Pfister’s Mason Street Bar Is Splendidly Historic

The bar at Mason Street Grill. Photo by Michael Horne.

Major League Baseball players visiting Milwaukee are usually housed at the Pfister Hotel, the region’s oldest, in operation since 1893. It appears they often do not sleep well. In 2001, Dodgers player Adrian Beltre was so disturbed by mysterious poundings and bangings that he took a bat with him to bed.

Mookie Betts, the current second baseman for the Dodgers, simply stays in an Airbnb when he’s in town, which was last Monday and Tuesday when his team lost the first two NLCS games to the Brewers. What’s got them — and many others — spooked? It’s the Pfister ghost(s), disturbing the peace since 1927 and now the stuff of legend and headlines.

On Tuesday afternoon, the team was about to take the field for Game 2 of the series, while I took a seat at the Pfister’s Lobby Lounge to watch the first pitches on screens set up on the east wall. Here I was seated in the Dodgers’ bad mojo epicenter, where I hoped they had spent an unsettled night. I thought I would send my lose-this-game vibes their way.

The lounge opens at 11 a.m. daily. It hosts a curved marble bar with eight padded seats, a mirrored wall stacked high with expensive spirits, a large open seating area with six round tables, and a number of sofas. Beers range from $5 to $7, with seven draft lines and a dozen bottled varieties. (A THC-infused seltzer will run you 18 bucks.)  There is a fireplace, a grand piano, a marble bust of Guido Pfister, and a tall case clock, whose dial was approaching 4 p.m. That is when the Mason Street Grill was set to open in the base of the hotel’s 1962 tower addition. I was just warming up.

Mason Street Grill Turns Twenty

In 2007, the Marcus Corporation undertook a large remodeling of its landmark property, adding a basement spa where a restaurant had been and replacing some leased retail space on the first floor with the Mason Street Grill, designed as a high-end destination steakhouse. If you enter through the revolving door at 423 E. Mason St., the first thing you encounter is a black-and-white photo of Ben Marcus [1911-2000] and his wife Celia K. Marcus [1913-2000], her dress colored a vivid yellow, the two standing behind a seated Maria Callas in an opulent setting that was not the Pfister Hotel, yet setting the stage nonetheless for the opulent restaurant beyond. This is not where you are headed. Turn right and enter the bar instead.

Photo by Michael Horne.

Beneath a coffered ceiling is a long marble-topped bar with a wooden rail, surrounded by about a dozen comfortable, padded seats. Beyond are cocktail tables and banquettes set in window niches. As is the case with any public space here, there is a piano and a fireplace. At the west end of the bar, drinks are prepared for both tavern and restaurant customers, with uniformed waiters using a passageway between the two. A number of televisions are placed for ease of viewing. As I entered, it was the bottom of the first inning, and the score was tied 1-1. Better get my mojo fired up if we’re going to beat these guys.

From 4-6:30 p.m., it is happy hour here, where drinks and appetizers at this swanky joint are available at better-than-dive-bar prices. For four bucks you can get your choice of any tap beer; well drinks or wine by the glass will set you back five; and bar snacks are $11 — that’s a $6 discount on the marinated steak forks. I ordered a “House Bubbles” sparkling wine. It arrived in a Schott Zwiesel flute. The service was prompt and attentive. I talked to the server and mused about the customer base here. There are the visitors staying in the hotel, of course, and then the office workers once released from their duties, perhaps some conventioneers, but also people of means who now live Downtown, possibly in a high-rise tower within sight of the place. I also noted that the bartenders here serve restaurant customers that they never see in person. That’s an odd disjunct. I focused on the game, as did the staff whenever there was a chance. (There was a lot of glass-polishing going on.)

The Brewers were leading and were on the way to win all four games of the seven-game series. The Dodgers won’t have to fret about staying at the Pfister anymore this year.

The Hotel in History

Guido Pfister [1818-1889] and Fred Vogel Sr. [1823-1892] settled here from Germany before Milwaukee was a city or Wisconsin a state. Their families had been tanners in the old country, and the business partners plied their trade here, backed by a $12,000 loan from Jacob Schoellkopf, a Buffalo tanner and Vogel’s cousin. By 1865 each partner of the Pfister & Vogel Tannery declared an income of $42,221 from the business — nearly $900,000 today. This left plenty over for investments.

Vogel handled the tannery operations, located on Virginia Street, where he made his home. Pfister was interested in the finished goods, which he marketed locally and nationally. Pfister also accumulated much real estate, including over 1,000 acres of tamarack in Kewaunee County (destroyed in the Peshtigo wildfire of 1871 and converted to a pig farm), about 75 acres of Milwaukee County farmland, and a plot in Downtown where he dreamt a hotel should be, just south of his house, now the site of the Mason Street Grill. Death was to rob him of the chance of seeing his dream realized when the hotel opened in 1893. It was run by his bachelor son, Charles F. Pfister [1859-1927]. Born Charles Frederick Weisert, he and his elder sister Louise Francesca Pfister [1857-1948] were adopted by Guido and Elisabeth as children in 1870.

