Repeal and the neighborhood tavern

1933 — the tavern as institution

The first pour, claimed twice: National repeal came on December 5, 1933, and Fort Wayne's legal trade restarted at once. Two houses claim the first pour, and the record carries both claims as claims. The State Bar at 1210 East State Boulevard dates itself to 1933, and local tradition as relayed by the roadside-architecture record holds that it was the first place in Fort Wayne — and possibly in all of Indiana — to serve legal beer after Prohibition ended; its vintage neon sign still reads "State Grill," and the room remains what it began as, a no-frills neighborhood tavern in East State Village. The second claim belongs to a store rather than a tavern: Belmont Beverage's house history records that its Flagship store at 1201–1203 South Calhoun Street, at Lewis Street, was the first store licensed in Fort Wayne after the Repeal of Prohibition in 1933. A tavern's first beer and a store's first license are different kinds of first, and both are printed here exactly as their houses state them.

One room, nine names, a century and a third: The fullest documented run of any Fort Wayne bar is the house at 1830 South Calhoun Street, and the city directories, not only the house's own published history, carry it. The room began at 354 South Calhoun, its number before the city's renumbering: Ferdinand Oetting kept the first saloon there in 1888, D. Wm Keefer held it in 1889 with Oetting as his bartender, and Wm T. Howey kept it from 1890 to 1893. Joseph J. Schnee, a Bass Foundry wheel molder until then, took the room in 1894 and held it for a quarter century, living over it until about 1910; through Prohibition he traded as soft drinks, and the house account says the room closed from 1928 to 1931. His son Leo reopened it as the law turned under the name Hoosier Products Co., a malt dealer's styling the 1933 directory fixes, and ran it through the thirties and war years as Schnee's Restaurant and Schnee's Liquors, on the house's account. From 1945 through 1953 the room passed through several hands, the most notable styling The Wifenpoof on the house's telling, with Al Pettit the one proprietor the directories fix. In 1954 Hughie Johnson, the house spelling, or Johnston, as Visit Fort Wayne and the Pistons record give it, the superstar first baseman of the Zollner Pistons softball team, bought the room, called it Hughie's Tap, and introduced oysters; in 1963 it passed to the Pistons' second baseman, Neal Barille, who renamed it Neal's Oyster Bar. Alan Huffman and Alex Laguna bought it in 1975, shortened the name to The Oyster Bar, and remodeled it to its present state; the Gard family held it from 1987, and Anthony and Kara West took it up in 2022. The house's own history garbles one keeper's name as W. T. Harvey and calls him a Pennsylvania Railroad fireman: the directories give Howey, no Harvey appears in them, and the railroad detail stands unverified. A saloon that began under German keepers on a renumbered street now trades on a 130-year history, and is, on the record reached, the city's longest documented drinking address.

The institution: The post-Repeal tavern was a fixed piece of neighborhood equipment: a family business, often with the family living above or behind, a short walk from the factory gates and the parish, pouring for regulars whose names the keeper knew. The trade's outer frame was the state's — Indiana liquor permits, issued in Indianapolis, and legal service running to 3 a.m., the closing hour that Fort Wayne bar listings have advertised ever since. What the saloon had been to the railroad traveler, the tavern was to the street it stood on, and the city's street corners accumulated their rooms decade by decade: by the time the survivors of the next entry opened, the pattern was a century old.

Sources:

2. The State Bar (thestatefw.com) — the tavern's own dating, "since 1933," at 1210 East State Boulevard.
3. Roadside Peek, "Neon Eateries Midwest" — the State Grill/State Bar neon on East State Boulevard, the house dating to the years after Repeal, and the first-legal-beer claim stated as belief ("is believed to be the first place in Fort Wayne — and possibly all of Indiana").
4. Belmont Beverage & Chalet Party Shoppe, company history post (Instagram, August 15, 2025) — the Flagship at 1201–1203 South Calhoun as the first store licensed in Fort Wayne after the Repeal of 1933, and the Schwieters-to-Druley ownership line from 1971.
5. FortWayne.com, "Visit: 46805" (Fort Wayne Magazine) — the State Bar & Grill as East State Village's no-frills neighborhood dive, in neighborhood context.