STEP BACK IN TIME AT BUFFALO'S OLDEST TAVERN

Ulrichs, originally owned by Fredrick Schrerier, a young German immigrant, was first listed as a business in the 1869 city directory, under the heading of Grocery-Saloon. Many Germans were grocers who also kept a back room grog shop. These emerged as the center of neighbor lines. This was the kind of patient business that while not widely profitable, yielded a lifetime of respectable income. It was a place where one could buy anything from soap to sausage, where local beer, be it Ziegele's Lager or Weyand's Munich dark, was served in house or taken home in a pail.

A barber shop was located in what is now the beer store room, from the early 1880's to 1919. It was run by George Fromholtz.

The grocery part of the operation was dropped in 1883 and the upstairs would become a hotel; renting rooms to the nearby brewery workers. Ulrichs would become a tied house (owned by the brewery) serving only that brewery's beer for the next 25 years. Two different breweries owned the bar; The Christian Weyand Brewery (which stood where the Courier Express building stands today) and the Ziegele Brewing Company (part of which remains directly behind Ulrich's at Washington and Virginia Streets). By this time, Ulrichs had been under the ownership of seven different people. However, the German tradition was continued throughout; Miller, Nayser, Martzlufft, Schuhman, Fischer, Theuer and Dobmeier, all of whom were born in Germany and had ties to Buffalo's brewing industry. George Dobmeier's son, George Jr., runs Dobmeier's Janitorial Supply Co. today.

A 30 year old man took over the saloon, giving it his name, Michael Ulrich. He had come to Buffalo at age 14 from southern Germany and had been a beer wagon driver for the Rochevot Brewery on Jefferson Avenue and the treasurer for the brewery workers union.

Mike Ulrich bought the saloon outright from the Ziegele Brewery, renaming it Michael Ulrich's Sample Room. For the first time, any beer could be sold in the saloon. If there was a German festival anywhere in the county, it was probable that Mike Ulrich catered the bar.

Ulrichs has become a rendezvous for political bigwigs as well as the literati and celebrated persons of the time in Buffalo. Mike Ulrich's Saloon quickly became the political and social center of Buffalo's German community. A staunch Republican in local politics, Mike Ulrich's Saloon was known as the Republican Clubhouse. Despite this fact, many local Democrats frequented the establishment and called Mike a close friend. Democrat Governor Al Smith ate dinner at Ulrichs during his 1928 Presidential Campaign.

Prohibition changed Ulrichs' look, but not its function. The downstairs became a delicatessen and restaurant. The barber shop and upstairs hotel were closed and the second floor became a private speakeasy for the political community known as the Hasenpheffer Club. This would last the entire 13 years of Prohibition with whiskey and wine being made in the basement and beer being smuggled in the dead of night. This huge lift that was used to bring the illegal alcohol up from the basement is still there today.

Mike Uirich not only weathered the 13 years of the "noble experiment", but also the heavy anti-German sentiment of the World War I era. Hamburger and sauerkraut were being called Liberty Steak and Liberty Cabbage, German names were changed to sound more American and the German heritage was being renounced in Buffalo and throughout America. However, in Mike Ulrich's Saloon, German was spoken, German Clubs met openly, and sauerkraut was called sauerkraut. A lasting remnant from this era is the black cherry and stained glass filled back bar. Mike bought this in 1910 from the Iroquois Hotel where it had stood since 1889 (pictured here).

Mike (pictured to the right) sold the bar this year but only lasted in retirement for about six months before going back into business with his former bartender, Victor Schultz, in the German- American Annex at Main & High. This building was an early forerunner to today's malls. Besides Mike Ulrich's bar, the building housed the Salvation Army and, ironically, the Alcohol Anonymous organizations. It's not many places that one could get drunk, dried out and saved all in the same building! Mike Ulrich's death notice called him "the last of the old-time German saloonkeepers" in 1947.

Jim Daley, from Buffalo's old first ward and his Bavarian wife Erika, took over the business. They added a mix of German and Irish sensibility. In their over 40 years of business, they have seen urban renewal clear away the once great neighborhood that surrounded Ulrichs and watched the demise of the Buffalo brewing industry which had originally spawned the business to begin with. However, Ulrichs remains a favorite downtown lunch spot and after work watering hole.

Salvatore G. Buscaglia, owner of the Snooty Fox Lounge on Delaware Ave becomes the new sole proprietor of Ulrich's 1868 Tavern, restoring Buffalo's oldest bar to its original grandeur.