Measuring 14 feet long and a few feet wide, the century-old, handcrafted bar in the Hotel Eau Claire had, for decades, served as an ideal watering hole for many a thirsty traveler. Mind you, this wasn’t the hotel’s “main” bar (the Continental Bar and Cocktail Lounge would later be found on the hotel’s second floor), but a more discrete place to have a drink, one where the eyes of the world might not find you.

I’d long been fascinated by the Hotel Eau Claire (originally called “The Eau Claire”), which, upon its completion in 1921, was hailed as one of the finest hotels in the northwest part of the state. Constructed on the corner of Eau Claire and South Barstow streets (the current site of Barstow Commons and the U.S. Bank building), the six-story, 175-room hotel had — throughout its 48-year-history — provided lodging for some of the era’s most well-known celebrities.

This list included world heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey (March 1940), U.S. Sen. Robert M. La Follette Jr. (May 1940), novelist Sinclair Lewis (September 1940), and Packers coach Curly Lambeau (1941). In 1942 (the same year they were voted “the third biggest box office attraction in the country”), Bud Abbott and Lou Costello checked into the Hotel Eau Claire. Then architect Frank Lloyd Wright in ’43, Boris Karloff and Wendell Wilkie in ’44, Richard Wright in ’45, Duke Ellington in ’53, and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1954.

However, the celebrity guest who interested me most was U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Between January and April 1960, the presidential hopeful spent several weeks in Wisconsin campaigning to win the state’s primary. I know that story well, having spent much of the last four years writing a book on Kennedy’s time in our state. As part of that research, I’d become somewhat obsessed (OK, wildly obsessed), with tracking down every Kennedy lead that I could, particularly when they pertained to Eau Claire.

Where did Kennedy go? Where did he stay? Where did he have a drink?

The answer to the latter was a 14-foot bar that was once in the Hotel Eau Claire.

A bar that I rediscovered 54 years after the hotel’s demolition, in the basement of a Putnam Heights home.

If not for local businessman George Wheeler, there would be no hotel, no bar, and no JFK lore surrounding them both.

In January 1919 — months after the conclusion of World War I — Wheeler drew upon patriotic fervor to rally support for the construction of what he claimed might serve as a “war memorial.”

“The thought has come to me that in order to engage the unified interest of all our people, with the same enthusiasm and success that has crowned all of our war work campaigns,” Wheeler explained, “we could organize a campaign to build a hotel, as a memorial to the great achievements and glorious victory of our Eau Claire soldiers and sailors.”

Constructing a luxury hotel seemed an unorthodox way to commemorate the region’s soldiers and sailors. Though as chairman of the citizen’s hotel committee, hotels were often on Wheeler’s mind. While he conceded that building a hotel under the auspices of a war memorial might seem, to some, like “commercialized patriotism,” he felt it was actually a matter of patriotism and pragmatism.

The city needed a hotel, and it wanted a war memorial. Why not give it both?

After two years of fundraising, building delays, and ever-growing expenses, on Monday, May 31, 1921, George Wheeler’s dream came to fruition when The Eau Claire at last opened its doors. All vestiges of the “war memorial” seemed to have vanished, though nobody seemed to mind. Instead, the hundreds of locals who’d gathered for opening day were too busy admiring the cut stone and pressed brick of the hotel’s façade, and the lobby’s pillared walkway en route to the mezzanine. Their shoes clicked across the terrazzo and marble flooring as their eyes flittered toward the mahogany wood-paneled walls. The combination of which, so said the local paper, offered an ambiance of “satisfying warmth.”

Throughout the day, 31-year-old general manager Joseph P. Dilley kept careful watch over his employees, who dutifully attended to their guests’ every need. However, he ought to have kept a closer eye on the guests, many of whom reportedly swiped towels as souvenirs to commemorate the grand opening.

And, indeed, it was grand. The opening of the new hotel signaled the beginning of Eau Claire’s very own “Roaring ’20s” — live music, dancing along the mezzanine, and a stark reminder of the era’s most controversial measure: Prohibition. Due to the 1919 passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, the hotel bar served everything but alcohol: sodas, ice-cream drinks, and likely “near beer” (the legally sold, low-alcohol alternative).

Local dignitaries proudly clinked the glasses of their non-alcoholic beverages, christening the hotel that would serve as the city center for nearly half a century.

Within days, The Eau Claire began receiving rave reviews, including one from Chicagoan A.J. Hunter, field secretary for the Great Lakes Hotel Association, who predicted that the “magnificent” hotel would help Eau Claire earn “a permanent place on the map.”

