The Stockholm Bar had at least two locations.

31-33 WASHINGTON AVE. SO.

Permit card information starts in 1888, but the building must be older than that if the bar goes back to 1883.  During the 1920s, the building housed a billiard hall.

 

An article in the Tribune on July 31, 1977, said that the Stockholm had been “known nationwide as a fine Scandinavian restaurant.”

 

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The ad below gives us the date 1882 as the origin of the bar, and says that Slim Jim, a singing cowboy, was the entertainment in 1945.

 

In 1949 the liquor license was held by Elmer N. Nelson and Leonilla L. Berman. In December 1949 the license was transferred to Albert Osman.

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The photo below from 1953 shows Skid Row residents congregating in front of a sign that advertises Good Food and Dancing.  The place must have been larger than the average Skid Row bar to be able to accommodate dancing.  Also, in order to even allow dancing, a proprietor had to have a specific license.  It wasn’t like the movies where a kid could go to a drug store, put a nickel in a juke box, and whale away.  Such were the rules of Minneapolis.

 

 

 

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In 1959 the owner was named as Mitchell Osman, Albert Osman’s brother, who planned to move the Stockholm to a building at Third Street and Third Ave. in preparation for the clearing of the Gateway.

 

 

 

The building at 31-33 Washington Ave. So. was demolished in about February 1962.

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300 SO. THIRD STREET

By August 1962 the bar had been moved to its new location at 300 So. Third Street in Minneapolis.  Don Morrison was not impressed, calling it “That typical, bland, impersonal, nameless walnut plywood style of decor that I think of as Dentist Waiting Room Swedish.”

In March 1967 the bar featured the Phil Rito Trio.

 

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Incongruously, in 1974 the Stockholm served Chinese food.  The ad below dates the establishment back to 1880.

 

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The Stockholm Bar lasted until at least 1978.