Photo: Adam Levin
Red Room Bar and Green Room Restaurant postcard
I’m not sure why I’m fascinated with the former Red Room bar and Green Room restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue. It closed almost a decade before I was born and barely anyone alive today frequented the establishment or remembers it. Even Milwaukee historian John Gurda was stumped when I asked him. Nonetheless, I’m going to do my best to share and honor its history.
From 1935 to 1960, the Plankinton Arcade’s basement at 161 W. Wisconsin Avenue was home to both the Red Room Bar & the Green Room Restaurants. You could bowl, have dinner and drink. The Red Room opened in 1935, the Green Room opened a couple of years later. The famous bar sat alongside the Green Room Restaurant. Frank and John Harvey managed the bar and restaurant with their brother Al. Prior to the bar it was known as The College Inn.
Wisconsin’s Longest Bar
In 1939, The Milwaukee Journal boasted the Red Room Bar was the “longest bar in Wisconsin.” As for the Green Room, the Milwaukee Journal’s 1937 advertisement mentions the restaurant was for “Those who desire a cool, comfortable place to dine and expect the finest in foods, be in a hasty seven o’clock breakfast, noon luncheon, or seven-course Green Room dinner. Those who appreciate delicious foods from the world’s cleanest kitchen, we dedicate the beautiful air-conditioned Green Room. Wisconsin’s largest & smallest restaurant.”
Image: Milwaukee Public Library - Special Collections
Red Room Bar 1937 Milwaukee Journal ad
Fred Smith’s Recreation Parlor was known as the largest one-floor recreation parlor in the world. Besides drinking and dining, the Recreation Parlor was centered around a bowling alley and pool. Today this would be compared to Landmark Lanes on Farwell Avenue.
Liberace Played Here
Image: Milwaukee Public Library - Special Collections
Liberace ad - Red Room Bar
The Red Room’s 1939 drink menu offered fine domestic and imported liquor of the highest quality. You could order “The Board,” a sampling menu for about $12. The quality and entertainment made the bar popular with visitors from across the country. The owners of the bar gave a start to a local pianist, “Walter Busterkeys” a.k.a. Liberace, who played piano in the Red Room Bar. “Walter” had a two-week engagement at the bar starting at $35 a week and any passer-by could hear him for the price of one beer. As a teenager in the mid-1930s, he began playing Milwaukee roadhouses and hotel lounges, developing the act that would eventually make him a star.
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The Red Room closed on Jan. 31, 1960, along with everything else in the Plankinton Arcade’s basement. The owners went bankrupt and the building sold at auction the same year. Today barely any reminders of the Red Room Bar and Green Room Restaurant exist, other than a few postcards and matchbooks. In the basement of the Plankinton Arcade, original floor tiles and structural beams still remain from this fine establishment.
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Photo by Lyle Oberwise via Milwaukee County Historical Society
Red Room Bar
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Red Room Bar
Oct 1957 - looking west from Plankinton Ave on W. Wisconsin Ave, Red Room on the left.
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Photo by Adam Levin
Red Room Bar
Red Room Bar original floor tiles as of today.
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Red Room Bar
Red Room Bar 1939 menu
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Red Room Bar
