Karl Kopp is unique among Milwaukee frozen custard royalty.

While his colleagues may operate similarly beloved and bustling – and long-lived – year-round custard stands, no one among them can also claim paternity over one of the city’s most enduringly popular cocktail and dinner spots ... and certainly not one named in honor of a custard monarch.

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Kopp, who owns the eponymous frozen custard business launched by his mother Elsa in 1951, opened Elsa’s in 1981 a beautiful Downtown building at 833 N. Jefferson St. that has a long history as a Cathedral Square watering hole.

How did this happen?

Kopp explained it to me as we sat in Elsa’s a few years back...

“I was relatively young, married and my wife at the time ... We would say, ‘Let's go down to Chicago, we like Chicago. Let's go down there and go shop and then we'll go have a little lunch, and then we'll shop more, and then we'll go to a museum, or do this, and then we'll go to eat.’ And we would go to these restaurants, or we would go to these clothing stores, and they say, ‘Oh, have you tried this, have you tried that?’ So the woman said, ‘You've got to go see this Gordon's.’

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“Gordon's Restaurant (which opened in 1976 and closed in 1999 on Clark Street in River North) ... as soon as I walked in there, I thought ... it doesn't look like (Elsa’s), but it has that same feeling that I like. So naturally I called the (designer) up and I said, ‘Do you want to do one in Milwaukee?’"

The designer, Bert Spitz, came up to see the space, did the work and the rest, as they say, is history.

Speaking of history...

Just a few months after the Schlitz Brewing Co. announced plans to build a hotel and palm garden on the southeast corner of 3rd and Wisconsin, it made known its purchase of an impressively located piece of land in East Town.

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“Heavy Purchase of Real Estate,” was the headline in the Journal on Jan. 26, 1886 on a brief that noted, “The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company has purchased the property on Jefferson Street, directly opposite the courthouse and will at once commence the erection thereon of a handsome four-story and basement brick block, the lower floor to be used for saloon and restaurant purposes, the second floor for offices and the third floor for a hall. The structure will cost about $30,000.”

Tapping no less than Henry C. Koch, who would later design a new City Hall as well as The Pfister Hotel, Schlitz altered its plans somewhat by the time contracts were let that spring, though the projected cost estimate remained unchanged.

“It will cover 40 by 60 feet of ground, will be three stories high and will have a rear addition 40 by 45, with one story and basement,” the paper reported on April 2, noting that construction was expected to start on May 1.

“The material will be brick with a brown stone front, the front windows being plate and ornamental glass. The first floor is to be a saloon and restaurant, and the other stories will be rented for offices.

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“The saloon will be 40 feet square supported by trusses, will be finished in hard wood with a tile floor. In the rear of the saloon will be a fine dining hall, private dining rooms and living rooms for the occupant.”

The plan called for the new building to be completed by Oct. 1, a timeline that makes the stunning Romanesque Revival result with its arched ground floor windows supported by columns, crenelated roofline and quirky arrangement of oriels, seem even more impressive.

The building replaced at least one earlier structure that in preceding decades had been home to Madame Seibert’s “excellent” boarding and day school “young ladies,” about which in 1859 the Milwaukee Sentinel noted, “We know of no school in the West where the French language is so well taught.”

The site was a perfect one for a saloon and restaurant, being located right across the street from Milwaukee’s second courthouse – designed by Leonard Schmidtner – which had stood since 1873 on what is now Cathedral Square (then called Juneau Square and later Courthouse Square).

Courthouse employees and visitors would have ensured a steady flow of potential customers right past the door of the watering hole most days.

While in the early years, the offices upstairs were occupied by the likes of the Milwaukee office of the Chicago-based St. Clair Cooperative Purchasing Association – a group of consumers and manufacturers that banded together to “save according to their purchases, as much as $1,000 a year” – as well as lawyer Jared Thompson Jr. and others, by the 1910s, classified ads seeking maids suggest that at least some of that space had relatively quickly been converted to apartments.

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But the main floor, which opened under the ownership of Adolf Arnold and Charles Quistorf, would remain a saloon and/or restaurant for nearly its entire lifespan.

Arnold and Quistorf held on to the place at least through 1900, though for time it appears that they sublet either the entire place or just the kitchen operation to Commons and Vogt, as is evidenced by a single advertisement found in a November 1890 newspaper.

But Arnold and Quistorf certainly knew the restaurant side of the business and appear to have even done what today we’d call catering, as in August on 1890 they were hired to provide 4,050 meals for Grand Army of the Republic post members visiting from Ashland for a GAR encampment held in Milwaukee.

