Brother, can I buy you a beer?
Several months ago, Marlin Teat mentioned that I might find the saloons, bars and past drinking laws of Rome quite interesting. He was, as usual, right on target. After a few days of research I knew it would intrigue folks the way it did me. In my tenure as a Rome Police officer I watched as we went from beer only to package alcohol.
Then we eased into pouring establishments that had to sell a certain amount of food with their whiskey, and clubs managed to spring up. How many old timers can forget the Sky Top, Ramada Inn and Honeysuckle? And brother, the party was on. But how did we get here? Shall we take a brief look backwards? It wasn’t always peaches and cream in the liquor business.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s the argument over whiskey reached a fever pitch in the country, and in Floyd County we had bitter accusations, lawsuits, fistfights and improbable political alliances such as religious leaders teaming up with the whiskey crowd against the dispensary system. I didn’t know what that was either, and like the lawyer said, “I’ll get back to that.” There were some financial ones, too.
The first wet versus dry confrontation took place in July of 1887. There was a petition that was circulated in an intense fight to ban the sale of alcohol. As late as 1971 that petition was still on file in the Ordinary’s Office with page after page of signatures. One of the most prominent was that of Seaborn Wright, one of Georgia’s great champions of prohibition.
Two ballots also were still on file for this election. Those in favor received a slip bearing the word “For the Sale,” while those against received a much larger ballot with “AGAINST THE SALE” stamped in bold letters with a background scene of a man teetering over a precipice, bottle and glass in hand, looking down into the raging fires of Hell. An airborne angel sought tearfully to alter his course, while wife and two children were pleading for his salvation.
The “AGAINST THE SALE” crowd won the day. There were 1,428 ballots against and 908 for the continued sale. Rome’s saloons were closed — for a time.
The war continued and two years later there was another ballot over the same argument. The details of this ballot are hazy to say the least, but the results were positive to rescind the ordinance banning the sale of alcohol by around five hundred votes. The swinging doors and sawdust floors once again became familiar sights in downtown Rome, much to the delight of bar owners and Rome’s drinkers.
However, a lawsuit was filed on the grounds that the ballot boxes had been stuffed. An investigation brought grand jury indictments against 417 Romans, but somehow on the day before the trial the tax digest disappeared from the offices of Tax Collector John J. Black and the prosecution was left without tangible proof of wrongdoing. Twenty years later (according to a “Fifty Years Ago” column in the Rome News-Tribune written by Mrs. Earnestine West on July 6, 1958) these records were found hidden in the attic of the old City Hall building on West Fourth Avenue.
As the 20th century came bustling on the scene, Rome numbered about 7,000 residents and thirteen open saloons on Broad Street between First and Sixth Avenues, including a few just off Broad.
Many we can place. Like the Armstrong Hotel (later Greystone), which attracted the carriage crowd and boasted the finest bar in town. They advertised heavily in the Rome Tribune. An advertisement on Jan. 1, 1902 proclaimed J.G. Briant’s Armstrong Bar “the best appointed and most elegant Bar in Rome…Whiskies, Brandies, Domestic and Imported Wines, Ale and Porter, Gin, etc.…Bottled and Draught Beers…Corn Whiskey… and an elegant Billiard Parlor…all at the Armstrong.”
The Central Hotel (Choice House, later the Forrest Hotel) at Broad and Fifth also advertised a house bar. Another saloon just above the Central in the 600 block, still another stood just across the street from the Central, and, just below this, the firm of Curran & Scott did a thriving wholesale liquor business at 419 Broad St. An unnamed saloon occupied the corner of Tribune Street and West Fifth directly across from the Old County Courthouse.
The numbering of Broad Street businesses has changed several times over the years, so we can’t pinpoint where these were, but the following list of owners may help those that had ancestors in the trade.
Of the Broad Street bars listed were J.G. Briant at No. 6, J.S. Wyatt at No. 9, M.C. Mathis at No. 72, W.C. Bogan at No. 74, J.H. Satterfield No. 80, Elliott and Otis at No. 85. Then there was Rome’s Cotton Block, a wide-open carousing ground for the hard-drinking gentry from the flat wood farms, the down river and mountain logging camps, along with the railroad and riverboat men.
On Broad Street, immediately above the Second Avenue intersection, J.H. Coleman operated a saloon at 107. W.D. Coleman competed at 133, W.M. Thompson at 110 and J. Black at 134. A vastly popular watering hole for beer drinkers was next door to the Nevin Opera House (which had its own bar for a while) and bore the name “Le Tapper,” or more familiar to Romans of the day, “Let’s tap ‘er,” where the brew was broached from 55 gallon wooden barrels with bung starters.
During this period, many ladies of the night carried on a lucrative business on the Broad Street bar scene. Money was changing hands rapidly and the temperance folks were steaming, about to spring their biggest surprise.
The opening of the Rome Dispensary cut down this busy and profitable group of saloons like wheat before a harvest blade.
Next week we’ll look at the Dispensary system, the good and the bad.