People flocked from far and wide to see it for themselves. The first names on the guestbook were Mr. and Mrs. R.K. Keller of Portland, Oregon. They were joined by dozens of others from Minneapolis and elsewhere, who descended upon Eau Claire to experience the latest in hotel luxury — baggage elevators, telephone switchboards, and a toilet in every room.

By the end of the first week, general manager Joseph P. Dilley could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The hotel was off to a promising start. The trick was to keep it that way.

In addition to the hotel’s modern design, another allure for guests was its many amenities. The hotel was a city within a city. The basement and first floor shared space with several local businesses, meaning that guests needn’t leave the building for a haircut, a jeweler, or to purchase a new pair of shoes.

Of course, the hotel also featured fine food and drink. While the names of the restaurant, coffee shop, and bar changed over time, in the beginning, guests and locals alike regularly enjoyed fine dining at the Colonial Grill, lighter fare at the Hunt Room Coffee Shop, and — in the post-Prohibition age — a drink at the Continental Bar.

But the other bar interests me most: that stately yet unobtrusive 14-foot “counter” (as it’s labeled in the hotel’s Prohibition-era blueprints) that once perched on the outer rim of the hotel lobby.

While the blueprints provide a snapshot of a building’s beginning, they’re not helpful in offering information about everything past that point. Like all historical resources, there are limits to what can be revealed. It’s the frustrating nature of history: much of it feels like three-quarters fact and one-quarter fiction. Local history can feel particularly messy, a community-wide game of “telephone” among neighbors and friends with plenty of static between.

Can I say for sure that JFK once drank at the 14-foot bar at the Hotel Eau Claire?

Not yet. Not quite. But I’m hoping to clear the signal.

Throughout its 48-year existence, the Hotel Eau Claire provided thousands of jobs for residents and a top-tier experience for its thousands of guests. Locals used it nearly as often as out-of-towners. Not necessarily for lodging but for food, drink, and occasionally, a place to get out of the cold.

One longtime resident recently shared how, in the mid-1960s, while in her teens, she and her friends regularly warmed themselves in the hotel lobby before braving the walk across a nearby bridge to Fournier’s Ballroom (currently the parking lot for the Eau Claire County Courthouse).

“None of us wore socks when we were headed to Fournier’s,” she recalled with a laugh, “so the hotel was a perfect place to warm our feet.”

Given that it towered over much of the city, the Hotel Eau Claire was also the perfect place for the local Ground Observation Corps to watch for enemy planes during the Cold War. According to Chippewa Valley historian Brian L. Blakely, between 1954 and 1957, more than a thousand local volunteers scanned the skies from the top of the hotel.

Despite the hotel’s many roles (from warming house to civil defense), it was losing ground in its primary purpose as a place for guests to rest their heads. By 1968, the hotel guestbook had noticeably fewer names. Fearing financial ruin, the managing group terminated its operating agreement with the hotel. It was the death knell for a dying hotel.

In 1969, general manager Donald Macrae announced plans to close the Hotel Eau Claire on Oct. 1, a devastating blow to the downtown district.

Macrae blamed the closure, in part, on “the lack of parking space and poor access and egress to the traffic flow.” Once, the hotel was the heart of the city, though increased traffic had clogged access to that heart. It was far easier for out-of-towners to stay in an easy-access motel off the highway near Clairemont Avenue or Washington Heights than take their chances downtown.

The hotel — which had served as the backdrop for a generation’s worth of stories—was now reduced to a cautionary tale.

Macrae told reporters he hoped “the loss of the Hotel Eau Claire would awaken citizens to the need to make downtown improvements.”

Local businessman B.J. Farmer heard Macrae’s warning loud and clear. In 1971, Farmer and others helped organize the Eau Claire Hilton Hotel Corporation, which, in three years, would not only build a downtown hotel (currently The Lismore) but also a much-needed parking ramp. South Barstow Street was also improved to help the flow of traffic.

Despite these efforts, stores like Sears, the Singer Sewing Machine Store, and many more began fleeing downtown in favor of the newly opened London Square Mall.

Hotel Eau Claire general manager Donald Macrae’s 1969 remarks played out like a prophecy, though his prophecy seemed to have come too late.

Another 30 years would pass before the city’s downtown revitalization efforts paid dividends. In 2001, an out-of-state consulting firm provided recommendations for the city’s future, including better use of the riverfront, a farmer’s market, and a downtown park — all recommendations that today have become a part of our town.

