Could you tell me something about that apartment building at 1019 S. Farwell. It looks like it might have originally been a hospital or something.
    Thanks for asking. It’s always been an apartment building, more than 80 years now. Which I think is kinda cool. Built in the mid-20s, replaced a house where a widow lived with a boarder who helped manage a local grocery: a nice, quiet home I imagine.

These Farwell Apartments, as they were named originally, display a neo-Classical footprint with some subtle deco styling. I’ve had many occasions to walk past it on my way downtown when I lived on Dewey Street and have always been fond.

    Next time you stroll through downtown, take a look at the Acoustic Café. Originally an early car dealership! And at the Wells Fargo Bank, corner of Grand and Graham (the real bank, kitty-corner from the dumb drive-in, which replaced the gorgeous Chappell Block in the early 60s). Originally a hall for the Scandinavian-American Fraternity, which at one time numbered 700 members with a 400-member Ladies Auxiliary; that’s a lot of fraternal Scandinavians.

You’ll find those two and the Farwell Apartments all strikingly similar (in architecture, and especially in their detailing). Not surprisingly, they were all built a few years apart. All three, like the slightly reminiscent Board of Ed building on Main, are solid, lovely creatures, buildings that you don’t really notice until you look, but that still, quietly, give our downtown grace.

The Grand Illusion on Water Street – I remember it was Amazing Jeffries, something like that – but I can’t remember what it was before or after. Can you refresh my memory?
    You’re remembering Lord Jeffries Pub, which it was only briefly. For a dozen years between Lord Jeffries and the GI, it was the Stable Saloon, which I myself don’t remember so well. One, because I drank so much back then, and two, because my place was The Joynt down the street.

The address, 418 Water, has been a tavern or tavern-slash-restaurant 93 years. (Well, dry during Prohibition. Maybe.) Owned by the Couture family for the first 30 of those: father Alphonse, then kids Napoleon Couture and Minnie Garlie. Alphonse had at least six daughters, and I think two sons. Before he moved to The Street, Alf ran a saloon on South Barstow. Coppers tossed the Barstow joint in 1913 after they caught him selling hooch on a Sunday.

418 Water went through a couple of owners in the 50s, and then for more than 15 years, it was Dale’s Blue Front Tavern. These are guesses, but, owned by Dale? Had a blue front? And that brings us back to Lord Jeffries.

But the building’s even older. Candy shop from the late 1880s to 1916, owned by John Wiseman the last 10 of those years. Before that, I lose the trail.

It’s been the GI – serving up strong drinks, great loud music, downblouse-looking balcony, secluded hormonally-charged booths, and crappy adolescent artwork – since 1988. Making it, shockingly to you oldsters, now the second-longest tenant in a very old building.

Now, 93 years as a tavern seems like something. But the story I heard is that the Amber Inn on East Madison ... in the same location, with the same name, in the same family 128 years. Maybe no big deal in New Orleans (Napoleon House, est. 1797, great muffulettas), but amazing in Eau Claire.