Anthony Waldman House - A Saloon

A Saloon

Fuchs' home was several blocks away at 148 Walnut Street and his business was based from Fort Road and Walnut, so it would appear that the stone house was an investment property. The question is, what was it used for? The Minnesota statehood census lists Edward and Sarah Shingles as residing on the lot in November 1857, and intriguingly, Edward's occupation is listed as "saloon." Both Shingles (aka Shindell and Shendle) and the building's owner after 1860, Anthony Waldman, paid the City of St. Paul for liquor licenses in March 1858. By May of that year Shingles is listed as the proprietor of the Winnebago Saloon on Jackson Street near St. Paul's lower levee (today's Lowertown), so if in fact Shingles operated an earlier saloon from the stone house it could not have been for long. Waldman, who purchased the stone house in October 1860, is listed as the owner of a lager beer saloon in the 1860 federal census. To add to the brewing connections, in October 1859 Waldman received a mortgage to the present-day Schmidt Brewery site on West 7th Street as security for a $500 loan to Henry and Christoph Stahlman, fellow Bavarians who were among St. Paul’s earliest and most successful brewers. Notably, there were a growing number of German lager houses and saloons in the immediate vicinity of the stone house prior to the Civil War. Immediately across the alley to the north on Forbes, John Fetzer ran a lager beer saloon from 1856 to 1860, and the notorious “Cave House” saloon and brothel operated a few blocks further down Bluff Street. All of this points to a possible intended use of the stone building as a saloon, perhaps first by Shingles and then by Waldman.