Supposing that you were allowed to pay a visit to another time in your life– which would you choose? There is scarcely a month in the year when I pass by 57th and Military Avenue and don’t dream a bit about Louis’ Bar and Grill–for this was a very special place in my childhood that I was allowed to share with my father and his friends. To say I felt privileged to take part in this small council was an understatement…and truth be told, I probably didn’t know what privilege was but I did know I was a young girl in a room of men only. It was the same with our visits to the old Arms & Ammo store featured in Mysteries of Omaha: Arms & Ammo 

 

 

 

An interior view of Louis’ Bar, located at 5702 Military Avenue. August 16, 1962. Photo courtesy of the Bostwick-Frohardt/KM3TV Photography Collection at The Durham Museum Photo Archive. Doug Wolfson let us know that the bartender in this great photograph is his father, Alan Wolfson– son in law of Louie and a full partner.

 

This is how I remember Louis’ Bar except for those bar stools. Now why wouldn’t I remember such a fabulous thing as those? I also don’t recall that cowboy mural on the east wall. Those wagon wheel lights are forever anchored in my thoughts though.  Notice that selection of hard liquor on tap–25 cents a shot. One of the many great things about growing up in the 1970s was that there were still pristine environments everywhere you looked– untouched interiors found in grocery stores, schools, hospitals, department stores and libraries from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. I can only assume we didn’t have the need to renovate everything as frequently back then.

 

 

 

My girlfriend, Jude Lund, described the Louis’ Bar tabletops with the ranch brands like “Rocking K.” The tables were a “wood” grained Formica with yellow cattle brands. She recalls trying to decipher them. Jude also placed the larger than life mural of Louis in the grocery store, which I had long ago forgotten.

 

 

***Addendum of April 10, 2024: Michelle shared these fab photographs of her very own Louis Bar table. “My parents gave it to me for Christmas about ten years ago I think and it’s been in my garage since. I, too, have memories of stopping by there with my dad. My parents bought it from someone off Craigslist that had a couple of them after the bar closed as there must have been an auction. There is a notch in the corner where it was against a beam or wall. I’ve cleaned it up but there is still ancient gum under it which I think is funny.” Thank you, Michelle. This is tremendous to see.

**Addendum of April 18, 2024. Bob Wilkerson contributed some incredible ephemera of his collection from the Louis Bar days. These are all scrumptious.

 

 

 

 

The grill of Louis Grill located within Louis’ Bar at 5702 Military Avenue. When they opened their new Chuck Wagon Kitchen in 1962, Louis’ was known for serving fresh water fish, jumbo hamburgers, French fried shrimp, home-made chili, giant footlongs, cheeseburgers and home-made soups. Bostwick, Louis (1868-1943) and Frohardt, Homer (1885-1972). The Durham Museum. 1962-08-10.

 

 

 

West side of the building. Louis’ Bar at 5702 Military Avenue had its own entrance on this western side and also in the rear (northern entrance). You could also walk through from the package side. Bostwick, Louis (1868-1943) and Frohardt, Homer (1885-1972). The Durham Museum. 1962-08-10

 

As I look back on, we only attended this secret meeting place in the afternoon. I recall the sun shining in on our shoulders. Father of Miss Cassette and one of his friends would meet to have lunch and a drink (s), sitting up at the bar of some casual weekend day. Falstaffs and Schlitzes. My dad was a Southern Comfort man. This is where I was first introduced to the world-famous Louis’ chili footlong, the ultimate sneak food shared between us, as Mother would never have allowed for something like that at home. In fact I wasn’t getting anything near a chili footlong served at home and knew this was a Big Deal. I protestingly believed my family to be the only inhabitants of planet Earth who ate Healthy Food in the 1970s. On the rare Louis’ Bar summit, I was also allowed a soda. I now wonder if this was hush money? The three of us and assorted older, solo males faced east on our bar stools with the windows behind us on the west. The Louis’ Market parking lot was out there, as was our family Volkswagon Bug. I can still smell the staleness of old beers and cigarette smoke of the bar mixed with the wafting odors of the grill, even though the doors would be propped open at times. The lull of Military Avenue. I would love to be back there and see if there was a jar of pickled eggs or other horrors propped up by the cash register. No music. Was there an old television with rabbit ears pointed every which way? Faint talking and the clinking of glasses and forks on their plates.  A well-worn linoleum floor. 1970s man stuff. It was divine.

