Stroll through any city with a formerly
Episcopalian, German Lutheran, and
Roman Catholic majority population, and
one will find on every block the ghost of a corner tavern. In his
excellent history of watering holes,
The Old-Time Saloon, the humorist George Ade recalls the
superfluity of corner taverns circa 1900, and how the
establishments rapidly fell into disfavor.
According to Ade, the glut of public houses was one of the
main gripes of groups like the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League.
Ade believed the bar owners had it coming. As the dry
opposition snowballed, tavern keepers continued to flout the law,
serving minors, operating after midnight, and opening their doors
on the Sabbath. Taverns were havens for all manner of illegal
shenanigans. And they spread like warm
butter.
Ade had high praise for the established German
brewers — the Buschs and Lemps in St. Louis, and the Schlitz,
Pabst, and Blatz families in Milwaukee — for being conscientious
managers of the industry. It was the English that mucked things up.
Envious of the Germans and their wide profit margins, the British
aristocrats muscled their way in. The English were happy to set up
anyone with a pair of shoes with a corner saloon — as long as he
agreed to sell only their brand of beer. Wrote
Ade:
New saloons opened whenever there seemed to be a fair chance of
attracting a group of bar drinkers. They grew in number along the
main thoroughfares, filtered into side streets and invaded
residence districts. They planted themselves next door to churches,
schools and hospitals. They began to sprout in quiet neighborhoods
among well-behaved homes, despite the frantic protests of
property-owners and householders.
German-Americans (about one in three of the population)
were the last bulwark against the dry protests. But the sinking of
the Lusitania (1915) effectively silenced them. With the
wet resistance squashed, the WTCU, Anti-Saloon League and the
Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals easily
carried the day.
AFTER PROHIBITION, the neighborhood tavern made a
brief comeback. I have fond memories of being dispatched to fetch
my father home from the corner saloon, but not before joining him
at the bar for a Royal Crown Cola and a bag of corn curls. That
tavern is no more, having been dealt a deathblow by the middle
class flight to the suburbs. (How bad was it? If Chicago
boasted 7,600 taverns in the early 1900s,
it now has fewer than 1,300.)
Today, as some urban neighborhoods undergo gentrification,
a few corner taverns are coming back. More often than not they are
reopening as gourmet bistros where the linened tables are reserved
for yuppie diners who quaff craft beers on tap.
The tavern at the corner of Kingshighway and Juniata in
St. Louis has largely avoided this pitfall. The proprietor, Steven
Fitzpatrick Smith, is a Chicago native with enough untainted Irish
blood in his veins to eschew shabby chic (you will find no
rust-painted 1950s Schwinn bicycles hanging on his walls). What’s
more, Smith has earned his Irish innkeeper chops by serving as the
city’s de facto boxing commissioner due largely to his inner city
youth boxing program and renowned backyard amateur
bouts.
Smith opened The Royale Food & Spirits in 2005. Since
that happy day, it has been our default saloon. The Royale is
smallish, and usually crowded. But it is never rowdy. The clientele
are mostly mild-mannered hipsters, with a few yuppies and sports
fans sprinkled throughout to keep the atmosphere from becoming too
ironic. Most bars are ruined by their unfortunate selection of
music. Not the Royale. Evenings there is a DJ who plays old
scratchy records from the early Sixties. If one thing distinguishes
today’s Royale from its 1930s predecessor, it is that the free
lunch counter has been replaced by a menu featuring fish tacos,
goat-cheese pizza, and other delicacies. However, it is the
Kobe beef hamburger that wins awards.
The Royale makes a point of not serving Anheuser-Busch
products, even though you sometimes smell the brewery from The
Royale’s spacious biergarten. Instead, the bar specializes in
cocktails named for the city’s famous neighborhoods. My favorite is
the Soulard sling (Rhum Barbancourt, fresh orange juice, fresh
lemon and lime juice, lemon juice, sugar, Angostura bitters and
grenadine, served on the rocks, with a slice of orange and a
cherry). If your prefer your poison by the pint (and who doesn’t)
there’s St. Louis’s locally brewed Schlafly’s on tap. I like the
grapefruity IPA the best.
Two years ago, Smith purchased an abandoned corner saloon
on Cherokee Street, not two blocks from my home. The plan was to
house a boxing parlor on the first floor and a Royale-style saloon
on the second. However, the local alderman, a teetotaler, wasn’t
having any of it. He managed to stall the project until the economy
tanked and Smith had to shelve his plans. Today, the tavern sits
dormant, its brick walls splattered with gang graffiti, a twitchy
crack dealer and a low-rent hooker sheltering in the doorway. In
our ward at least, the Anti-Saloon League rides again. Thank God we
still have The Royale.