When attendance fell flat, the GAR declined to pay for a large number of meals, leading to a lawsuit. Perhaps the financial hit of this debacle is what led the saloonkeepers to lease their restaurant business to the other men later that year.

But that lease could've also derived from the failing health of one of the owners.

The 1900 census shows the unmarried 39-year-old Quistorf living with the family of 35-year-old Arnold – and four servants – in the saloon building, a situation that may have arisen from the fact that Charlie Quistorf was long afflicted with consumption (aka tuberculosis).

On Dec. 17 of that year Quistorf, who had returned home to Mishicott, died at his mother’s house, where he was staying.

“The body of C. Quistorf was buried here yesterday,” wrote Der Nord Western on Dec. 20, 1900 (relaying news from a Mishicott correspondent, sent two days earlier). “Until recently the deceased had been employed in the Milwaukee firm of Arnold & Quistorf. Upon falling ill he came here to stay at his mother's, Mrs. H. Spohr. His condition worsened and he died Friday morning. He was born and raised here and leaves three brothers and one sister in addition to his mother. Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Arnold and Mr. L.S. Arnold came from Milwaukee to attend the funeral, returning home yesterday evening.”

The Manitowoc Daily Herald added this sad item, “Two brothers, August and Henry Quisdorf are here from Ashland to attend the funeral. They had not met the deceased in 15 years and arrived here only after he had passed away.”

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The Arnolds don’t appear to have remained in the Jefferson Street place long because by July 1903, Frank Hallada had renamed it the East Side Palm Garden, which he boasted was, “the coolest place in town. My East Side Palm Garden. Delightfully spacious and airy. Electric fans are buzzing when it’s warm and everything done for the comfort of our patrons. Mixed drinks, wines and liquors. Special feature: A cigar department that has no equal in the city for quality and variety. Music by Schmidt’s Quartette.”

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The palm garden name appears to have migrated one building south from a tavern of the same name that operated just north of Arnold & Quistorf’s place in the 1890s.

Hallada was born here to parents from Bohemia and he lived at the saloon site with his wife Winnie and their children. They would’ve been there, serving light lunches in addition to the many treats advertised above, when the new University Club building – designed by club members Howland Russel and Alexander Eschweiler – opened in 1904, adding even more cache (and potential customers) to the saloon’s location.

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Hallada remained a few more years before selling the place in July 1908 to E. B. Rebholz, who had operated Marble Hall for eight years on Broadway. The “E,” incidentally, was for “Engelbert,” but everyone called him Bert.

Marble Hall is where a group of whistling enthusiasts gathered and used a variety of whistles as a code for ordering drinks. These folks became known as the Canary Club and they followed Rebholz to the palm garden when he moved. Later, the club again shifted to the home of a Mrs. R. Orfield at 782 N. Milwaukee St.

Meanwhile, in October 1908, Hallada announced the opening of Hallada’s Cafe “in the old Alamo space two doors north of the Pabst Building at 413 East Water St.”

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In addition to being an enabler of whistlers – and perhaps one himself – Rebholz was a fan of recorded music and in 1909 ads for his palm garden included details of the compressed-air-powered Auxetophone, which allowed him to play records by the likes of Enrico Caruso (who performed in Milwaukee during the same era) for his customers.

During the Rebholz years, the palm garden was also reportedly known as a refuge for hunters and fishermen.

The year after Rebholz’s wife Josephine died in 1912, he remarried, to a woman named Alma, whose father was the well-known lake captain August Kuehn, who lived with the Rebholzs for a time.

Kuehn was the captain of the the James Murphy, which in 1872 was the first steam fishing tug on the lake. In 1887, during his time at the helm of the Hannah Sullivan tugboat, he rescued four men from the schooner Havana, which was wrecked and sunk by a brutal gale while bound for Milwaukee from Escanaba with a cargo of ore.

But I digress. In August 1919, with Prohibition looming just a few months out, Rebholz began to divest himself of the contents of the saloon – the liquor cabinet, two pianos, “a lot of fine pictures,” cash register, light fixture, a rolltop desk and chair, a cigar case that was perhaps the one of which Hallada was proud, and worst of all, the Victor auxetophone and its records.

By the following April, William Hart was behind the bar and wasn’t about to let a little thing let federal Prohibition law stop him watering the locals.

That month he was indicted on six counts of selling whiskey at the palm garden and fined $100.