 

Louis’ was possibly the coolest place I had ever set foot in at age seven. It was certainly one of my first Benson memories of a neighborhood tuckaway. The Nifty. Tiger Tom’s. Jerry’s Bar. Take me back.

 

 

 

 

 

Louis’ Package front entrance was on the southern elevation. Bostwick, Louis (1868-1943) and Frohardt, Homer (1885-1972). The Durham Museum. 1962-08-10. That Sinclair filling station seen further to the east would become a hair salon by the time I was a teenager.

 

The eastern half of Louis’ Bar was their popular, always chockablock package store. It was a treat to be summoned on a package run with my father to restock our family bar for a house party. That old, solid bar was built into our 1950s basement and featured a Formica top. My father kept his light up tube amp and turntable down there, which I would die a thousand deaths to own now. The Parents Cassette did a lot of socializing back then and I fondly remember their warm, candlelit, shag carpeted parties–listening from atop my stairs to the adult gales of a laughter and complicated story lines, of which I could make almost no sense. But back to Louis’ Package: I remember some creamy liqueur featured near the front counter in a pink frosted glass, almost like milk bottle with a cow logo on it. I recall it came in chocolate and strawberry and seemed to enchant me. Imaginably, I was not the only child or adult to fall prey to this creamy delight. It was like those frozen tv dinners from the 70s, featuring illustrated characters on their packaging—a marketing magnet for kids. Despite my begging, my parents would never let me get those gimmicky products and this strawberry, creamy, cow liqueur, of course, was off limits to a child.

 

Louis’ Package on the eastern side of the building. It was very large in my child’s eye and this photograph proves that it was as big as I thought. This business was body to body on Saturday nights.

 

 

 

Photo courtesy of the Bostwick-Frohardt/KM3TV Photography Collection at The Durham Museum Photo Archive.

 

 

 

Antique cars driving down Maple Street in a parade in downtown Benson. Businesses visible along the street include the St. Vincent de Paul Store, the Musette Bar, Morris Paint, Louis’, and Goodwill. Omaha Sun (1951-1983). The Durham Museum. May of 1972. The Louis’ sign was always on the horizon.

 

Back in the early 1970s I figured that Military and the Northwest Radial wraparound must have been The Thoroughfare to the epicenter of Omaha. After all, it transported us to our home, Louis’ Bar, the Benson Library, and the very modern Safeway Supermarket right on the corner of 60th. I was keenly aware of St. James Orphanage just north on 60th, which held a certain air of mystery to me as a child. Dark and magical secrets, piquing my inquisitive nature. But more on that adventure later.

 

 

 

 

A Wee Bit of History

 

Mordecai Louis Paperny arrived in Omaha in 1913, a Jewish immigrant from Russia. Soon after, he began work at a South Omaha packinghouse job. A year later, at a friend’s suggestion, Louis began “buying and selling junk.” Junk was profitable and he prospered at his own yard at 34^th and Q Streets, employing forty people.  Louis would later explain he “made a lot of money” in junk—purportedly forty thousand dollars in three years but “lost every dime when the market broke in 1918.” Louis began peddling fruit and vegetables to country stores from a truck. (Some accounts say as far back as 1916.)

 

Mordecai Louis Paperny was a single, 26 year old at the time of this United States World War I Draft Registration Card, 1917-1918. Born in 1891 in “Karenia, Russia.”

 

Shortly thereafter, he married wife, Ida.

 

 

Setting up shop every day down at the City Market at 24^th and Q Streets was ultimately refocused in 1923 to Louis’ Benson operation. Mr. Paperny would, decades later, note the Benson clientele was grateful for his already low prices–apparently not squabbling like the crowd at City Market for reduced bargains. Louis became the fruit man on the corner as proprietor of an open-air fruit stand at the corner of 46^th and Military Avenue. He functioned out of a shack and then a rental building at 5516 Military Avenue (northeast corner of 56^th and Military). It was there that he got into the beer business in 1934 when Prohibition was lifted, finding a desirable markup through selling Storz beer.

