A view looking west on High Street in the early 20th century. On the right side of the photo is the Faurot Opera House. Just west of the opera house and Cherry Alley is a building erected by the Pabst Brewing Co. of Milwaukee in 1900. It housed a saloon until 1912 when it was sold to local interests. At the time of this photo, King’s Woolen Mill was the tenant of the building. The woolen mill closed in 1918.
Courtesy of Allen County Historical Society
The final years of the 19th century had been good to Lima and, thanks to the discovery of oil in May 1885, business was good as well, a fact reflected in the new buildings going up along busy downtown streets.
On January 2, 1900, the Allen County Republican-Gazette, proudly listed the new additions for 1899. “It is a hasty compilation and not complete, but it is sufficient to show that Lima has made progress in 1899 and is still entitled to the claim of being one of the best cities on earth,” the newspaper enthused, adding, “Some fine buildings have been erected to adorn Main and other business streets. The one which stands out most conspicuous is the beautiful Hotel Norval, which was so splendidly dedicated Friday night.”
Oil man J.C. Linneman, who built the Hotel Norval on the southwest corner of Main and North streets and named it after one of his racehorses, also erected the Linneman block on South Main Street, which, the Republican-Gazette noted, “started a building boom in that vicinity.” That boom included the Tolan and Dorsey blocks.
The newspaper’s listing of downtown movers and shakers in 1900 included one notable out-of-town mover. “The Pabst Brewing Company, always on the lookout for openings in wideawake towns, last spring purchased a lot on West High Street on which they have erected a brick building, 24×50 and three stories high. They seem to think pretty well of Lima as they have invested $12,000 in the plant.” The brewer apparently thought Lima was wide awake enough that it announced plans for a second building in the city two years later.
Most of the buildings the Republican-Gazette pointed to with such pride more than 120 years ago are long gone. In January 1945, The Hotel Norval, by then known as the Milner Hotel, burned down in a spectacular fire that killed two people. Meanwhile, the first building constructed by Pabst on West High Street was torn down around 1989. Both sites are now parking lots.
However, Pabst’s second building in Lima, this one on the northeast corner of Main and Elm streets, still stands and could find new life. It has been renovated by local restaurateur and downtown advocate John Heaphy. It still carries a Pabst Brewing Company emblem on its Elm Street side.
Pabst’s investments in Lima were part of a trend popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when big brewers like Milwaukee’s Pabst and Schlitz ensured a market for their products by actually building a market for their products. The establishments the brewers built were known as “tied houses” because they were contractually tied to the breweries that built them. Anyone looking for a cold Schlitz wouldn’t find it in a Pabst saloon.
In early 1899, news of Lima’s first Pabst building was announced in the Republican-Gazette, which revealed Jacob Kissell, who operated a meat market on West High Street, had sold part of his property to the brewer. “The latter will put in a swell saloon,” the newspaper noted in a story from February 1899.
In March 1900, the Republican-Gazette reported that the “swell saloon,” which was on the first floor of the three-story building erected by Pabst, would be leased by a man named Charlie Akerman, who had been forced from the Elk’s building earlier that year.
News of the second Pabst building arrived in 1902. “Another deal was closed yesterday when the Pabst Brewing Co. of Milwaukee purchased the P.C. Beck property at the northeast corner of Main and Elm streets,” the Lima News reported May 2, 1902. “The company will improve the property in the near future by the construction of a three-story brick building (the building eventually would have only two stories). A café will be established on the lower floor, the second floor will be occupied as living apartment by John P. Deis, the company’s local agent …” By March 1903, the News reported the building was “rapidly nearing completion and will soon be prepared for occupancy.”
Neither of Pabst’s establishments in Lima lasted long. The Lima Times-Democrat reported in April 1908 that the Pabst café on West High Street no longer had a proprietor. “It is not unlikely the place may open, as the building is owned by the wealthy Milwaukee brewers,” the newspaper wrote, “but neither this nor the bottling works at Main and Elm have been paying ventures during the past two years.”
Although the High Street bar seemingly had a new proprietor annually, it continued to operate as a saloon until the late summer of 1912 when Pabst sold the building to Lima’s Maire Brothers and W.L. Mackenzie. The Lima Morning Star and Republican-Gazette reported the bar would be remodeled and that “the change of ownership means that the castellated structure which has figured in police records as a nest of whiskey selling and gambling will be wiped out.”
Both the High Street bar and Pabst’s other establishment at Main and Elm had been occasional targets of police raids over the years. The High Street bar was also the site of several bizarre incidents during its short existence.
In late October 1904, the Republican-Gazette reported friends of the proprietor of the High Street bar “fixed up a pumpkin face, into which they placed a candle and set the grinning countenance in the cellar to await a visit” by the proprietor. On his next trip to the cellar, the startled, gun-toting proprietor pulled his pistol and fired three shots into the pumpkin before realizing what it was. “One or two police came running over from the station across the street, thinking that a foul murder had been committed,” the newspaper wrote.
Police were needed at the bar in 1910. In July of that year, a depressed man bought a bottle of carbolic acid at a drug store, went to the bar, asked for a glass — telling the bartender, according to the Republican-Gazette that ‘he was going to take some medicine” — went to the cellar, and drank a glass of acid. “He staggered up stairs and out to the curb where he sat down,” the newspaper reported, adding that an ambulance was called but it was too late.
After its sale in 1912, the High Street building became the home of King Woolen Mills. Later, the Ottawa Paint Store occupied the site, followed by Central Building and Loan, which remained there from the mid-1920s until the early 1950s when Lima One Hour Cleaners took over the site. Carla’s Fashions and the Fashion Clearing House were the last major tenants of the site.
In 1918, with Prohibition looming, Pabst sold its other Lima property. “The two-story brick building at the northeast corner of Main and Elm streets, the last piece of Lima property owned by the Pabst Brewing company passed into the hands of William Hydaker of the Franklin Automobile company in this city Tuesday, the consideration being $22,000,” the Times-Democrat reported October 19, 1918.
By 1924, memories of Pabst presence in Lima were apparently fading. In his column ‘Round Lima Hour by Hour, the editor of the News asked if anyone remembered “old Pabst bottling works” on South Main Street.
The old bottling works in later years was home to Hunter’s Drug Store as well as the King of Clubs bar. Its last major tenant was the Franklin Variety Store.
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SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
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See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
