Wittnebel's Tavern and the biergarten, the relocated and renovated saloon that Old World Wisconsin has been preparing, will open to the public on Saturday, May 17, joining the adjacent historic brewing experience that was announced in 2021 and opened the following year.
The saloon, which offers a 1930s post-Prohibition tavern experience and an outdoor biergarten, was moved from Old Ashippun and is the first building to be added to the historic park since the 1990s.
The grand opening event will include ribbon cuttings on May 17 and 18 at 10 a.m., live polka music by Mike Schneider, a tap dance performance, a complimentary Wittnebel’s Tavern can cooler and an exclusive sticker with the purchase of beer.
Tickets are available online at oldworldwisconsin.org.
"So why did we go for a tavern at this point in time," asks WHS Director and CEO Christian Øverland, rhetorically. "We were looking at what are the great stories that are in this village called Old World Wisconsin?
"A lot of people don't understand what (is) meant by Wisconsin Tavern culture during that time, and really what it was. It's not just a bar, it's not a speakeasy. It's where people gathered, where they got their news, where they held a dance, where they talked about school competitions coming up, where they learned from the news, from the radio.
"That's why we built this, to connect our communities together in a way that people could experience the past, but a light from the past shining to us today. We still have tavern culture in Wisconsin today."
Wittnebel’s Tavern opened in 1906 and was run by two generations of the Wittnebel family until 1987.
The shuttered tavern was moved 27 miles in three separate pieces and reassembled next to the newly constructed brewing experience building at Old World Wisconsin.
It has since been undergoing careful restoration to its post-Prohibition appearance.
“The addition of Wittnebel’s Tavern and the expansion of Old World Wisconsin’s beer and brewing experience is about bringing history to life in new and engaging ways,” said Angela Titus, Wisconsin Historical Society’s assistant deputy director and chief program officer.
“This immersive experience invites guests to journey through Wisconsin’s rich beer and brewing heritage, across a variety of cultures and traditions, and from one era to the next. Guests can watch a traditional 1800s farmhouse ale being produced in the Brewhouse, take their sample to the outdoor space reminiscent of an early 1900s Milwaukee biergarten, and then head to Wittnebel’s Tavern for an authentic look at the tavern culture that emerged after Prohibition.”
The tavern maintains many of its original features, including its back bar, bar and oak-paneled cooler, along with original details like a rotary hanging telephone. That telephone rings and there's a voice on the other end of the line.
Other features have been recreated based on historical research, such as corner pocket tables, a checkerboard floor and yellow-toned walls.
There are Wittnebel family photos, an old beer delivery truck outside and beer advertisements and other posters from the post-Prohibition period. Above the entrance hangs a carefully recreated replica of a sign advertising West Bend's Lithia Brewing.
A radio is tuned to 1930s baseball game broadcasts and Big Band music.
“Wittnebel’s Tavern provides a window into a pivotal era in our nation’s history and is part of our efforts to create deeper, more engaging connections between visitors and the past,” said Rob Novak, Old Word Wisconsin beer & brewing historian.
“The growing beer and brewing experience embodies the spirit of ‘gemütlichkeit’, which is the feeling of welcome, warmth and good cheer brought here by the German immigrants who greatly influenced Wisconsin’s brewing industry.”
A bartender in period attire will serve its own flagship beer – a post-Prohibition style corn lager called “Kettle Brau" – brewed in partnership with Mequon's Foxtown Brewing, on tap.
"Kettle Brau is our attempt to recreate what a beer like Lithia would've tasted like in the '30s," Novak explains. "We went with Foxtown after I had a few of their lagers and I was like, 'okay, I like these'."
So, Novak reached out and worked with the Foxtown brew team.
"We went up (to Mequon) and put a recipe together, brewed a test batch, liked it, made a couple tweaks. We had to try to find the right hops. Cluster hops (which are grown at Old World Wisconsin) aren't as easy to find now, so we went with a slightly different variety for the aroma hops."
Kettle Brau has been canned and will be available around Old World Wisconsin and to-go in six-packs at the gift shop. It will also be on tap at Wittnebel's and the beer garden, along with three other brews, including a rotating selection from New Glarus (right now it's Tailwagger amber ale) and the Two Red Barns farmhouse ale collab with Duesterbeck's. At the moment, the fourth tap has Kostritzer's schwarzbier.
While Two Red Barns is available in a few other locations, Kettle Brau is exclusive to Old World Wisconsin.
"We're hoping we'll brew a second batch for the summer," Novak says of Kettle Brau lager. "But we also want to do some seasonals, so we're going to need to have an Oktoberfest."
Those seasonals will likely also carry the Kettle Brau name, Novak says.
Old World Wisconsin currently grows hops – all the noble varieties plus Cluster and two English varieties: Brewers Gold and East Kent Goldings – and has added six hop poles around the beer garden (two of which have had rhizomes planted so far).
Novak also plans to head up to the Wittnebel family farm where the tavern was originally located to try and find some rhizomes to grow at Old World Wisconsin.
"Long before the tavern was built, in the mid-to-late 1860s, they did log hops as a crop one year," he says. "So (we) might drive up there once the hops have grown a little bit and see if we can get something.
"We've also talked with (UWM hops historian) Jennifer Jordan, and she's got a couple of historic rhizomes from Coddington's first hop farm in Wisconsin that we might take."
While Novak uses the hops grown on-site for the brews he does in the adjacent historic brewhouse – now starting its fourth season – there are not enough to use in brews like Kettle Brau and Two Red Barns.
He says that so far, he's brewed 250 batches of beer, in about 40 different styles, in the brewhouse.
"It's more than a lot of production breweries over that period of time," he says.
Now that the tavern project is basically done – though Novak says he's still putting on some finishing touches – Old World Wisconsin is diving into its next major improvement, says Øverland.
That will be a new entrance and new pathway into the separate villages within the facility.
"We've never had this type of improvement at Old World Wisconsin since 1976," he says. "You're seeing something brand new. What's going to happen after we open this is the new visitor center. Actually, the fence is going up tomorrow.
"We want to create much more of a step through the gate into a back-in-time experience and give people something that they can't get somewhere else."
The new Visitor's Center will have restrooms, ticket and program areas, gathering places for families and schoolchildren, and more.
"Importantly," says Øverland, "it's going to give people a sense that, 'I have arrived'."
Then a new tram stop and picnic pavilion are in the plans as is the remodeling of the round barn cafeteria.
"Next year is our 50th anniversary," Øverland points out. "This was a bicentennial project, originally. Old World Wisconsin was the State's bicentennial project.
So for the 250th coming up next year, we decided why not lift it up to the next level?"
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