OK, so maybe he would let it stop him as the place was listed for rent the following year by the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. Real Estate Department, which suggested it might make an, “elegant location for tire salesroom. Also suitable for auto accessories, etc.,” adding that the owners, “will remodel.”

In 1925, either still or again for sale – with Schlitz still pushing that tire salesroom idea to apparently little effect – the spot was on offer in 1926, too.

That is until Hans Peterson reopened it as a soft drink parlor (by now we all know what that meant ... or do we?).

When in mid-December 1926 Peterson was busted by federal agents for having 25 pints of bourbon and a quart of scotch whisky in the place, tests determined that the booze was fake!

Or was it?

The following March, Peterson was back in jail, sentenced to six months in the house of correction after pleading guilty to selling whiskey. Turns out the booze determined to be fake was “tested in Chicago later and found to be ‘high grade moonshine’.”

Sadly, prison proved fatal for Peterson who died, age 51, in November 1927.

Peterson had been released from the house of correction in August but he hadn’t spent much time in jail anyway, having suffered from gastric ulcers during most of his sentence, which he passed largely in a bed at the county hospital.

By 1929, Salvatore Maglio was operating the palm garden and, like Peterson and countless others behind the pine across Milwaukee, he was no stranger to the long arm of the (anti-alcohol) law.

In February of ‘29, he was in court over liquor found in his place and a year later it was deja vu all over again, as the Sentinel wrote of a spectacular raid on the East Side Palm Garden, under the headline “Palm Garden falls again to US agents, one man held.”

“Elaborate arrangements for privacy made at an exclusive key club formerly the well-known East Side Palm Garden – a system involving three doors, one of steel, mirrors and peepholes and private keys for each bona fide patron – crumbled before federal agents. Crashing their way through wood and steel, the agents moved so swiftly that the liquor could not be poured away before they rushed into the place. Salvatore Maglio was arrested.

“The elaborate bar and back-bar known to politicians and business and professional men when Hans Peterson ran the old Palm Garden was torn down and with all the other furniture in the place was moved to the government storehouse. Seized 18 gallons of alcohol, six gallons of gin, 83 bottles of beer, 36 pints of Old Elk whisky, eight quarts of Mountain Dew whisky and nine quarts of vermouth, plus cigarettes, cigars, soft drinks, dishes, cooking utensils, the radio and cash register. A large crowd watched the big government trucks haul the stuff away. Among them were many patrons of the place, which had a choice clientele, including many county employees, attorneys and downtown business men. Several were in the key club when the raid was staged but were released.

“The raid was the third in the last four years. When the present arrangements were made the place was thought invulnerable. There was an outside door which was left unlocked so as not to arouse suspicion. Proceeding along the corridor, the patron was confronted with another door, which he opened with a private key. But the steel door still blocked him. Mirrors were placed at one end of the hallway and peepholes were focused on it so the person seeking entrance could be covertly watched. If the lookout considered him ‘all right’ the bulky metal door swung slowly open. Through it he walked into a room luxuriously furnished with a real old time bar and bottles of various kinds lining the back bar. Federal agents said the key club was the most difficult to enter they had encountered.”

Agents used crowbars, sledgehammers and axes to gain entry to the place and the feds told journalists that they had the right to use whatever means necessary “to enter in any manner when evidence clearly shows a place is being operated in violation of the law.”

Maglio was held on $1,000 bail (just shy of $20,000 today) and a judge ordered the place padlocked for the second time in a year. Not long after, the Coakley Warehouse was the scene of an auction – run by Deputy Marshal William Phillips – of the contents of the East Side Palm Garden.

Everything went, including the 24-foot mahogany bar, back-bar, faucet and foot rail, which was purchased by Ben Jakubiak of Humboldt Avenue, who declined to state what he planned to do with his $75 purchase.

Jakubiak’s haul accounted for a tad more than half of the $149.25 raised at the auction, which was attended by Maglio, who winced as the steel door the feds ripped off sold for a mere 50 cents.

The door and its lock, Maglio told a reporter, had set him back $150.

For now, the saloon days in Schlitz’s Jefferson Street tied house were over. Upstairs there was a 12-unit rooming house and on the ground floor well-known restaurateur Joe Deutsch decided to give the place a go.

The Austrian-born Deutsch arrived in Milwaukee in 1912 and landed work in area eateries, including at the Ogden Cafe on Jackson Street, which he took over when owner Marie Heiser died.

