What’s the oldest bar in Minnesota?

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After a game of softball, Jim Lonetti would stop at Neumann’s for a drink on the way back from Stillwater. He grew up in Maplewood and was familiar with the North St. Paul establishment that calls itself the “oldest continually operating bar” in Minnesota.

“I kind of have an appreciation of the older dive bar,” Lonetti said.

But then Lonetti noticed the Spot Bar in St. Paul advertised its establishment date as 1885 — two years earlier than Neumann’s — on its awning outside.

The inconsistency inspired Lonetti to reach out to the Strib’s reader-powered reporting project, Curious Minnesota, to ask: What is the oldest bar in Minnesota?

Lonetti, who lives in south Minneapolis and runs a baseball glove repair business, thought the answer might be a little tricky.

To be considered the state’s “oldest” bar, does the place need to have kept the same name it opened with more than a century ago? Served alcohol without interruption, even when it was illegal?

“A lot of technicalities might have something to do with whether or not they closed during prohibition or stayed open as a speakeasy,” Lonetti said.

Andy Sturdevant, who co-wrote a book on the history of Twin Cities bars, agreed. “It’s not a straightforward question,” he said.

It all depends on how you define “oldest.”

At Neumann’s, things have changed as little as reasonably possible after 138 years — and that’s how customers like it. Opened in 1887 by a man named Bill Neumann to serve Hamm’s beer, the bar stayed in the family for 90 years until it was sold to a lifelong customer.

“I won’t do a thing,” Karl Speak, who was then the new owner, told the Minneapolis Tribune in 1977. “I couldn’t. This is the kind of thing you have to keep around.”

The current owner, Mike Brown, feels the same way. A machinist for 25 years, he bought the bar in 2007 after the company he worked for was sold.

“I didn’t like corporate,” Brown said, “so I decided I was going to be a bartender and I bought my own bar.”

Frogs, first introduced by Neumann’s son Jim, still live in the front of the establishment, greeting customers from their elevated pond. Warm wood paneling lines the walls and framed photos and news articles show off the long and storied history.

Neumann’s calls itself the “oldest continually operating” bar in the state. The “continually operating” part is key to the claim. When alcohol was outlawed in 1920, they sold near-beer downstairs and then operated a speakeasy above the bar.

Elements from the bar’s Prohibition days remain, including a trick picture frame on the wall. From the outside, it looks like a framed photo. From the inside, a small door unlatches and allows you to pull a string to lower the photo and look out through the glass.

One of the bar’s original phones hangs beside it. This allowed the bartenders upstairs and downstairs to communicate. For years, the phones were only connected to each other.

“We didn’t get a phone that actually called out of the building until sometime in the ‘70s,” Brown shared. The reason? Jim didn’t want people calling in and “wrecking his customer’s day by making them come home or anything like that.”

Regular Bruce Nicolas has been coming to Neumann’s for over 45 years. He remembers when the taps were a huge brass cylinder with only four spouts — one of the few changes Brown made was replacing them with a more modern tap (the brass tap is still preserved upstairs).

“I like the people here,” Nicolas said over a Miller pint.

In 2002, the state Senate passed a resolution celebrating the 115th anniversary of Neumann’s, calling it “the oldest bar in Minnesota,” with a “colorful history.”

“The argument for Neumann’s that’s very compelling is the fact that the name hasn’t changed,” Sturdevant said. “I would say that’s the consensus.”

The Spot Bar in St. Paul first opened as Wittmer’s Saloon in 1885, welcoming customers years before Neumann’s. The place did close for a time, though.

Located in the West 7th neighborhood, the Spot Bar features wood paneling pretty much everywhere, inside and out — except the floors, which are carpeted. It’s a quintessential dive bar, and plays the part in the 2024 movie Downtown Owls (you can see it throughout the trailer).

Highland Villager reporter Gary J. Brueggemann did a deep dive on the history of the bar in 2005. According to his research, the bar stayed open during Prohibition serving “soft drinks” — although he suggests they likely also served stronger stuff.

During the Great Depression in 1929, however, the bar shut down and remained vacant for a year. It was reopened as a restaurant, but closed again for a couple years before being revived as tavern in 1936. The current name came about in the early 1960s.

Meridith O’Toole’s husband Michael, a longtime bartender, bought the bar with a partner in 1983. After Michael died in 2012, she and her daughter Emilie retained ownership. Collectively, the O’Toole family has now owned the bar for longer than any of the other previous owners.

The dive hosts a plethora of events, from the Bizarre Bazaar in December to the shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March (they take a trip out the front door and then come right back in through the side). There’s a meat raffle every Friday evening.

Besides the busy calendar, doing the basics right has allowed the Spot Bar to stay in business as long as it has, O’Toole said. “I think our bartenders keep everyone coming back, and our prices are low,” she said.

During his research, Sturdevant spent time looking into women saloon owners. One saloon that he kept coming across throughout this process was a Minneapolis place called Maurer’s. Elizabeth Maurer took over as saloon keeper for a time after her husband died in 1909.

“It’s like, ‘oh, this place comes up a lot, like, I wonder what’s there now,’ you know, probably a parking lot, right?” Sturdevant said.

What he found instead was another bar that could lay a reasonable claim to being one of the oldest in the state. The first bar to operate at that address opened in 1885.

“Asking me personally … you can definitively say that they have been serving alcohol in this location since 1885 — continuously with different owners, different names,” Sturdevant said. “The building has been wrecked beyond recognition, but it’s still the same building.”

The bar in question?

“It’s actually Cuzzy’s on Washington Avenue.”

You wouldn’t think it, looking at Cuzzy’s website. The only hint to a historic past is a mention of their ghost, Betsy. Cuzzy’s opened in the building in 1995, and is now one of the last dive bars in Minneapolis’ North Loop neighborhood.

“That is the one with the clearest paper trail back to 1885, where you can definitively say, yes, Emil Bader was serving alcohol here in 1885, and then he sold it to a bunch of people,” Sturdevant said. “It’s gone through dozens of iterations.”

The business name and ownership has changed countless times, and Sturdevant didn’t find evidence they sold liquor during Prohibition (they did sell meals, soft drinks and cigarettes, though).

If maintaining the same name and feel and serving alcohol through the years of Prohibition are key criteria, then Neumann’s keeps its title. But Cuzzy’s is a contender if the question is defined a little differently, Sturdevant said.

“A person in 1885, if they were to travel to 2025 and go to 507 Washington Avenue North, they would be able to sit down on a chair at a bar and order a drink that they would recognize, you know, like a beer,” he said.

Sturdevant settled on calling it a three-way tie between Neumann’s, the Spot Bar and Cuzzy’s.

And if the definition of the word “bar” is expanded to include places like the Rathskeller in New Ulm’s 1873 Turner Hall — which carried on the German tradition of beer halls in town hall basements — there are even more contenders.

“With all these things, it’s nothing but asterisks,” Sturdevant said, laughing.

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