Racine Beer-Zarr

After 1880, Milwaukee’s Pabst Brewing Company pursued a competitive strategy of opening taverns throughout the Midwest, especially in ethnic neighborhoods. Walking into this corner tavern around the turn of the twentieth century, one would have found the patrons and employees speaking only German and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.

With its crenellated parapet, pointed-arched windows, corbeled cornice, and arched entrance, the tavern looks like a tiny medieval fortress. It also resembles a miniature Pabst Brewery, echoing the massive Milwaukee brewing complex (MI44) built in this same Gothic Revival style, thus becoming an architectural advertisement for Pabst. In the logo on the tavern’s corner tower, the circled “B” stood for “Best,” the firm’s original name. When Prohibition closed this and all other saloons in 1919, Pabst sold the building. It remains a tavern.