Road Tips

The Demise of the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill

When I travel along Interstate 43 between Milwaukee and Green Bay, I always try to stop at the small unincorporated town of Lake Church, just east of Belgium, WI.  Traveling through Lake Church, the county road takes you right up to the edge of Lake Michigan.  (See map)  There's a small parking lot there where I can park and walk out to the shore's edge to stand and watch the waves roll in.  It's like my little moment-of-zen where I can sort of just zone-out for 5 to 10 minutes looking at the lake.  I was able to do that when I was up in Wisconsin last week.

Driving through Lake Church, however, I sensed that something was amiss.  There was this old building that housed the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill that became one of my favorite little joints that I've come across in my travels.  I had been fascinated by the place ever since I found this little spot off Interstate 43 a number of years ago.  (Click here to see my original entry on the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill.)  I was even more fascinated after meeting the owner and one of the regulars who gave me the history of the 170-year-old building which was a notorious speakeasy during Prohibition.  I loved the fact that they had Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap and Blatz beer in bottles.  And they also had a great burger.  It was simply one of the coolest places I've found. 

But it appeared that the building was gone.  I hadn't been there for about a year and the stately old building was nowhere to be found.  I was sort of discombobulated as I sat at the intersection trying to get my bearings where the building used to be.  Getting into the hotel in Milwaukee that evening, I did a Google search for the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill.  And I was horrified and immediately saddened to learn that it had been destroyed by fire in May of this year.  

Owner Dave Maiman - known to the locals and regulars as "Uncle Dave" - had just left the building around 5:30 p.m. on May 17th when he was suddenly called back as a fire had broken out in the kitchen.  The fire quickly spread throughout the 175-year-old building and there was no chance to stop it.  22 fire departments descended upon Lake Church to battle the fire as they also had to contend with high winds which helped fan the flames.  The building burned through the night and was finally out around midnight.  The building was a total loss.

Pictured left - Firefighters battle the blaze at the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill.  Photo courtesy of Ozaukee Press. 

It was determined that electrical wires in the wall of the kitchen area shorted out and started the fire.  The old building had no safeguards in place to contain the fire and it went up in flames in no time flat.   The employees and about 8 patrons evacuated the building and no one was harmed, save for an employee who suffered from a bit of smoke inhalation trying to save some items from burning up in the flames.  

Dave Maiman remarked after the fire that he was hoping to pass the business along to the next owner who would keep the bar/restaurant going.  And he lamented the loss of the hand-carved back bar and the original tin ceiling tiles that dated back to when the building was built in 1848 - the year Wisconsin became a state.  But mostly he was going to miss the people who came into the place that he owned for over 20 years.  People had eaten or imbibed at the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill for generations and suddenly it was no more.  

 

Pictured left - Dave Maiman makes his way past the rubble from the aftermath of the fire at the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill.  Photo courtesy Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.  

On a subsequent visit to the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill, Maiman had told me that he was getting old and was looking for the right person to buy the establishment. But now after the fire, that obviously won't happen.  Maiman said in an interview after the fire that he didn't know if he was going to rebuild the restaurant.  But, quite honestly, how could you? There's no way to replicate the vintage mid-19th century building, the hand-crafted bar, the tin-ceiling panels, and the homeyness that the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill had.  The debris was long gone, the land that the building sat upon had been leveled off, and a thick grassy patch was in place of where the building used to be. I'm just thankful that I got to experience the place on a couple three occasions and will sadly miss the Lake Church Inn Tavern & Grill. 

Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill - Belgium, WI

Many times when I travel Interstate 43 between Milwaukee and Green Bay, I like to take a little side road off the super highway near Belgium, WI that takes you to the Lake Michigan shoreline just north of Harrington Beach State Park.  (see map)  There's a small parking lot there and I like to get out and walk to the shoreline and look out over the lake for a few moments.  Looking out over water is always a relaxing and tranquil moment for me.  To get to this little spot of heaven on earth, I drive through the small unincorporated village of Lake Church.  In Lake Church is a little bar/restaurant/inn that has always fascinated me - the Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill.  I've always wanted to stop in and take a look around.  The only problem is that it opens at 3 p.m. through the week (11 a.m. Friday thru Sunday) and I'm usually driving by going to and from the lakefront much earlier than that.  I've always wanted to stop in and see what the place is all about and on a trip to Wisconsin last fall, it turned out that I was there after 3 p.m.  After stopping at the lake front for a moment of reflection, I headed back to the Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill.   

I really don't know how I found this place, but I've been coming to this area for about 17 years.  I'm guessing I saw that the lake wasn't that far off the interstate on a map one time and I just wondered what would be down that road.  I thought there might be a bar or a lookout, but it turned out to be a pretty primitive boat ramp where a person - if they didn't know where they were in the middle of the night - could literally drive right off into Lake Michigan.  Over the years, I've stopped there dozens of times - especially on nice warm days - to gaze out over the lake.

This is the view at the end of County Highway D.  As I said, it's serene and relaxing with the waves lapping at the concrete boat ramp that dips from the roadway into Lake Michigan.  It's usually just me or maybe someone else who is running their dog along the beach.  There are houses just past a tree line to the north and I'm somewhat envious for the views they have every day.  I usually don't linger much longer than 5 to 10 minutes, but it's usually enough to clear my head and send me on my way.  If there were a chair or a bench there, I'd sit there for a helluva lot longer.  

