“Over 100 years old & looks every minute of it”

The Liberty Bar began in 1890 when the German immigrant brew master

Fritz Boehler bought a lot in the city block across the street from the San Antonio Brewing Association (later Pearl Beer Brewery), where he worked. Fritz, a canny Alsatian peasant, scraped up enough salvaged lumber from construction sites in the rapidly expanding neighborhood to slap together a crudely constructed two-story balloon frame building. Boehler built the upstairs to be a rooming house but used it for his family’s residence until his death in 1931. (Today it functions as office space, guest room and home to the Oriental Rug Works.) Downstairs, where the dining room is today, he operated Fritz Boehler & Son, Simple & Fancy Groceries. He installed a mahogany Brunswick-Bake-Collender bar on the other side of the wall and called that that space the Liberty Schooner Saloon.

Structural problems plagued the place from the get-go. Cobbled together quickly by unskilled labor out of cast-off materials, the building appears to have been designed and constructed by children whose milk was laced with laudanum. (And who immediately changed their minds and removed the entire store front so they could add ten feet.) The flood of 1921 left water standing above the mahogany bar and a thick layer of river bottom silt around the cedar posts and oak sills of the foundation. The weight of the floodwater warped the walls and, over time, some of cedar foundation posts rotted, giving way, warping the floor. By this time, Grandma Boehler had fallen down the stairs, broken her neck and died, leaving Fritz a corner room recluse in his daughter Minnie’s care. After his death the daughter rented out the building. There was no significant repair or maintenance for over fifty years. Time went by and the building did a slow hula as in laws took over. A family cousin encouraged the troops in rented rooms upstairs while black waiters carried fried chicken and tamales out to cars parked in the hackberry shade. Old rodeo clowns and Saturday morning matinee cowboys drank beer, smoked cigars and cracked jokes . They grew old and die but to a few mossbacks from the brewery and the perennial under-age adolescent.

. Today it functions as office space, guest room and home to the Oriental Rug Works.

In January 1984, Dwight Hobart took the lease on the skewed structure now to be known as the Liberty Bar. After removal of many layers of additions and restoration of what original parts could be located, the renewed restaurant and bar actually opened for business under Drew Allen’s management in July 1985 and continued that way until his death in 1995 when Oscar Trejo, took over supervision of the kitchen.

Today as always Liberty Bar focuses on serious food. All our dishes are made on the premises and we bake all our desserts and breads. The crowd is well mixed and as a reviewer once said, “the floors are uneven and so is the service.”