Old Bars & Restaurant Photo Gallery

**jackie5275** · January-22-12, 02:00 PM

This is from the Detroit News

http://apps.detnews.com/apps/multime...y.php?id=13636

**Parkguy** · January-22-12, 04:11 PM

That's great! "The Bucket of Blood." Sounds appetizing!

**coloroflaw** · January-22-12, 08:52 PM

Look at picture 16/26. If that really was taken in 1942, you can see where it had originally said "German" over the top "Restaurant," which was obviously freshly painted over. Ah...xenophobia in its finest hour. Can't believe the Detroit News missed that one.

**Bobl** · January-22-12, 09:44 PM

Great photos. Detroit churches and bars from back in the day are fascinating to me.

**EastsideAl** · January-23-12, 01:07 AM

Originally Posted by coloroflaw

Look at picture 16/26. If that really was taken in 1942, you can see where it had originally said "German" over the top "Restaurant," which was obviously freshly painted over. Ah...xenophobia in its finest hour. Can't believe the Detroit News missed that one.

The story is much more complicated, and intriguing than that, and I'm surprised that the News put that picture in there with no background information. Xenophobia was not the only thing at work in the painting over of that restaurant's sign. The owner of the German restaurant in that picture, Max Stephan, was one of the very few U.S. citizens convicted of treason during WWII.

Stephan aided a German prisoner-of-war, Peter Krug, who had escaped from a Canadian POW camp and paddled across the river to Belle Isle in a boat he had somehow acquired. Stephan hosted Krug in his restaurant and home, helped him with his escape plans, bought him a bus ticket, and gave him money. Krug was eventually caught in San Antonio, and Stephan was arrested by the FBI and put on trial for treason.

He was convicted in federal court and sentenced to death by hanging. Just a few hours from the time his sentence was to be carried out, President Roosevelt commuted his sentence to life in prison.

Here is a review of a book about this event that describes the incident itself in a little more detail:
http://www.hourdetroit.com/Hour-Detr...y-Crime-rsquo/

And, from Wayne's Virtual Motor City site, a picture of Max Stephan in jail:

**EastsideAl** · January-23-12, 04:53 PM

A couple of other interesting notes about these pictures, or at least interesting to me because they involve my family.

The "Workmen's" hotel and restaurant shown in picture #1 was located on Howard near what was then Chinatown and run by a worker's cooperative for the large numbers of single men struggling to work and live in Detroit. My grandfather was involved with the organization that founded and ran this place. The Workmen's Co-op restaurant #2 was in Hamtramck and was the forerunner of the Polonia restaurant still operating today.

The tavern shown in picture 14, at Jefferson and Grand Blvd., was another place involved in my grandfather's life. He worked there as a kid in pre-prohibition days helping to sweep up and clean the place, and sometimes also delivering buckets of beer to nearby homes, selling newspapers, and shining patron's shoes. He grew up nearby on Baldwin and Field and did similar work for the whole line of saloons that once stood on that stretch of Jefferson, as well as at the amusement parks that stood across the street back then. But the man who ran this saloon was a favorite of his, and something like the father he never really had, and Grandpa remained in touch with him and his family for the rest of their lives.

**MSUguy** · January-23-12, 05:26 PM

Roadhouses were located on the outskirts of Detroit in Highland Park, Hamtramck, Royal Oak or Pontiac with such names as La Belle Inn off Woodward, Marquette's and Crooked Acres at Seven Mile and Woodward. They were outside the city to keep out of the eye of the police, since they were often the source of crime and trouble up through the 1920s.
Anyone could drink at a roadhouse, and they frequently served hard liquor to boys as young as 12. Some had illegal slot machines, hosted "cocking mains" [[cock fights) and frightened local farm families with brawls, robbery and gunfights. They flouted the no-alcohol-on-Sundays law and were called by one Hamtramck sheriff "a menace to the peaceable citizens of the village

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120122/METRO07/201220302