a Polish blackberry brandy) cost $2. Swig Polish beer from tap, can or bottle.
Performing at the weekly polka jam are a mix of professionals and hobbyists. Kochanski, who bought the longtime Art Altenburg’s Concertina Bar in 2007, added a beer garden and annual Polish Pile Up Music Festival (with car and motorcycle show).
“Somebody needed to step up and save it for Milwaukee and for polka,” he says of the brick building and its heritage. He stayed true to the bar’s polka traditions during his first year but “polka doesn’t pay the bills anymore,” so now he books other musical genres too.
Milwaukee’s once plentiful polka-bar scene has all but vanished. Kochanski’s, in the southern Burnham Park neighborhood, is an exception. When the tavern was constructed in 1900, it was surrounded by celery fields and workers lived upstairs. Then came heavy industry, and the bar was home to workers’ union offices.
Holler House
Tenpins started flying two years after this place opened in 1908, making it the nation’s oldest sanctioned bowling alley. Play happens by reservation; pins are set by hand at the two basement lanes.
Upstairs, matriarch Marcy Skowronski has held court since the 1950s. “We’re too lazy to change this place,” deadpans the second-generation owner, who turned 92 in February.
Shortly after she and husband Gene took over, women began leaving behind brassieres. What began as a dare turned into a tradition. Dozens of bras hang from the ceiling; many more are stored or given to charities. Some arrive with a story, like the gal who stopped by before breast-reduction surgery. Donors hail from Australia to South Africa.
“We never know what to expect,” says Skowronski’s daughter, Cathy Haefke, who lived in the bar-house at 2042 W. Lincoln Ave. until age 19. Her dad was born there.
On Wednesday “social nights,” loyal customers take turns providing an early-evening meal. Jaci Hoppe — who brought sloppy Joes with chips and earned raves for “orange fluff” salad — began coming here with her father 70 years ago. He’d order a shot and beer for himself, a candy bar for her.
Across the street are Milwaukee luminaries, including beer barons Pabst, Schlitz and Blatz, in Forest Home Cemetery, which offers maps and guided tours — so does Tom Haefke, Cathy’s husband, before Halloween.
Mary Bergin is a freelance writer.