 

 

 

The Unionist. 1939 advertisement.

 

 By 1935 he bought frontage land across Military and to the west, constructing his first brick building. This modern Louis’ Market was located in what I would come to know as the bar and liquor store at 5702 Military.

 

A variety of 1940s, war time advertisements. The “cocktail bar” portion of Louis Market had a more traditional, stripped-down decor. As with the times, the focus on musical entertainment, with emphasis on the Hammond organ and community gathering was central to the Louis’ drinking establishment. “All-union” meant all employees were of the hospitality union.

 

 

 

 

 

World-Herald. 1956. Fantastic photograph of Louis Paperny in front of his MCM creation, the new Louis’ Market. Great font.

 

With a 152 thousand dollar building permit, Louis Paperny replaced his Louis’ Market with a much expanded grocery store to the east in 1956. By 1958 his newer 5718 Military Avenue location was reputedly the largest independent grocery store in Omaha.

 

From Bob Wilkerson’s collection. This Louis Market calendar is from 1955 and it’s fantastic!

 

 

 

 

The gorgeous Paperny home at 2619 North 56th Street. Built in 1939. Grandson Doug Wolfson confirmed that the Papernys built this delightful brick residence.

In all those years, the Paperny couple raised four daughters, Sylvia, Rose, Ruth, and Bernice. The girls, their husbands and their children (later) would help run the stores. Ben and Rose Rosen, Alan and Bernice Wolfson, Morton and Sylvia Friedlander, and Leonard and Ruth Luttbeg.

 

With Louis Market having relaunched and expanded into a full grocery store, the original building at 5702 needed modernizing. The combination package liquor store and bar and grill, minus the musical entertainment, was reimagined by Omaha’s very own Lou Fogel. Lou and Elsie Fogel famously were Omaha’s Mid-Century Modern Theme King and Queen (at least that’s what I call them), able to create the most imaginative of interior environs. An Omaha artist and decorator, covered elsewhere in our investigations, Lou Fogel was highlighted in The Benson Sun‘s August of 1962 article as visionary behind Louis’ Bar as western-themed watering hole with a Chuck Wagon Kitchen. The barstools were actual western saddles and Fogel hand-painted the western mural for the bar. I found the permit from months earlier where Mr. Paperny had lowered the bar’s ceiling, obviously to create the current with the times, intimate environment. The package liquor department did not uphold the Western theme and instead offered a functional, supermarket feel. At that point, Louis’ package was considered the Midwest’s largest self-service discount liquor store.

 

 

Love the new 1962 advertising logo.

 

August of 1962. Grand reopening of Louis’ Bar.

 

 

World-Herald. 1968. Ida and Louis Paperny celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary.

Ida Paperny passed away in 1972. Louis Paperny died in 1974.

 

 

In January of 2012, Louis’ Market, a Benson staple, announced they would close. Louis’ Bar shuttered in 2013. Somehow it was unbelievable to me that Mr. and Mrs. Paperny had died years before I’d ever stepped foot in Louis’ Bar with my father.

 

 

For more clues on Louis’ Bar and Louis Paperny, check out my Fabulous Fireside Connection investigation.

 

 

Louis’ Bar razed in 2015. Photo by Brendan Sullivan of the OWH.

 

 

 

2015. Photo by Brendan Sullivan of the OWH.

1962. Photo courtesy of the Bostwick-Frohardt.

 

 

 

I welcome your feedback and comments on Louis’ Bar, the Papernys and the Benson neighborhood. If you would like to correspond with me privately, please find that option in Contact. But I assure you, everyone would love to read what you have to say and it makes the conversation more fun. You can keep up with my latest investigations by “following” myomahaobsession. You will get sent email updates every time I have written a new article. Also join My Omaha Obsession on Facebook. Thank you Omaha friends.

 

© Miss Cassette and myomahaobsession, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Miss Cassette and myomahaobsession with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.