Milwaukee’s Oldest Bar Is For Sale

Landmark 1850 Inn, 5917 S. Howell Ave. Photo taken April 23, 2022 by Jeramey Jannene.

A tavern as old as Milwaukee is looking for a new owner to write its next chapter.

Joseph G. Halser III owned and operated Landmark 1850 Inn from 1983 until his passing in 2022, when the bar closed.

The 10.6-acre site, located at 5905 S. Howell Ave. across from Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport, is now for sale for $5 million.

The listing from Halser’s family includes the two-story Cream City brick building that housed the bar, a former trucking building Halser used historic objects to repurpose into The Terminal beer garden and event venue, a wood-frame building that previously housed the Port of Hamburg bar, a garage that sits on its own parcel and lots of open land.

“Any and all transportation businesses would have frontage on busy S. Howell Avenue, as well as being adjacent to Mitchell Field, and lots of room,” wrote listing broker Tom Thiessen of Century 21 Pierce Realty. The bar could be separated from the other parcels, which Halser assembled over time.

Halser, who passed away at the age of 80, was a teacher, inventor and entrepreneur who renovated the Cream City brick tavern into a bar that was a draw for locals and visitors alike with nearly two dozen beers on tap. Its interior mirrors the Italianate style of the building’s exterior, with a wood-carved bar and tin ceiling.

The exact date of the tavern’s construction depends on which source you trust. Halser, as indicated by the bar’s name, favored 1850, four years after the city was founded. The authors of the 2021 book “Germans in Milwaukee,” Jill Florence Lackey and Rick Petrie, suggest the late 1840s. A National Register of Historic Places nomination from 1987 estimates a date between 1862 and 1869 based on the building style and a search of other records.

“An exhaustive search of the deeds, tax records, mortgages, old maps, newspaper accounts and published histories failed to provide a definitive construction date,” wrote nomination preparer Les Vollmert of the Department of City Development. “Two buildings are known to have stood on the site by 1858, but it is impossible to know for sure if they included the present structure or included earlier buildings.”

There is agreement that it was known as the New Coeln House, a reference to the since-annexed Village of New Coeln where it was built. Multiple historical accounts note that the structure, a central hub in the German farming community, played host to those making the journey on horse or early automobile between Milwaukee and Racine.

Later guests included those making use of the airport or traveling through town, including professional wrestlers.

The tavern has also been known as Deuster’s Saloon and has had a series of additions that were constructed and removed.

Halser had an eye for history beyond the bar and accumulated a large collection of historical artifacts that were on display in The Terminal. The pieces, which included items from the Wisconsin Hotel, Schlitz Brewery, Plankinton Arcade, Avalon Theater, St. John’s Cathedral and Allen Bradley, were auctioned off in February.

Is It Actually Milwaukee’s Oldest Bar?

Want a good bar debate topic? Try asking your friends or those warming the bar stool next to you what actually makes a bar the oldest in Milwaukee?

Oldest based on being first used as a tavern? That would still be Landmark 1850. But it hasn’t operated continuously, including a nearly four-year period that ended in 2011 after Halser made a series of repairs to the space.

Oldest tavern still actively being used as a tavern? That would be the 1873 Puddler’s Hall in Bay View.

Oldest tavern continuously used as a tavern? That would be The Uptowner in Riverwest, which opened in 1884 and survived prohibition by selling “medicinal alcohol.”

Photos