Martha's Midway Tavern, 810 West Fourth Street: a century in one family's hands

1924 — 2026

The purchase and the lunch counter: In 1924 Martha and Cyriel Antheunes, Belgian immigrants, bought the frame building at 810 West Fourth Street — the address where the 1921 directory had listed Alphonse Audenaert's soft-drink stand — and opened it as a lunch counter under the name Midway Lunch. What the house served in front was chicken dinners, soda pop and cigars, and near-beer; what it sold, by the house history's own account, was bootlegged beer and whiskey run out of the garage behind. The house history — the tavern's own researched account, assembled in a 2009 independent history project and kept by the house since — preserves the working texture: Martha hid the whiskey bottles behind a hollow panel in the wall and carried the beer in against her body, under her apron, so a raid would find a clean house; when she saw the agents coming she would clap her hands, and everyone would dance until the song ended. In 1930 the law caught up: the Antheunes were arrested, the Midway was padlocked, and the family spent nearly a year in Belgium — the case and the enforcement record are the Crime section's, told there; this section keeps the place. They returned and reopened the lunch counter, and worked it to repeal.

Repeal and the dance hall: When repeal came on 5 December 1933, Martha remodeled. The dance hall was redone with wood floors and the atmosphere of an outdoor Belgian beer garden, and the house filled it with music: by the Chicago Sun-Times' account, Martha after repeal booked live jump, swing and country-western music, bringing musicians in from all over, while the Belgian decoration she installed in the 1933 remodeling — the antique Belgian lamps among it — stayed on the walls for the rest of the century and beyond. The trade's course at the Midway was thus set in the repeal year: a neighborhood tavern, a dance hall, and a music room in one low frame building in the Belgian West End, run by the family that owned it.

Sixty-six years, or sixty-seven: Cyriel Antheunes died in 1946. Martha ran the Midway with her daughters Albertina and Toni, and her tenure at its bar is the longest single keeper's tenure this county's record documents — and the record gives it in two forms, printed here whole and not reconciled. The house history reckons "66 years behind the Midway's bar" and gives her death in 1990 at the age of 91. Dave Hoekstra's Sun-Times profile of November 2010, written from interviews in the room, says she "tended bar at the Midway for 67 years, after immigrating to the United States from Belgium as a teenager," and that she died in 1990 "at the age of 92"; Hoekstra gives her maiden name as Van Holsbeke and her birthplace as Koewacht, in Holland — a village on the Dutch-Belgian border — where the house tradition frames the family simply as Belgian. Either subtraction is longer than any documented tenure at a single bar in either river city; the year in Belgium, 1930–31, is inside both counts, and neither account subtracts it.

The blues era: Martha died in 1990, and the room's course passed to her daughter: Albertina Wassenhove has run the Midway since 1990 and books its talent herself. The booking that turned the room's second life began, by Hoekstra's account, in 1989, when Albertina put the Swingin' Crawdads on the Midway's stage — the start of the blues-booking era that made the tavern a blues room of regional standing under the billing Home of the Blues. The physical room carries the era on its walls: more than five thousand signatures cover them, by Hoekstra's count, and Albertina's early-1900s upright piano — the one she practiced on as a girl — still stands by the bar. The professional record noticed: the Washington Blues Society's Bluesletter of January 2018 profiled her among the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive honorees of that year — weeks after she turned ninety at the end of 2017 — noting that she had taken the room over from her mother and run it ever since. One piece of the room's lore stands here as it stands in Crime, at lore size: the claim, carried in a People magazine recollection of February 1988, that Al Capone stopped at the Midway in the dry years; it is printed as recollection, with its carrier named, and not as fact. The Midway Tavern stands at 810 West Fourth Street, operating in November 2026 — the oldest tavern course in the city in unbroken family hands, and the county's documented proof that a neighborhood bar can hold a century.

Sources:

1. The Midway Tavern house history — the independent history project on Prohibition in South Bend and Mishawaka (2009; deposited with the Center for History; published by the house as its history presentation, updated 2022): the 1924 purchase from a soft-drink stand's address; "Midway Lunch" — chicken dinners, soda, cigars, near-beer; the garage whiskey, the hollow wall panel, the apron, the clap-and-dance signal; the 1930 arrest, padlock and Belgium year; the dance-hall remodeling, wood floors and Belgian beer-garden decoration; Cyriel's death in 1946; Martha's 66 years and death in 1990 at 91; Albertina and Toni.
2. Dave Hoekstra, "Playing the blues (Martha's Midway Tavern)," Chicago Sun-Times (November 2010) — Martha "tended bar at the Midway for 67 years," died 1990 at 92; née Van Holsbeke, "a native of Koewacht, Holland"; post-repeal bookings of jump, swing and country-western; the 5,000-plus wall signatures and the early-1900s piano; the Swingin' Crawdads booked in 1989; "still about 20 family-owned bars within a 15-minute walking distance of the Midway" (quoted in the neighborhood entry below). The conflict with the house history's figures is printed in the entry, not resolved.
3. Washington Blues Society, Bluesletter (January 2018) — Albertina Wassenhove profiled in the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive class of 2018; "running the Midway Tavern in Mishawaka, Indiana" since her mother's death; turned ninety at the end of 2017. R. L. Polk & Co. (1921), p. 1027 — Audenaert at this address, 1921; Crime section of this history — the 1930 case, and the Capone recollection (People, February 1988) at lore size.