I did deliberately say “primarily” on corners. Of course individual exceptions existed.
And that’s not even looking at all the places where speakeasies were hidden during Prohibition.
Hm … that wouldn’t have occurred to me. If I had to think about it, maybe to buy drugs, because drug dealers hang out on corners.
Did the “corner” really mean a bar?
You probably aren’t completely imagining this - but you might be overgeneralizing. I live in NYC ( but not Manhattan) in a residential neighborhood. There is what I would call a “commercial street” - it’s not a big street, because there is only one lane in each direction but there are no strictly residential buildings on it. Every building has a business on the ground floor and apartments above. On this street, bars may be on the corner or in the middle of the block.
Then there are the residential areas, where almost every building is strictly residential - it’s a mix of one to four family buildings and maybe three larger apartment buildings in the entire neighborhood. In these areas, almost all businesses are on the corner- bars, hair salons, laundromats, bodegas/delis/grocery stores , video stores ( when they existed). It’s “almost all” because there are a very few that are not right on the corner - but even those are not in the middle of the block. They are adjacent to a corner business. I think it may have to do with the corners being zoned differently than the rest of the block. I have very occasionally seen a bar/restaurant/other business in the middle of a block of houses- but in all the cases I can think of, that “block of houses” is itself an anomaly on a predominantly commercial street.
Not if you’ve been drinking a while.
“We certainly can send you a taxi, sir. Where are you?”
“Um, the corner of Telephone and Telephone.”
I forget what city it was in, but there was an advantage to corner bars for getting around curfews. The law stated that a bar had to have it’s front door locked by a certain hour. A corner location would allow
the owner to designate one door as the front door and only lock that one. Everyone just used the “side” door after hours.
You’re helping to confirm my theory that every town in Wisconsin, no matter how small, has a least two bars – one with an Old Style sign over the door and one with a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign over the door.
This thread mad me realize that in modern suburban strip malls, restaurants and bars are usually out at the ends. I suspect part of the reason my be similar, it allows more windows and diners like being able to sit by a window. And in a strip mall being on the end allows space for an outdoor patio dining area as well. The exceptions are usually fast food type places like Subway, not the sort of places where diners would linger over a long meal.
The moment I read, “In the town I grew up in, a town of 600, there were three bars,” I didn’t even need to look at the pictures to know that it was in Wisconsin. 
Ain’t it the truth!
Back in the day, you’d see an occasional Red White and Blue (but they’re all gone), but never a Miller (surprisingly), Bud or anything else. The “Schoolhouse Tap” (the one in the country I posted above) had a Heilman’s Special Export since at least 1970. Never seen another one. It finally faded into a white sign just two years ago. I guess they went PBR now.
I’ve been photographing every one I find back there. I have a photo collage of about 50.
And that’s not including the freestanding rural bars, just in case you can’t get into town. There was one 1/2 mile from our farm - we used to see the neighbor drive his tractor by our place and head up there most every afternoon. 
In addition there is usually more nearby parking on the side at the end of strip. It may even be reserved for the establishment. Parking is a big thing for bars and restaurants. In urban areas it may require lots, valets, etc., but in suburbia a restaurant you can’t park close to is a turn off.
We had one of those! There may be another one around town. (This one is from 2014–the bar and sign are now gone):
Way cool!
And, don’t forget the Schlitz signs, too. This one, with the guy with the crew cut, was ubiquitous on bars in Wisconsin when I was a kid. (The guy looked a little like my uncle Tony.)
LOL, many of which sell liquor if you’re in a state which allows that.
Might as well add that during Prohibition, pharmacists were allowed to sell alcohol with a prescription.
A practice that continued here in Rhode Island after Prohibition when Sunday alcohol sales weren’t allowed.
Interesting!
Yeah, that Lydia Pinkham’s wasn’t just a tonic.
I think you nailed it with the new paradigm business. Cities, large and small, are changing, and changing dramatically, The corner bar seems to be slipping away, and not because people don’t drink as much as they used to; it’s just like they do it elsewhere.
Also, in cities that aren’t sick and dying,–mostly away from the coasts–gentrification has changed the demographics, which tend to be more upscale, and in many cities the word tend is too mild for the massive transformation of cities that once upon a time (the 20th century, mostly), had rich, middle class and poor neighborhoods, were Euro-Diverse but not so much racially. People tended to hang out with their own kind.
Also favorable to corners were the bars that were mostly for men, places where sports and politics were often discussed, as well as the usual localy topical gossip, usually local and sports oriented. These are the kinds if bars that are dying out. I see it in the section of the city I live in, where the “talking bars”, social places in other words, seem to have vanished.
It reduces the number of drunks wandering through the rest of the mall.
I see Schlitz didn’t have a space at the bottom for the bar name. A key feature of the Old Style/PBR signs.
I’d like to have one of those for my yard, for that nostalgia feel, but two things: they’re a lot bigger than they seem, and I never see any in antique malls or places that sell that stuff. I guess no one ever takes them down until they break or fade.
I seem to remember that there was another version of the Schlitz sign, with that same photo, that did have the space at the bottom, but I couldn’t find an example on Google Image search. But, yes, you’re right, that was always a key feature of those exterior signs in Wisconsin.
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?)