Doubling back to the Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill located at the corner of Lake Church Road and County Highway D (see map), I pulled up in front of the place and even though it was 10 after 3 in the afternoon, the place didn't look open.  In fact, the sign in the front window said they were closed.  I was sort of pissed and incredulous that the place wouldn't be open.  I got out of the car, walked up to the red front door and jiggled it.  It opened up and I walked inside.  There was a gray-haired man behind the bar with his back to me and I asked, "Are you open?"

He turned around and yelled back, "Sure!  Come on in!"  He said that he had gotten in there a little late and he hadn't changed the sign from "Closed" to "Open".  "I'll just do that now," he said as he came out from behind the bar to flip the sign.  It turned out the man was Dave Maiman - known as "Uncle Dave" to the locals - who owns the Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill with his wife Annette.  

I took a seat at the bar and ordered up a beer.  It wasn't long before a guy came in who had been out riding his motorcycle and he sat at the bar near me and ordered a Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Not long after that, an elderly man came in, ordered a Blatz and took it back to a video gaming machine that was in the back corner of the bar.  I sort of chuckled and thought to myself, "I love this place already!"  

It turns out there's a lot of history in the building that houses the Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill.  The original building on the east side of the main building was a small rooming house originally built in 1848.  That was the year Wisconsin became a state.  

A few years later in the 1860's a larger building was built to the west - that's the building that houses the tavern.  The walnut back bar is the original one and it dates back to the 1880's.  The 10 unit inn just east of the tavern was built in the mid-80's.  There are 8 two queen bed rooms, along with a two bed efficiency room with a small kitchenette, and a one bedroom unit with a full size kitchen and living area.   Rates run from $70 for the two bed rooms, to $80 for the efficiency, to $95 for the one bedroom room with a full kitchen.

After the building in which the tavern was built, the owners at the time decided to build another part of the structure that connected the original building and the building that houses the tavern.  This part of the building is the dining room at the Lake Church Inn Tavern.  A number of historical pictures from the area were hung on the wall in the dining room.  

Another one of the regulars - an elderly man who lived nearby - came in and sat at the end of the bar and ordered a Miller High Life in a can.  He and I started to talk about the building and its history.  He said that, of course, there have been many owners over the years - in fact, his son was one of the owners a few years back.  But this gentleman was a treasure trove of information on the transition of not only the building, but the surrounding area in Lake Church.  

There is a church across the street from the tavern - St. Mary's Church with an adjoining cemetery.   Next to the church was a nunnery which housed the nuns who taught school at the St. Mary's Catholic school.  Both the nunnery and the school were torn down years ago.  The man told me that there wasn't a bathroom in the church and if parishioners had to go to the restroom while at the church, they had to come across the street to use the bathroom at the tavern.  "How ironic is that," the man asked me with a chuckle.  

Caddy-cornered from the tavern to the southwest and across the street from the church was a stage coach station.  The rooms to the side and above the tavern were used as overnight boarding for people who were passing through on stage coaches going to and coming from Milwaukee.   

The man squired me around the tavern and dining room pointing out some of the pictures and explaining some of the aspects of the building.  "The bar used to be on the opposite wall," he told me.  "There was a door on the outside that went to the basement.  They would store food, liquor, beer, whatever down there."  I asked him if this place was a speakeasy during Prohibition.  He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Maybe."  Then he said with a bit more conviction, "Probably.  I mean, there were a lot of places my daddy told me about that you wouldn't think of as having booze during Prohibition that really did." 

He showed me the indentions on the floor of where a set of double doors used to be under the arch in the middle of the room.  "They used to store stuff back in there, too," he explained to me.  "But they had taken the doors off by the time my son had the place to give them a little more room."  I asked him how long ago that his son owned the business.  "I don't know.  20 years, 25 years...", he said as his voice trailed off as he was thinking.  "Hell, maybe 30 years.  Once you get to my age, you sort of lose track of time."

I sat back down at the bar and I picked up a food menu to see what Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill had to offer.  It was your typical bar food - burgers, sandwiches, and appetizers.  They had dinners such as an 8 ounce beef tenderloin filet, fish and chips, and a sweet & sour chicken sautéed with green peppers, mushrooms and onions in a sweet and sour sauce and served over rice with a vegetable medley.  And - like a lot of places like the Lake Church Inn Tavern in the state of Wisconsin - they have a fish fry on Friday nights.  

It was getting a little later in the afternoon and I was thinking that maybe I ought to try something.  I asked Uncle Dave if he could make something up for me on the grill.  "You don't want me to cook it," he said as he grabbed a pad to write down my order.  "But the cook would be happy to make something up for you."  

I ended up getting the mushroom/Swiss cheese burger that they had on the menu.  I asked Dave to throw some bacon on it, too.  It was served on a spongy toasted bun and came with some dill pickles on the side.  It was actually pretty damned good.  It was juicy and required a number of napkins to help keep myself clean.  The bun held together very well considering it was turning into somewhat of a mess the more I ate.  I finished up the burger and Uncle Dave asked what I thought of it.  "I have to tell you, I've been driving by this place for years and always wanted to come in," I explained to him.  "This burger, alone, was worth stopping.  But the history of this place is just amazing."  

I'd waited a long time to stop in to the Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill and it was worth it - to me.  Look - it's a dive and they don't have much, if any, of a craft beer list.  Most of their food is basic bar fare, but the history of the place is worth stopping by.  The burger I had was very good and I would have no problem stopping back in there for another burger at some point in the future.  Now that I know about the place, I'll have to time my little mental-break excursions out to Lake Michigan to coincide with when the Lake Church Inn Tavern and Grill is open.  Or maybe I just need to stay some night at the inn next door and enjoy myself a little longer than the short time I was there on my first visit.