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Freeland saloons
- Introduction
- 1911 newspaper article - Wilkes-Barre judge not granting any more licenses to Freeland
- Mystery bar from Main Street in Freeland
- Restaurants and cafes - 19th century
- Freeland taverns, saloons,
bars - 19th century
- Beer distributors -
19th-20th centuries
- Bottlers - 19th-20th centuries
- Freeland taverns, saloons, bars - 20th-21st centuries
- 20th-21st-century restaurants,
bars, etc. - This has been the page on this website where
information about bars is collected. Eventually information from that
page will be moved onto new pages about particular types of businesses.
For now you can also get ADDITIONAL information about Freeland's bars
there.
This is an evolving set of pages on Freeland's taverns, saloons, bars. Bars have been an important part of Freeland area society and culture for as long as Freeland and the nearby towns have been there! If there is a bar that you would like to see highlighted here, please send me information and also photos if you have any. Thanks, enjoy!
This article
reports that a Wilkes-Barre judge didn't see why Freeland needed more
saloon licenses granted in 1911. As Charlie Gallagher has pointed out,
he was completely overlooking the fact that the company towns
surrounding Freeland did not have saloons, and so people from those
company towns walked or rode to Freeland to drink! So the "number of
residents" to be served should have been considered to be much larger
than Freeland's population.The judge said: "Freeland now has seventy-five licenses places, one for every eighty inhabitants. If more places are desired, application should be made to the legislature and not to the court." Apparently there were even more saloons in Nanticoke in terms of number of saloons in proportion to number of residents, the limit specified by law. He said about Nanticoke that the number of places in proportion to the number of residents exceeds any that exists in any other civilized community on the face of the earth except Freeland! He continued about Nanticoke: "If 103 licenses places are not enough to relieve the aridity an appeal should be made tof new legislation to provide a remedy."
The article comes to us from Christina Humphreys.
A bar on Main
Street in Freeland, still to be identified, photo bought on eBay:
This photo is glued to a mat board, on the back of
which is written "Bar on Main St., Freeland, Pa." It doesn't say what
bar it is. I love that the photographer or bar owner seem to have asked
the other customers to move to the side so they're not in the picture,
but you can see them all in the mirror (you can see this better in the
crop, below). I've conferred with Ed Merrick and Charlie
Gallagher to get their thoughts on which bar this might have been.
Ed wrote: "Compare
it with the photo
of Balon's, which you posted in Businesses. The tin ceiling is the
same, but that doesn't surprise me. Remak's had the same ceiling. This
could be an earlier photo of the same bar when it was much newer and
less the worse for wear. The wooden supports under the arm railing are
almost identical, although the decorative posts are missing. It would
have been taken in the other direction, also. I guess we'll never
know." Then he followed with this note: "Chuck, I just
happened to remember the Italian Club on Main Street just west of
Centre and right behind the store, which was a photo studio when I was
a kid. I was never inside so I can't say this is a photo of the place,
but it's a possibility."
Charlie
wrote, about the calendar on the wall and about the
photo in general: "Well, the best I can see is the date is Feb 11?
190_ something. What I can tell you is the building has a wallpaper
ceiling. To the right is the front of the building and that must face
south as there is the image of sunlight hitting the bar from the front
window on the lower right. So if that is the case the building would be
on the north side of Main. (Believe me sunlight never hits the front of
the buildings on the south side of the east-west streets in Freeland.)
I think that would leave out Dushak's (as that was later Genie Boyle's)
on the southwest corner of Main and Washington. My best guess is it was
the saloon on the northwest corner of Washington and Main on the 1895
Sanborn map. This is where the post office is today. Only a guess ..."On Facebook, Joan Yersevich Hale wrote: "I remember the bar. Next to the post office and across the street from my aunt Elsie Peterssen's beauty shop. Her dad, my grandpa Adam Yersevich, would ask her for some coins to go for a drink. I could see him sitting at the bar while I sat on the porch swing. Great memories from the 40's."
Here below is the information that I had sent to Ed and Charlie, along with a copy of the photo:
There weren't all that many bars on Main Street in the early decades. Here's a list pulled from city directories, some of them located on a Main Street corner and fronting on the cross street. The address numbers (except for Remak's) are in the old numbering system.So, website visitors, any other ideas as to which bar that might be in the photo? All feedback is welcome.
1882-1884
Ferry, Morris – Washington corner Main
Gallagher, Hugh – Centre corner Main
Given, James – Centre corner Main
Kennedy, William T. – Centre near Main
Shigo, John – Centre near Main
1884-1886
Carey, Patrick – 27 E. Main
Ferry, Morris – Washington near Main
Kennedy, William T. – Centre near Main
1886-1888
Carey, Patrick – 14 E. Main
1895
SALOONS
Haas, Frederick - southeast corner Washington and Main
Murphy, Edward (or Edwin) - Centre corner Main
Snyder, Daniel - 17 Main
WINES AND LIQUORS, WHOLESALE
Dusheck, Charles - southwest corner Main and Washington
BOTTLERS
Zemany, Michael - 28 Main
1897
WINES AND LIQUORS, WHOLESALE
Dusheck, Charles - southwest corner Main and Washington
BOTTLERS
Zemany, Michael – 17 E. Main
1901
Gross, Samuel, saloon, Main
Murphy, Edward, saloon, cor. Centre and Main
Dusheck, Charles, liquor dealer, cor. Main and Washington
1921-1922 and 1928-1929
Remak, Michael – 709 Main (there from 1910)