In 1938, he sold the place to John Ernst and opened a new restaurant on 12th and Galena, which had been home to the first location of the Five O’Clock Club (now Steakhouse). Later still he operated the Capitol Lounge in Capitol Court mall and Deutsch & Graun (renamed Joe Deutsch’s after Howard Graun passed away in 1966) in the current Major Goolsby’s space.

On Jefferson Street, Deutsch planned a focus on seafood, according to the Milwaukee Sentinel.

“The cafe will offer a tasty noon day luncheon and popular evening dinners ... seafood, lobsters, oysters, shrimps, scallops and appetizing chicken and steak dinners to suit every individual appetite.”

But even successful businessmen stumble once in a while and Deutsch’s didn’t last long. By summer of 1935, the space was again listed in real estate ads for rent.

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For the remainder of the 1930s, the place was home to The Ronaele Cocktail Lounge, which advertised itself as, “an unusual cocktail bar,” without explanation. Other ads focused on the food side, noting that it was, “famous for aged steaks, frog legs and best individual chicken pot pie.”

In 1938, the place was burgled by some desperate (or heartless) thieves who stole the framed one dollar bill signed by The Ronaele’s first customer off the wall behind the bar. They were also hungry cocktail fans who weren’t in a hurry because, a newspaper reported, “they mixed Scotch highballs while partaking of cold fried chicken found in the refrigerator.”

By the time burglars hit the place again in 1940, it was run by Mathias Streicher, who had previously operated Matt Streicher’s Resort hotel on the north shore of Fox Lake where he rented cottages and boats.

Streicher arrived after The Ronaele’s owner Eleanor Schwartz’s sale of the business to a Janesville couple went south over an issue with the inflated commission of the broker of the deal. It didn't help that a mortgage for equipment included in the sale and unpaid rent to Schlitz’s Majestic Realty Co. were not disclosed to the buyers.

By this time, Schlitz was ready to sell the building and Streicher was wise enough – and must have had the means – to buy it. In 1944, the new landlord hired architect John Menge to convert William Stegeman Jr.’s rooming house upstairs into apartments and the following year he decided to let his real estate do his work for him.

On June 24, 1945, Streicher held a closing night party that was unique enough to draw newspaper attention.

“The barfly’s paradise, with the bartenders popping all the time and doling out baked ham sandwiches to boot, was discovered at 831 N. Jefferson St. last night,” the Sentinel wrote the following morning. “Not only that, there was a bottle of liquor at every table at 6 p.m. when Matt Streicher, veteran tavernkeeper, opened the place. Not only that, the cash register didn’t ring once all evening, although bottles had to be replaced from time to time and the crowded bar did a brisk trade until the closing hour.

“This was Matt’s idea of a farewell party, for he was bowing out of the tavern business after 34 years of it. Invitations went only to his steady patrons, of whom there were enough to keep the place jammed for eight hours. But casual customers were treated, too. No use going there today. The party’s over.”

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After a brief run as Arthur’s Faircrest Inn, “under the personal direction of Arthur R. Melanson” – serving midcentury cocktails with nuclear age names like the Atomic Bomb Cocktail (“it’s terrific, it’s devastating. It’s the newest delightful sensation”) and a Uranium Cocktail, Wendelin Kraft stepped behind the pine in 1947 and stayed for a good long while.

And Kraft was no stranger to the tavern business

Born in 1893 in a part of Hungary that became part of Yugoslavia after World War One, at age 16 Kraft followed an uncle to the U.S., settling in Milwaukee where he had some cousins. Though he spoke three languages, none of them was English. Still, he got jobs – at Allis-Chalmers as a punch press operator, as a brewer at Pabst, a poolroom attendant at Republican House Hotel and in the cafe at Federal Lumber in Cudahy – before opening his own place, called Kraft’s Place, naturally, on 9th and Vliet at the dawn of Prohibition in 1920.

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But that didn’t stop him selling liquor, of course. “I sold it right over the bar like everyone else,” he later admitted.

He had another Kraft’s Place at 26th and Lisbon for 13 years, but went belly up in 1934 due, he’d said, to bad investments, including stock in a bank that went under during the Depression.

He took a job as a liquor salesman and briefly ran the Clybourn Bar on Plankinton and Clybourn before serving as manager of Turner Hall for five years. He secured the tavern concession for the Liederkranz Singing Society’s home on Front Street (now the Safe House), staying on until the Liederkranz became the Tunnel Inn, at which point Kraft moved over to the Oneida Tavern on Wells Street for three years.

