The Phil T. Beer Cafe

 

A mirror from the Phil T. Beer Café has a saying at the top, “Look at yourself, but think of us.” Phil Beer (a great name for a tavern owner) operated the tavern from about 1910 to 1919, at 301 East Market Street. Grace Episcopal Church now operates a thrift shop at this location. In an advertisement in the Sandusky Register on June 28, 1912, readers were informed that they could “while away an idle hour” or play pool, or eat a meal at Phil’s Café.

At the end of May in 1919, the state of Ohio became a “dry” state, several months before the 18^th Amendment became a law on October 28, 1919, prohibiting the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors throughout the United States. 

The article below from the May 24, 1919 issue of the Sandusky Star Journal reported on the mock funeral for “John Barleycorn.”

A group of men were to meet at midnight, and pay their respects to old man “Booze” who died from an “overdose of votes.” There was a procession that was to start at Washington Park, and then go to Water Street, past Dan Nolan’s, Baldwin’s, Ted Lauber’s Mulharen’s, the Pabst and the old West House. Next they would shed a tear at the old Annex Cafe, pass by Werner & Wagner, and play slow music as they passed by Phil Beer’s Cafe. It was expected that there would singing and speeches, concluding with the song “We’ll be dry for a long, long time.”

Later in 1919, Phil Beer ran a cigar shop at the Rieger Hotel. 

Mr. Beer died in September, 1959, and was buried at Oakland Cemetery.

You can read more about the residents of Sandusky and Erie County at the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center, which houses microfilmed copies of decades of local newspapers. A ClevNet database, Newspaper Archive, provides online access to many historical newspapers as well.