Fortunate Orphans Charlie Pfister and Sister Louise

In 1876, when she was 18 and he was 25, Louise Pfister married Fred Vogel Jr. [1851-1936]. This created an entirely new family dynamic, perhaps unique among Milwaukee’s giant industrial concerns of the late 19th century.

Upon Guido’s death in 1889 at 71, his widow Elisabeth received $400,000. The siblings split the remaining $1.6 million. Charles remained with his mother in the family home, while Louise spent $50,000 on a Cass Street mansion for her brood in 1891. This was $20,000 more than the three spent that year to build the German English Academy, the nation’s first secondary school to be equipped with a gymnasium. Dedicated to Guido’s memory, it remains standing at 1120 N. Broadway.

Elisabeth died on Dec. 26, 1896. She suffered a heart attack the day before during a Christmas tree lighting ceremony at her daughter’s home. She left $1.5 million in cash to her two children, along with the real estate portfolio Guido had accumulated. The siblings had a decision to make.

Land Swap

With five children ranging from a newborn to a 19-year-old, Louise Pfister Vogel had no interest in running a hotel, nor did Charles have time to manage the family’s country properties on the East Side. Guido’s dairy farm of over two decades was bounded by Hartford Ave. on the south and Edgewood Ave. on the north; Maryland Ave. on the west and Downer Ave. on the east. Shortly after Elisabeth’s death in 1896, they donated 10 acres to Downer Seminary. (Louise was eventually to donate 55 acres to what is now the UW-Milwaukee campus, where a building was named in her honor in 1919, a rarity for a living woman at the time.) On Feb. 28, 1899, the siblings swapped their respective shares in the hotel and the land, which also included parcels with lake frontage, including the Milwaukee Country Club golf course and its clubhouse in the old family summer home. This parcel was later to become the Elmwood and Lake Dells subdivisions, some 20 acres that Louise would ultimately develop into exclusive residential properties, including the southernmost lakefront dwelling in Shorewood, a new home for her and Fred Jr.

Charles Pfister went on to control the city’s street railways, the tannery and the First National Bank (run by Fred Jr.), while also serving as the undisputed boss of the Republican Party of Wisconsin for 25 years. When the Milwaukee Sentinel started snooping into his political dealings in 1901, Charlie bought the paper, which he held until selling to Hearst in 1923. When Pfister died in 1927, he was eulogized as “a commanding figure in the city’s greatest bank, a director of its largest tannery, the owner/manager of its best hotel and the publisher of its only morning newspaper.”

His sister was his heir. For the third time in her 50 years she had inherited millions. The entirety of a great fortune was to pass through her hands, with much devoted to educational institutions, hospitals — and, significantly, orphanages.

Oh, and to finish our tour of the bar:

On Tap - Sponsored by Lakefront Brewery

• Mason Street Grill Amber [a.k.a. Lakefront Riverwest Stein Beer]
• Miller Lite
• New Glarus Spotted Cow
• Pilsner Urquell

Photo Gallery

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The Verdict

• Name: Mason Street Grill
• Location: The Pfister Hotel, “A Palace for the People,” 424 E. Wisconsin Ave., City of Milwaukee
• Neighborhood: Juneau Town
• Subdivision: Plat of Milwaukee in Sections 28-29-33, Town 7N Range 22E, Block 19, Lots 1-6
• Phone Number: (414) 273-8222
• Website: https://www.thepfisterhotel.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MasonStreetGrill
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masonstgrill/?hl=en
• Description: Milwaukee’s oldest operating hotel has three restaurants: The Lobby Lounge, Blu atop the tower, and the Mason Street Grill at its base. The high-end steakhouse also is an intimate bar where out-of-towners mingle with occupants of glassy high rise towers, whether residential or commercial.
• Restrooms: Terribly fancy ones down the hall
• Year Established: The northeast corner of the building has been styled as the Mason Street Grill since 2006
• Year Building Constructed: 1893
• Annual Rent: Operator owns building
• Property is assessed at $3,240,000 for the 43,200 s.f. lot [$100/s.f.] and $45,104,600 for the building, for a total assessed valuation of $48,344,600
• Property taxes: $1,085,120.03. Payments are current on the installment plan
• Property Owner: Pfister LLC
• Trade Name: Pfister Hotel & Tower
• Business Owners: Marcus Hotels Hospitality LLC 100% owner
• Agent: LaMarvon Jackson D.O.B. 08/27/1986
• Business: Full Service Restaurant, Hotel, Cafe/Coffee Shop, Banquet Hall, Cocktail Lounge, Tavern
• Source of Sales: Alcohol 13.85%, Food 32.73%, Entertainment 2%, Other 53.42%
• Capacity: Bar area could handle about 40
• Walk Score: 98, Walker’s Paradise. City Average: 62
• Transit Score: 69, Good Transit. City Average: 49. Many intersecting bus routes, easy streetcar access
• Bike Score: 85 Very Bikeable. City Average: 58
• Bike Rack:  Yes
• Entertainment: Live music Monday-Saturday 6-10 p.m. No cover
• Aldermanic District: 4th; Robert Bauman
• County Supervisor District: 3rd; Sheldon Wasserman
• Police District: 1
• Hours of operation: 4-9 p.m. Monday–Saturday, 4-8 p.m. Sunday

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