# Why were bars always on corners? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** food-cooking\ **Created:** [March 4, 2021, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160 "2021-03-04T10:07:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160/41 "2021-03-05T18:04:23Z")
I’m not the only one who loves these signs: > **[Vintage Beer Signs of the Midwest](https://www.kpraslowicz.com/project/beer-signs-of-the-midwest)** > > A photographic tour of establishments throughout the Midwest that still have Pabst, Old style, and similar brands vintage beer signs on display. He seems to have up nort covered pretty well. My colection is from the mid part of the state. I see he has a Blatz in there! ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160/42 "2021-03-05T18:37:47Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I didn’t know any bar owners, so I wonder - do those signs come from the distributor? Do you get them for free when you buy your stock from the OS/PBR jobber? Do they put the name on for you? I never knew these answers. > > And the neon in the windows - do the bars have to buy that? Or are they promotional freebies, owned by the distributor? (and the ones I bought at flea markets - were they legal for me to buy?) I suspect that the signs were, indeed, given to (or sold at a subidized price to) the bars by the distributors – after all, they were effectively free advertising for the beer brands. As [this NPR article](https://www.npr.org/local/309/2019/12/30/792371391/how-chicago-bars-got-so-many-old-style-signs) notes, regarding the Old Style signs on Chicago bars: > [@](#): > > The signs came about in the 1970s. That’s when Old Style began giving them out for free to bars they’d done a lot of business with, even paying crews to install them. It was a win-win: Old Style got to assert its brand, while bar owners got a bright shiny light to lure in customers. Other brands also handed out signs, but not nearly as many as Old Style. > … > During this period, Old Style’s reputation as a working class, Chicago beer continued to rise. The company installed up to 2,000 signs in the Midwest, with Chicago as the glowing epicenter. Given that there seems to be a lot of variation in the script/font on the bar names on those signs, my suspicion is that the signs with the space for the bar name were provided/installed with that space as a blank, and then either the bar (or possibly the distributor) worked with a local sign painter to add the name. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160/43 "2021-03-05T19:05:55Z")
Currently, the signs and fancy taps come from the distributors or the beer companies themselves. I can’t speak to the 70s. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160/44 "2021-03-19T02:43:22Z")
In England, pubs were often on the corners, especially on the crossroads of larger roads. You can still see it now - either the remaining pubs are on corners, or you can tell it was once a pub even though it’s now flats. On very busy crossroads there’d be two diagonally opposite each other to get traffic going in different directions. It increased visibility They were visible to travellers coming from two roads rather than one. On crossroads they were visible from all directions. Although lots of them ended up being used primarily by locals, they also depended upon a lot of passing trade. Most businesses need a storefront, after all. Small local shops in the UK are also usually on the corner, hence the term corner shop. And they didn’t need the gardens that the houses comprising most of the row did. Though, since the smoking ban, a huge number of these corner pubs with no gardens are now divided into flats. Obviously there are a lot of exceptions - rural areas have a lot of detached buildings and some central areas of cities are lined with pubs, but I think the general image of a pub in the UK would have two frontages, not one. So maybe settlers in the US transplanted this whether it made sense or not - in the earlier settled states, at least. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160/45 "2021-03-19T04:14:34Z")
We should distinguish between “Main Street” bars, which are common in small towns, and “neighborhood” taverns as found in traditional cities like Brooklyn, parts of Queens, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The classic Chicago neighborhood fabric is an unbroken weave of 330- by 660-foot blocks—with houses—sometimes two- or three-flats—on 25x125 lots. In 19th-century parts of the city, [the corner lots were nearly always built up with a particular building typology:](https://goo.gl/maps/mK9iKdPXMs7a993n9) the corner store/tavern, in a building that had a secondary entrance around the corner for access to the apartments upstairs. Only on the corners could you have that secondary entrance and enough light for windows in those back units. Nowadays, nearly all retail has coalesced on the arterial streets, and even many of those are now mostly vacant. Only in Mexican neighborhoods are the [corner stores still taverns or small groceries.](https://goo.gl/maps/AuQ3G6EwvfZeJsU66) Hundreds of them have been quietly converted into residential units. Over 25 years ago I worked with the city landmarks commission on a book detailing how to do that conversion with some sensitivity to the original building design. very few of ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160/46 "2021-03-19T07:33:08Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > On very busy crossroads there’d be two diagonally opposite each other to get traffic going in different directions. In Melbourne Australia, there might be 4 pubs at a crossroads – although that was less common than 3. Opening hours were restricted in WWI, and the restriction was retained after WWI (a period which saw prohibition in the USA, and when there was a similar strong push for prohibition in Australia and NZ). The restricted opening hours gave rise to something called the ‘6 o’clock swill’, where men would rush to get all their drinking in before closing time at 6pm. Since everybody was drinking at the same time, and drinking hard, a lot of linear feet of bar was required, and a lot of bars on a lot of corners, close to home and work. The architecture is gradually fading away, but some of those buildings are still recognizable by the tiled walls up to shoulder height (easier to hose down), and the cellar entrance for the beer delivery. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160/47 "2021-03-19T07:45:33Z")
FWIW, a typical Melbourne 1940’s bar would have the ‘public’ bar along one side, half way up the other side by including the corner. Entrance at both ends. With the ladies lounge and the residential entrance taking up the rest of the other side. All of upstairs would be residential (windows on both streets). Men’s urinals probably outside, in the inner courtyard. Someplace with actual real residential business (near a train station, commercial travelers, single men) would be bigger, and have a bigger public bar (because of the train station) and have a club/residential lounge as well as a ladies lounge. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-bars-always-on-corners/937160.md?page=2)