In addition to being active in Democratic politics – which helped keep the hall in the back of the saloon humming with events, including union meetings, German Press Club Democratic committee meetings and even Republican Club gatherings – Kraft was also a longtime president and officer of the Wisconsin Tavern Keepers Association, which he helped found in 1932. He also was key in launching the National Tavern Keepers Association and served as its president, too.

All this despite having had only five years formal education.

“Ever since 1932 when Kraft called the first meeting of the organization, he has had a leading voice here on matters pertaining to tavern keepers – closing hours, Christmas Eve closings, juvenile drinking and see what the boys in the back room will have,” wrote the Journal.

“Kraft talks so much at times that some listeners have approached boredom, but they were not tavern keepers. Tavern keepers can listen to Kraft all afternoon and frequently do. Kraft is a colorful personality and a somewhat remarkable example of a self-made man.”

Soon after opening, Kraft rented the kitchen and dining room to Paul Thomas, former chef at the Wisconsin Club, but that didn’t last long and by the following year, Kraft was seeking a new restaurateur to take up the concession.

In 1948, Kraft brought his mother over to live here, seeing her for the first time in 18 years, landing photos of the two of them in the dailies. That same year, he redecorated the bar, selling the old front bar with its formica top and the matching 14-foot back bar, along with other saloon furnishings.

In 1951, Streicher sold the building for an estimated $30,000 to an undisclosed buyer, but it would seem likely that Kraft was the new owner of the tavern, hall and eight apartments upstairs, one of which he used as the Wisconsin Tavern Keepers Association office and another of which he occupied.

Six years later, Kraft – of whom the Journal said, “has practically no personal life outside of his tavern and political activities” – leased what the afternoon paper said, “for more than a decade ... has been the unofficial Democratic headquarters of the city,” to Clifton Hainer and his son Clifton Jr.

Kraft planned to focus on his activities with the Tavern Keepers Association and his role as executive secretary of the Liquor Retailers’ Association. However, the Hainers neglected to re-apply for a liquor license and rather than let it lapse, Kraft went back downstairs to run the bar in June 1958.

But, Kraft’s un-retirement was short-lived and later that year, Victor Salamone took over the space and opened Victorio’s Tavern, which morphed into Victorio’s Restaurant, which despite its name was more steakhouse than Italian restaurant.

Still going in 1973, Victorio’s earned a visit from the legendary Sentinel columnist Alex Thien, who wrote, “Seating is a mix of booths and tables. It should be pointed out that the dinners we ordered were what restaurants call ‘prepared portions,’ usually distributed by a meat packer. They are not gourmet items, but they are tasty and inexpensive. The restaurant’s steaks and prime ribs are in a different category entirely, but still inexpensive at a top price of $4.95.”

Two years later, the Journal’s no-less well-remembered Jim Auer recounted his visit to Victorio’s.

“What sets Victorio’s apart from the area’s other watering spots is its decor which can perhaps best be described as eclectic,” wrote Auer, who was also the paper’s art critic. “Mounted on black painted walls and hanging from bamboo and bead chains are reproductions of paintings from a bizarre mixture of periods, contemporary schlock art through acknowledged Dutch and English masterpieces, calculated to challenge the digestive processes of the most composed art historian.

“Virtually every inch of exposed area is covered with something – candelabrum or ceramic sculpture, Dresden figurine or curio ship novelty. Nor has the ceiling been neglected. Colored glass chandeliers and a few leftover Christmas decorations share the upper regions with an assortment of white stenciled leaves and stars. ... An atmosphere of Victorian (or is it Edwardian?) clutter.”

The next year Salamone partnered with Consiglio Cirillo and transformed Victorio’s into the short-lived Cirillo’s Supper Club, of which little trace appears to remain.

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By 1977, Marlene and Joe LaGalbo had the spot and moved their Chico’s restaurant there from its previous location at 1550 N. Farewell Ave.

Alex Thien went back for another look that July.

“What we have here is a restaurant with a bright and youthful outlook that is being run by four nephews of the man who had been in business for about 30 years, the late Frank LaGalbo,” Thien wrote. “The nephews are Joe, Paul, Frank and John LaGalbo. The restaurant opened on May 12 and since then much of the time has been spent cleaning up the establishment and working toward a restoration of the building.

“There’s a cocktail area on your left, a bit of neighborhood styled trattoria on your right and the main dining rooms in the rear. Also serves pasta dishes like lasagna, spaghetti with clam sauce, etc.”

