Meet Otto, of Otto's Scandinavian Bar

A reader made me very happy yesterday by sending me some new information and photos about one of my favorite lost businesses, Otto's Scandinavian Bar. It stood for many years at the southeast corner of Columbia Street and Kane Street in Brooklyn, near the waterfront, and was, before it finally closed in the 1970s, one of the last remnants of Red Hook's Scandinavian past.

Until now, the only pictorial evidence I've had of Otto's are the photos seen above (from the 1960s) and to the right (a shot from the Jimmy Breslin-inspired 1971 film "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight."

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Otto's Scandinavian Bar

I've written a lot about South Brooklyn's vanished Scandinavian heritage in the past. I didn't think there was much I had missed. But this article, while covering a lot of the same familiar ground, turned up one toothsome tidbit that had escaped me.

I have passed by the above bar, at the corner of Columbia and Kane Streets, a couple hundred times, having no idea it was once a tavern with the glorious name of Otto's Scandinavian Bar. It was a popular watering hole, and was used as a location in the Jimmy Breslin-inspired film "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," before closing sometime in the 1980s. That would make it perhaps the last working vestige of the area's once teeming Norse population. From what I can gather, Otto himself tended bar well into the 1970s.

I found the mind-blowing picture below on the Who Walk in Brooklyn site. What fantastic signage Otto had. The painted words on the western side—"Otto's Forste Og Siste Stop—translate to "Otto's, First and Last Stop." A great motto for a bar if I ever saw one. On the north wall, I think it says "Otto Hansen," and man's full name.

Most recently, Otto's was the home of an uninspiring bar called Blue Stone Bar & Grill. It closed at least three years ago, and the space has remained dormant, though I'm told the owners of Blue Stone retain the lease. That may change soon. I've noticed that the old Blue Stone signs have been removed and the windows papered over. And today, I spied a man in a suit inside looking over some blueprints. Could his name be Otto Jr.?

Otto's Scandinavian Bar Gets New Woody Tenant

Come April, they'll be a new tenant in the former home of Otto's Scandinavian Bar. OK, OK, Otto hasn't held forth at the corner of Columbia and Kane Streets in Brooklyn since the early '80s. Still that's how I think of the spot.

Anyway, the address—vacant since Blue Stone Bar & Grill closed five years ago—has been a hive of activity the past couple months. It will reopen as Casa di Campagna, a new Italian restaurant. The facade and interior have been covered over with wooden planks, giving the place a country lodge feel. The owner, whom I talked to, said the wood came from a dismantled barn in South Carolina. The inside is spacious and stretching far back along Kane. Near the front is a brick fireplace which is original, and I imagine must date back to Otto days. Doesn't work now, though.

Lost City: Milwaukee Version: Karl Ratzsch's

Karl Ratzsch's Restaurant loomed large in my Milwaukee childhood. The old German downtown restaurant was where you went for special occasions. It's name evoked the kind of awe in a kid's mind that perhaps The Four Seasons and the "21" Club still do in New York. I remember going only seldomly, and being jealous when I heard of others going. In particular, my wealthy aunt and uncle's family's habit of going to Ratzsch's every Christmas day before coming to our house—and not inviting us to join them—was an annual source of frustration and anger to my mother.

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The Ghosts of Columbia Street Past: Otto's

I was recently contracted by the owner of Freebird Books, a fine indy used book store on Columbia Street, near Kane. He told me he had recently given given a cache of old photos by a neighbor on nearby Tiffany Place who was moving out. The photos and negatives were of the Columbia Street area, and date from roughly the 1960s, when the neighborhood was on its way down but had not yet been utterly killed by the long 1970s Columbia Street sewer dig. Many of the buildings that are now vacant, or have been converted to apartments or torn down, can be seen with stores in their ground-floor spaces. Quite a number of bars and restaurants, too.

You can see all the photos that have been scanned so far at Freebird's Flickr page. (Both of these photos are the property of Freebird.) There will be more to come. Here's one of Otto's Scandinavian Bar, at the southeast corner of Columbia and Kane. I have posted a photo of Otto's before on Lost City, but this is a new view. Below is a view of the space today. The restaurant that opened in the space last year recently closed. 

The Ghosts of Columbia Street: La Gondola Bar

As I mentioned in a past yesterday, I was recently contracted by the owner of Freebird Books, a fine indy used book store on Columbia Street. He recently lucked into a cache of old photos of the Columbia Street area, circa 1966, when the neighborhood still shows signed of its former life as a waterfront street, and a Scandinavian, Italian and Puerto Rican stronghold. 

I posted an old photo of Otto's Scandinavian Bar, at Columbia and Kane, yesterday. Here is a shot of La Gondola Bar, where sat directly opposite Otto's, to the north. Below is another view of the bar, and below that is a look at the building today, which most recently housed a sushi joint. (All of the photos are the property of Freebird.) It has been a bad-luck corner for the past few decades, with businesses coming and going quickly.  The building is remarkably the same, right down to the double entrance.

Lost City: Wisconsin Edition: Wilmar Chocolates

For whatever reason—most likely, the heavy late-19th-early-20th-cenutry influx of German, Dutch, Belgian and other immigrants in the area—there are a high proportion of old-fashioned, quality, family chocolate shops in the towns of the Fox River Valley, nestled around Lake Winnebago in central-eastern Wisconsin.

Among there are Seroogy's in De Pere; Beernsten's, a wonderful old soda fountain in Manitowoc where you can also sit in a booth and enjoy a cheap lunch of bratwurst and chips; Oaks, a century-old candy shop in downtown Oshkosh; and Hughes Chocolates, an unfathomably quaint chocolate factory situated in a white clapboard family home on a suburban street.  (The New York Times called it "a figment of Wisconsin's imagination.) You walk through a side door down to the basement, where you can buy plain white boxes of bulked chocolates (no fancy individual wrappers) from a small counter in a room so cramped you have no choice but to leave immediately after you make your purchase. Hughes chocolates have been a Christmas tradition in my family for decades.

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The Ghosts of Columbia Street: Eddie's Bar

Here's the latest shot from a cache of old 1960s photos of the Columbia Street, Brooklyn, area recently uncovered by Freebird Books. (All photos seen are the property of Freebird.) This photo depicts the southeast corner of Columbia and Congress Streets, as seen from the north (above) and from the west (below).

We can conclude by this time that Columbia was once a street of many bars. Previous photos depicted Otto's Scandinavian Bar and La Gondola Bar. Here we see Eddie's Bar (right across the street from Van Vorhees playground) and another bar/restaurant, the White Horse Bar, just two door down. The building that held Eddie's has since been demolished; there's an empty lot there today.

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