Painted Lady Saloon is on the corner of Eighth and Kosciusko streets in Maxwelltown, Manistee. Built in the mid-1880s, the building has housed a bar since the 1890s. Photo by Kevin Howell.
By Kevin Howell
Bob Venne was sitting at the bar of the Painted Lady Saloon, nursing a pint of beer with his buddy David Teasley, when I walked in and took the seat next to him.
“We had this place for nearly 30 years,” Venne told me. “We bought it in 1993. My wife (Linda Venne) managed it for a couple years before that.”
The Painted Lady is one of a handful of businesses in a part of old Manistee known as Maxwelltown. I recently “discovered” the area on a lakeshore excursion with my wife. We enjoyed a good lunch at the saloon and, out of a nagging curiosity, I returned to Manistee to learn more about both Maxwelltown and the Painted Lady.
That curiosity led me to the Manistee County Historical Museum and its director Mark Fedder, who pointed me to Susan Wolkens and Jeff Bladzik, current owners of the Painted Lady Saloon. It turns out Wolkens is Venne’s daughter.
Wolkens said her father, who just turned 80, “knows a lot more than I do; he remembers everything and has a memory like an elephant, basically.”
That’s how I came to be sitting at the bar on the corner of Kosciusko and Eighth Street, on Manistee’s east side, with Venne and his buddy.
“Right now, it’s the oldest bar in the county that’s still operating pretty much as it was,” Venne said, as he ran through some of the history of the Painted Lady Saloon and Maxwelltown, in general.
“The lot next door (now vacant) was the Hi-Way bar,” he began. “They caught the arsonist and it’s coming to trial pretty quick.”
The Hi-Way Inn burned last August, leaving the Maxwelltown area with three bars where once a half dozen or more stood.
The Painted Lady was named G and L Bar when the Vennes bought it. Wolkens explained how her mother made the name change.
“They had a contest with the customers, and they all threw a name in a hat,” Wolkens told me, laughing. “There were some names in there, but I think my mom ended up picking the one she wanted anyway.”
Venne worked at the Hardy Salt Company until it closed, like so many other industries in Maxwelltown. He said that, at 53 years old, buying the historic (and popular) tavern in his hometown seemed the right thing to do.
“We figure this (building) was built in 1885, and it was a bar, for sure, in 1894; (a) guy named Daniels bought it,” Venne said.
Teasley added, “When Daniels bought it, it took him a year to renovate and then opened it up in 1894.”
According to Venne, Daniels and a partner owned a brewery close to where the American Legion is now. (OldBreweries.com lists the Charles Daniels and Joseph Gambs Brewery, 1884-90, and later the Chas. H. Daniels Brewery, 1911-1919.)
“It was a saloon then, but when prohibition came along in 1920, they turned it into a drug store,” Venne continued, adding:
“I’ll tell you something interesting about Prohibition. Drug stores used to sell a half a pint of raw alcohol; it was legal for medicinal (use). Well, hell, you could go in, your brother could go in, your uncle. They could have a hell of a party.”
He laughed as he related this, then told me that after prohibition it became a bar again.
“There’s been one here ever since,” he said. “When I was a kid, it was Zeggers Tavern.”
Pointing in different directions from his bar seat, Venne said, “There was another bar there, a barber shop there, a barber shop there, a pool hall over here, a couple stores, an army surplus down the road ⸺ it was a little village.”
When I met with Fedder at the museum, prior to talking with Venne, he had given me some of the history of Maxwelltown. Though use of the name has been generalized to include almost the entire east side of Manistee, Fedder said it began as an eight- or ten-square block section from 12th Street to 16th Street and from Vine Street to Main Street.
“Maxwelltown is basically a small section of the east side of the city of Manistee named after a guy named John C. Maxwell,” Fedder explained.
Maxwelltown was established in the mid to late 1870s, according to Fedder, not long after Manistee became a city in 1869. (Point of interest: Manistee was called Manisteetown before it was incorporated.) Fedder explained that “Mr. Maxwell,” a sawmill owner, briefly lived in Manistee. He had a couple of partners.
“He purchased the property which encompasses a small portion of today’s Maxwelltown,” Fedder said, “but as the years have passed the name has encompassed the whole east side of Manistee.”
It was a working-class area, whereas historic downtown Manistee was settled by lumbermen and owners of industry who lived near the business district. Old U.S. Highway 31 ran through Maxwelltown until the mid-1950s, when it was re-routed to its present location beside the historic district.
By then the lumber industry was drying up and the mills closed, leaving Morton Salt Company and a few businesses in Maxwelltown.
According to Wolkens, “There’s this place and next door there’s a little restaurant called Two Slices, then there’s a bar called Bill’s Place, then there’s Stu’s Pub.
“There’s a flower shop over on 5th Street, there’s a cleaning service down here at the end of 8th Street – you know, it’s just a little area, there’s not a whole lot of business down here, but there’s some. No stores or anything like that; there used to be, but not anymore.”
Many of the old buildings from the late 1800s and early 1900s are still there, though mostly vacant and waiting to be reclaimed someday.
There has been some attempt to re-energize the area and bring attention to it. Pre-pandemic, the bars and businesses held a St. Patrick’s Day parade which Wolkens said drew a good crowd. Plans were made (and scrapped) to do it again in 2020. They hope to bring it back as the pandemic slows.
Before the Hi-Way Inn burned, its owner, the owner of Stu’s Pub and Wolkens went together to rent a billboard highlighting Maxwelltown. The sign was along U.S. Highway 31, south of Manistee.
Back at the Painted Lady, Venne talked about former lumber mills around Lake Manistee, furniture factories once found in Maxwelltown, the 60-year-old Century Boat Company that went belly up in the 1980s or so, foundries and machine shops. (“If you wanted anything made here, you could get it made.”)
By the time Venne and I parted company, my curiosity had been pretty much satisfied, but I look forward to another visit to the Painted Lady Saloon to soak up the history of Maxwelltown.
Kevin Howell is a transplanted freelance writer from Indiana residing in Mason County. He loves the Michigan woods, lakes and especially Michigan craft beers, not necessarily in that order! Contact him at kevin(at)ytci.com.