It appears that the LaGalbos also bought the building, and when they closed Chico’s in 1979, they leased the restaurant to Jeff Whaling and his wife Kathleen “Kitty” Panagis-Whaling, who applied for and received an occupancy permit but then canceled it for unknown reasons. They opted instead to open their Ovens of Brittany with Tim and Joan Utter a block south at 770 N. Jefferson the following year.

The Whalings would go on to open a restaurant called Le Picnic on Downer Avenue and would then convert Ovens of Brittany to a Le Picnic, too.

The old East Side Palm Garden then sat empty for the rest of 1979 and the first half of 1980.

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Permit records suggest that Karl Kopp came to an agreement on the space early in 1980 but nothing appears to have transpired at first. That August, he received a permit to make the renovations suggested by his Chicago designer, hiring Lake Geneva’s Walter Larson to do the work.

Early in August they were demo-ing the old interior, removing wallpaper and a dropped ceiling, and by November the bulk of the work was completed and approved by a city inspector, except the kitchen ventilation system.

After that and air-conditioning was done in December, an occupancy permit was issued in early 1981 and by early April, the chic tribute to the queen of frozen custard was ready to open.

“For years the place was of 10-watt light bulbs, beaded curtains and chairs you stumbled over once your eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, an offering of garish wallpaper as part of the decor,” wrote the Sentinel on April 10, 1981. “Then it became a barbecue house, which didn’t appeal to enough people for the manager to pay the rent.

“Now it’s Elsa’s On the Park, a reasonable example of the new, pseudosophistication chic for bars and hamburger-type sandwich emporiums. The windows to the street have been opened up from the floor to arched top, allowing the sun to enter and making it totally unnecessary to bob your head up and down when walking by to see what, if anything, is going on inside. To this add a much-needed scrubbing of the interior, new paint and quite civilized approach to order.”

Elsa’s was instantly popular with up-and-comers – which we called yuppies back then – and would remain so for a very long time.

The bar and restaurant’s first anniversary party in April 1982 was on everyone’s lips and select personal calendars. The Journal didn’t send its restaurant critic to the party, it sent its fashion writer, Jean Towell, instead.

Local TV star Bobby Rivers was there, calling Elsa’s the Ma Maison of the Midwest and adding how wonderful it was to not see people drinking out of beer cans. Local car dealer Mel Schlessinger – who was there, it should be noted – called Elsa’s, “a postgraduate drugstore.”

“When the invitation says black tie is most apropos, you know it isn’t going to be just another party,” the Towell wrote. “And when you hear that the guest list at this memorable tete-a-tete will be compiled from the select clientele who frequent one of Milwaukee’s most chic hangouts, it becomes even more intriguing.

“Guests pulled up to the bar in everything from a Jeep to a chauffeured limousine. The curbs surrounding Jefferson Square were lined with cars that included Mercedes-Benzes, Toronados, BMWs, various other sports cars and yes, even a Rolls-Royce and a Stutz.

“The party was by invitation only. Kopp said he invited his frequent patrons, adding that they included established career people from their mid-20s on up – sales representatives, models, bankers, realtors, doctors, lawyers and retailers, to name a few. The reason for the black tie: ‘I wanted to make it a special event, rather than just another night out,’ Kopp said as he began greeting guests near the door.”

More than 250 people came to the party, which featured a performance by no less than jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis (who surely played his hit, the appropriately named "The In Crowd") and, at midnight, a crew of “female impersonators” called Batan Club.

Towell also described the remodeling that had taken place a year earlier...

“The interior reflects no real period, but comes closest to projecting the image of Art Nouveau. The bar is flanked by huge urns of silk flowers and busts of men with eyes that light up. Large white columns strategically separate the front room from the back and accent the gray walls and black booths that line the main entry. Large framed mirrors above the booths and small tables in the back room subtly reflect the glow of candlelight.”

But don’t be fooled by the glitz and glamour, like Kopp's, Elsa’s is a family affair.

One of the bartenders has been there since it opened. Kopp’s sister works there as does his nephew. Before her passing in 2003, even Elsa would come in with friends.

Elsa’s has grown into a Milwaukee institution, known for its cocktails, its see-and-be-seen atmosphere.

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It also led Kopp to open similarly vibe-y restaurants in Arizona and New York’s SoHo neighborhood.

Recently, Elsa's – which has gotten updates inside over the years – launched a new menu. At the moment its hours are truncated while the kitchen gets a makeover. But, those hours should be back to normal soon.

“Things are in flux and changes might come in phases, but we’re hoping to be back to normal hours by Thanksgiving,” says Chris Collins, Elsa’s (the restaurant) general manager and Elsa Kopp’s grandson.