Ask Northeaster: Q. What’s the oldest continuously operating bar in Northeast?

A. The key might be the “continuously operating” part of the question. It would probably have to be a bar that somehow made it through Prohibition (1919-1932) with its doors open. 

The first bar in Northeast may have been when the area was still called St. Anthony. Two French Canadians, Alexis and Theodose Cloutier, opened what they called a “bowling saloon” in 1850 at the intersection of Marshall and Dana Street (Fifth Avenue). 

The new business ran afoul of a local temperance movement, and struggled to stay open in the next few years. There was actually a bowling alley of sorts, but the business was mainly aimed at giving men a place to knock one back, and the ambience was thick cigar smoke and spittoons. 

Bill Lindeke and Andy Sturdevant, in their book “Closing Time” about Twin Cities watering holes, quoted an Eastern visitor who visited a bowling saloon in St. Paul at that time, “You come out stunned by the noise and blinded by the tobacco smoke.”

Cloutier closed the bowling saloon and created a new saloon between what are now Ninth and Tenth Avenues Northeast in the 1850s.

Also in 1850, John Orth opened a brewery along Marshall Street, the origin of what eventually became the Minneapolis Brewing Company, purveyors of Grain Belt.

The next oldest bar in Northeast may have been Gluek’s Bar & Restaurant, dating back to 1855 when Gottlieb Gluek established the Mississippi Brewery at Marshall and 22nd Street. He later changed the name to Gluek Brewing Company. Gluek moved his bar and restaurant business to downtown Minneapolis at about the turn of the century.

Also in those early days of St. Anthony, you could buy a drink at Cheever’s Tower, a 90-foot tower built as a tourist attraction. The ladies had an ice cream parlour on the ground floor and the men a saloon on the second floor serving hard cider. 

Many of the early bars were what they called “tied houses,” where the saloons only served beer from a local brewery such as Gluek’s or Grain Belt. By 1900, there were 40 saloons Northeast, most of them tied houses. 

The city established patrolling corridors where bars could be located in 1884 to make police patrolling easier and keep the liquor businesses out of residential neighborhoods. For instance, there were no bars in Northeast east of Central Avenue or north of 29th Avenue. 

So finally, we come back to the question of the oldest operating bar in Northeast. Our answer is open to challenge by any bar historians out there, but as near as we can tell, the answer is:

The Northeast Yacht Club, formerly known as the Town Pump, at 801 Marshall St. NE. 

The building was constructed by Gluek Brewing, said current owner Todd Parker. Minneapolis inspection records date the building back to at least 1891, when plumbing was installed in the saloon. The establishment was was named for a water pump on Marshall and Plymouth (8th Avenue) where local residents could get clean water. The pump was well used in the early days of the century. 

In 1893, the saloon was the scene of a gunfight that made the news. 

So how did it survive the 13 years of Prohibition? It sold near beer, but its real key to survival may have been a tunnel that led from the basement of the bar, under Marshall Street and down to the river where illegal booze could be unloaded from boats on the Mississippi. The liquor could be stored in the tunnel.

The second floor may have contained a speakeasy. Parker said a pipe leading from the upstairs to the bar supplied bootleg whisky. All evidence went up in smoke, though, when a fire destroyed the upper floor and it was removed.

The bar had some legal skirmishes in the 1950s and 1960s for pouring cheap liquor into bottles with more expensive labels and other infractions. 

The bar kept its name until 1993 when it was purchased by Parker, who bought it from Joe Mancino’s widow, Betty. He changed the name to the Northeast Yacht Club.  “It was a joke,“ Parker said. “If the city ever put in a marina, we’d be ready. There are no yachts in Northeast, only rowboats.”

The bar was also a hangout for newspaper workers. Parker had met many Star Tribune employees when he tended bar at the old Mill Inn. With a new printing plant just across the river, they sailed easily across the Plymouth Avenue Bridge and into the Yacht Club. The bar still has a newsstand inside, selling newspapers from around the country.

The Northeast Yacht Club celebrates its 126th anniversary this year and until new evidence comes along, it’s the oldest continuously operating liquor emporium in Northeast Minneapolis. 

~ Al Zdon

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