Throughout the spring and early summer of 1970, a demolition crew destroyed the Hotel Eau Claire and much of its history. For locals who’d long enjoyed dinners at the Colonial Grill or coffee in the Hunt Room, the demolition was hard to watch.

Some of the furniture and fixtures were spared, including the 14-foot bar where Sen. John F. Kennedy allegedly had a drink in 1960.

“This is it,” Cora Overboe says one April afternoon, leading me into the basement of her Putnam Heights home.

“This is it,” I whisper, running my hands across the bar’s lacquered wood.

How the bar ended up in Cora’s basement is its own game of “telephone” history. But thanks to a combination of neighborhood lore and city directories, here’s what I think I know.

Sometime between 1970 and 1974, a man named James Meyers acquired the bar (likely in October of 1970, shortly after the hotel’s closure). Around the same time, he was building a house in Putnam Heights. After pouring the foundation, Meyers hired a crane to lower the enormous bar into place. The house was built around the bar, and three owners later, the bar — and Meyers’ former home — now belong to Cora.

Yet when Cora first toured the house in the summer of 2019, the bar was hardly a selling point.

“I mean, it takes up a lot of square footage,” Cora laughs. “And you can’t really do anything else with it.”

After reading a note from the former owners confirming the bar’s previous life in the hotel, Cora warmed to being its caretaker. Yet the note didn’t specify that Kennedy had drank at the bar, only that he’d stayed at the hotel.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place in October 2019. Cora had just closed on the house, and while out for a neighborhood bike ride, she struck up a conversation with 88-year-old John Lindrud, who had been a photographer for the Leader-Telegram for 45 years. As the pair chatted, the conversation eventually turned to the Hotel Eau Claire bar in Cora’s basement.

“Oh yes,” John smiled, “I know that bar.”

“It’s like having a time capsule,” Cora says, “one that holds the laughter, tears, and whispers of all the patrons who’ve come before. But,” she continues, “it’s also a monument to the passage of time and the power of shared experience.”

One fateful night in early 1960, John — while on assignment to cover Kennedy’s visit to town — spotted the senator in the Hotel Eau Claire. John knew a good photo opportunity when he saw one, so, just as Kennedy took his seat at the 14-foot bar, he instinctively reached for his camera.

But John didn’t snap the photo.

As he recounted to Cora 59 years later, Kennedy had asked him to forego the photo while he was seated at the bar. (While on the campaign trail, politicians prefer photos of handshaking rather than drinking.) Perhaps the Kennedy charm had won him over, though whatever the reason, John allowed the camera to fall to his chest.

This is why we have no photographic proof that Kennedy ever sat at the bar. All we have is a story, which John relayed to Cora just weeks before his death.

“I wish I would’ve recorded our conversation,” Cora tells me.

But even without a recording, I’m compelled to believe Cora’s story. Not only because Cora swears by it (and another former Leader-Telegram reporter confirmed he’d heard a version of it, too) but because Kennedy was notoriously picky about how he was photographed. Kennedy did everything in his power to avoid being photographed while wearing a hat; I suspect he felt similarly about holding a drink.

However, whether Kennedy had a drink at this particular bar might be beside the point. This bar, after all, boasts plenty of hometown history, too. It was the place where friends swapped stories deep into the night, where people fell in and out of love, and where political candidates were anointed or not. If bars could talk, this one would have plenty to say. Its “Kennedy lore” is only one of the many stories ingrained into its lacquered wood.

“What’s it like,” I ask, “to be the bar’s caretaker?”

“It’s like having a time capsule,” Cora says, “one that holds the laughter, tears, and whispers of all the patrons who’ve come before. But,” she continues, “it’s also a monument to the passage of time and the power of shared experience.”

An experience like the one that Cora and I are sharing now.

Seated at Cora’s basement bar, I smile at the thought of the strange circumstances that have led us here, from George Wheeler’s hotel dream to James Meyers’ bar acquisition and all the people and stories in between.

Sidled up to the stools, Cora and I are just two more travelers listening in on what has become a very long-distance telephone call.

We lift a glass to those who came before.

We listen for the echoes of the past.

B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, most recently Wisconsin for Kennedy: The Primary That Launched a President and Changed the Course of History (Wisconsin Historical Society Press) and Year of Plenty: A Family’s Season of Grief (University of Wisconsin Press). He is an associate professor of English at UW-Eau Claire. His website is bjhollars.com.