Sheboygan history: How the fish fry united church and tavern

The Friday night fish fry, long a Wisconsin tradition, seems to have first appeared in 1920 in Appleton, perhaps a product of Prohibition.

Traditional taverns and bars had to find new ways to conduct business. Many became soda fountains or ice cream shops during President Hoover’s Noble Experiment, but others started serving fish fries on Fridays, the day men traditionally were paid for their week’s work.

Although Prohibition was not officially repealed until Dec. 5, 1933, on April 7, 1933, the Cullen-Harrison bill allowed breweries to produce beer with 3.2 percent alcohol and the tavern was back.

Once Prohibition was rescinded, neighborhood watering holes began offering inexpensive fish fries for as little as 10 cents. The tavern keepers hoped to make up for the low cost of the fish fries by selling more beer.

The popularity of the Friday night fish fry tradition in Sheboygan County was fueled by a number of factors, in addition to the end of Prohibition. There was the need to escape the dreariness that came from the hard-time Depression years; the Germanic tradition of Gemuetlikeit (public festivity and well-being); the Catholic Church’s ban on eating meat on Fridays; and the availability of fresh fish from nearby Lake Michigan.

The Great Depression took its toll on the morale of all Americans. Envision fish fries in Sheboygan County years ago and your mind will likely picture checkered tablecloths, steins of foam-flecked beer and plates loaded with French fries, coleslaw, warm bread and fillets of Lake Michigan perch. Gathering at a bar with one’s friends for a cheap meal and good conversation went a long way toward lifting the spirits of everyone.

Sheboygan’s Germanic sense of Gemuetlikeit meshed well with the community atmosphere of an evening meal held in a public forum with friends rather than just family.

In the 1930s, the Catholic Church reaffirmed that Fridays during Lent be meatless days for its members in observance of Christ’s crucifixion on the cross. Abstaining from meat goes back to the fourth century, but Pope Pius IX felt that Catholics were becoming too lax in their observance of the custom, so he issued an encyclical urging this penance.

Seemingly unlimited quantities of fresh and tasty lake perch, harvested just offshore of Sheboygan, also made the Friday fish fry possible.

Tavern owners soon took advantage of these factors and began offering Friday night fish dinners. Catholics responded enthusiastically, but Sheboygan’s large Protestant population soon joined in, together creating a wonderful Friday night tradition.

The Empire Bar at 431 N. Eighth St. in Sheboygan, now the location of Legend Larry’s, was one of those successful establishments where the window ads, scrawled in soap, boasted perch dinners for just 25¢.

The Schwarz Fish Co., founded in 1911 by Herman and William Schwarz, supplied much of the needed fish to local eateries. The Schwarz operation was initially housed in a small building on the banks of the Sheboygan River, near the site of the Riverside plant of the Wisconsin Power and Light Co. on the north side of the Sheboygan River.

Organized as a corporation in 1946, the firm employed about 30 people and served a 12-county area. At that time, the company processed between two and three million tons of fish annually, ranking it as one of the largest fish companies in the state of Wisconsin.

Today’s fish fries have changed just a bit from the 1930s and 1940s. Fish fries served in taverns in the 1940s were inexpensive — 10 cents and later, 25 cents. They are no longer served on tables with checkered table cloths and they are not limited to Friday nights during Lent. And the fish entree is no longer just Lake Michigan perch. But Wisconsin residents still love their Friday night constitutional to get fish.

And where else, but in Wisconsin, could taverns and churches find common ground.

Beth Dippel is executive director of the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center.