Bottoms Up

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A Toast to Wisconsin's Historic Bars and Breweries

By Jim Draeger and Mark Speltz
Photographs by Mark Fay

A richly illustrated history of Wisconsin’s taverns and breweries, tracing their evolution from frontier saloons to modern microbreweries.

272 pages, 8 x 10, 394 color and b&w photos
Paperback: $30.00 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-872-0
Ebook: $19.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-601-6
Publication Date: 10/6/2017

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Description

Bottoms Up celebrates Wisconsin's taverns and the breweries that fueled them. Beginning with inns and saloons, the book explores the rise of taverns and breweries, the effects of temperance and Prohibition, and attitudes about gender, ethnicity, and morality. It traces the development of the megabreweries, dominance of the giants, and the emergence of microbreweries. Contemporary photographs of unusual and distinctive bars and breweries of all eras, historical photos, postcards, advertisements, and breweriana illustrate the story of how Wisconsin came to dominate brewing and the place that bars and beer hold in our social and cultural history.

Seventy featured taverns and breweries represent diverse architectural styles, from the open-air Tom's Burned Down Cafe on Madeline Island to the Art Moderne Casino in La Crosse, and from Club 10, a 1930s roadhouse in Stevens Point, to the well-known Wolski's Tavern in Milwaukee. There are bars in barns and basements and brewpubs in former ice cream factories and railroad depots. Bottoms Up also includes a heady mix of such booze-related topics as ice harvesting, barrel making, bar games, old fashioneds, bar fixtures, and the queen of the bootleggers.

Jim Draeger

Author Bios

Jim Draeger is an architectural historian and former State Historic Preservation Officer at the Wisconsin Historical Society with more than thirty years of historic preservation experience. From roadside architecture to Northwoods resorts, Draeger celebrates the importance of ordinary buildings to our daily lives through his research, writing, and lectures.

Mark Speltz

Mark Speltz is an author and public historian who researches and writes about civil rights era photography, vernacular architecture, and Wisconsin culture and history. He resides in San Francisco, California.

Mark Fay

Mark Fay has contributed to many book projects for the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. He also has worked as an aerial photographer and a staff photographer for a postcard and calendar printing company. He has been in business as Faystrom Photo since 1996.