Indiana’s Knickerbocker Saloon in Lafayette has survived fire, Prohibition, and innumerable renovations, all while purportedly serving drinks to such luminaries as President Ulysses S. Grant, the writer Mark Twain, and astronaut Neil Armstrong — and scoundrels like gangster Al Capone — among others. It was the first bar in Indiana to receive a liquor license back in 1835, when Andrew Jackson was the U.S. president and Indiana had been a state for less than 20 years. It’s still located in the same spot on North Fifth Street, from when it opened 190 years ago.
The Knickerbocker may be young compared to Pennsylvania’s oldest bar, King George II Inn, founded in 1681 in Bristol, but it’s still impressive. When it was first opened, Lafayette was only a decade old, a river town that grew quickly thanks to traffic on the Wabash River from the Erie Canal and the burgeoning railroad system that made traveling easier. For the first 40 years of its life, the bar was associated with a hotel, first called the Wabash House. The saloon and hotel passed through a series of proprietors until John Lahr, a German immigrant, bought the hotel and bar, then called the Gault House (also written Galt) in 1848 and poured money into renovations, which paid off by drawing the likes of Grant and Twain. Lahr advertised in newspapers, hyping the establishment, including its “bountifully supplied” bar. “A good Bar with choice liquors, is connected with the Galt House,” he boasted in the Lafayette Journal in 1850.
Celebs kicked back at the Knickerbocker Saloon
Mark Twain was said to be a guest at the hotel (and the adjoining saloon) during one of his many lecture tours. U.S. Grant was a frequent visitor as well. “Grant used to stay at the [Lahr] Hotel quite a bit,” the Knickerbocker’s then owner, Rick Wheeler, told the Journal and Courier in 1982. “From what I hear, he was quite the drinker. I don’t know what it would have been back then — redeye, I guess.” Grant was definitely a drinker, liked Old Overholt, the oldest rye still available, and also patronized the oldest bar in Nevada, the Genoa Bar and Saloon, as did Twain.
By the 1870s, John Lahr’s hotel had closed, but the bar was thriving under a new name, the Knickerbocker Saloon, where still more celebs came to drink. Current owner Jeff Hamann alleges Al Capone visited the bar, although he doesn’t say when. Astronaut Neil Armstrong — the first person to walk on the moon — was also said to be a patron while he was a student at nearby Purdue University in the 1950s. Considering its claim to fame, over the years, the Knickerbocker has suffered a lot, from its shuttering during Prohibition to a devastating fire in 1964 to a few years as a clock shop, before being returned to its former glory as an old-school bar with a storied history.
