This week saw the destruction of the old Win Schuler’s restaurant on Red Arrow Highway. I never experienced the establishment as Win Schuler’s, however I did play many a game of pool there when it was the 5 O’Clock Sports Bar and truthfully it was one of my favorite places to play.
I joined the consensus when the news was announced that they would tear down the building to build another car wash. They’re going to do what? Tear down that beautiful building just to build a car wash? I was appalled. But if there’s anything that writing about history has taught me, it’s that people don’t really care about old buildings. Especially old buildings that need renovation, and especially when money can be made with the land by constructing a parking lot or a new building altogether. Look at the Barber House in Edwardsburg that was recently razed, or the Captain Wallace house on State Street in St. Joe that was razed in 1979. It breaks a historian’s heart to see such old buildings fall victim to the wrecking ball.
That being said, it was equally disturbing to see the old Win Schuler’s sit and rot away, abandoned and all but forgotten. Its future of being turned into rubble was similar to the first Win Schuler’s in our area that was located a couple miles north on Red Arrow Highway, across from the old Snow Flake Motel. That one was built n 1954 and it was completely destroyed by fire nine years later, in 1963.
The Win Schuler restaurants were started by Albert Schuler, a native of New York. Albert was an adopted son of a traveling butcher who worked at a lunch counter in Marshall, Michigan in the early 1900s. In 1909, he opened his own lunch counter/cigar shop. A decade later he upgraded his business to a larger establishment, which he named after himself, The Albert. Five years later, he bought another hotel/restaurant and named it Schuler’s. Albert’s son Win, a high school history teacher in Wakefield, Michigan, returned home in 1934 to join his family’s restaurant business. Business was good, so good that Win expanded the restaurant by buying a nearby livery stable and car dealership and for a time even had an eight lane bowling alley that was later converted to a dining area. From there, other Win Schuler’s restaurant chains were opened – in Jackson, Ann Arbor, Flint, Kalamazoo, Grand Haven, East Lansing, West Bloomfield, Rochester, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and our own Win Schuler’s right here in Stevensville. But our Stevensville location was not the original site of the restaurant.
Our first Win Schuler restaurant was built on Lake Shore Drive across from the Snow Flake Motel in 1954, closer to St. Joe. The Schuler restaurants had an old English theme, and the Marshall and Jackson eateries had a Charles Dickens theme. Our local Win Schuler’s had a Dr. Samuel Johnson theme, with quotes inscribed on the large beams along the ceiling. Dr. Johnson was a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer, deemed by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history.” Which is, I suppose, what you might argue if your restaurant is immortalizing his words overhead of their steak dinners, and if Charles Dickens was already taken.
In 1963, the St. Joe Win Schuler’s was planning a remodel that was going to begin January 1, 1964. But fate had other plans for the restaurant when on June 6, a fire started on a busy Saturday night. The fire broke out in the kitchen, and luckily the 200 guests and 80 employees of the restaurant were able to evacuate safely. Most of them believed the fire would be quickly extinguished and they would be able to return to their half eaten dinners, but much like those getting on lifeboats on the Titanic, future reservations were cosmically canceled. The fire ended up leveling the entire building, and five firefighters were injured battling the blaze. They were: Roger Petrie, Fred Beckman, George, Nichols, William Phillips, and Don Byers. Three volunteer fire departments fought the fire, which lasted over fifteen hours before it was put it completely. Over 2000 people watched it burn from the road. The place was a total loss, with damages reaching $500,000. Win Schuler himself, had just left the establishment and was on his way back home to Marshall when he received word of the disaster. He vowed immediately to rebuild, bigger and better.
Rebuild they did. By late summer of 1964, the new Win Schuler’s restaurant was up and running, a few miles down the road at the location we will soon know as the Drive and Shine Car Wash. The new restaurant’s location was once known for another landmark to this area, called the Round House, which was built in 1940 by a retired Army officer named James Tate Gabbert. James was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, and World War I. His Round House was a two story house that was – you guessed it – completely round. Designed by S.T. Playford, a Dowagiac contractor, the house was one of three that he built in Berrien County. Another was built in Edwardsburg, and a third in Dowagiac. Unfortunately James died in 1943, so he didn’t have much time to enjoy his round house before he passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. He was only 61-years-old when he died in the house.
Strangely enough, history sometimes comes full circle. In between his military days and when he was having a round house built, James Gabbert operated Sarge’s Poom Room, a billiard hall on Territorial Street in Benton Harbor. The Stevensville Win Schuler’s restaurant would become a bar and poolroom sixty years later. It’s little tidbits like this that make me find local history fascinating.
Once the Round House was razed to make room for the new Win Schuler’s, the restaurant picked up where the old restaurant left off. Over the next several decades, it was known for its fine dining, fancy architecture and atmosphere, and a seating capacity of 500. It was by far the largest Win Schuler’s restaurant, over twice as big as the one it replaced. It also included a 70 unit hotel on site. The News Palladium reported that because the restaurant had a Samuel Johnson motif and because Johnson was known as the compiler of the first complete English dictionary, the restaurant was going to house Samuel Johnson’s very own two volume dictionary, which Win Schuler had purchased at an auction for $970. Another item on display was a set of pewter plates that was passed at Johnson’s church. They were initially planning to redesign the St. Joe restaurant in a Sir Walter Scott theme but changed direction after the fire, which is fitting because Samuel Johnson once said, “There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.”
In 1999, the restaurant saw a face lift with a million dollar renovation and an update to their menu. But it wasn’t meant to be, because in 2004, it was sold to become a sports bar. People’s dining habits had changed, according to Larry Schuler, Win’s grandson who then owned the building. Customers wanted a more casual environment, and the 5 O’Clock Sports bar was promising just that, as well as over fifty television sets and pool tables.
The 5 O’Clock Sports Bar opened in 2006, and lasted until 2015, when it went out of business due to competition from other sports bars. There were rumors that Olive Garden was going to open in the building, but those were only rumors. In 2017, the owner’s of 5 O’Clock sold the building to the CEO of Drive and Shine, a car care facility based out of Goshen, Indiana. All along they planned to raze the building, as it wouldn’t have been cost prohibitive to try and save it.
And that’s what happened this week, six years after the sale. Just as the Round House had been torn down to make way for the largest Win Schuler restaurant, the old Win Schulers gets torn down to make way for the next project on that land. It’s the cycle of life… of old buildings. As we gaze across at the empty real estate, before the glass contraption known as Drive and Shine appears like graffiti on our horizon, it’s important to remember the words of the man who inspired Win Schuler’s 5000 Red Arrow Highway location… Dr. Samuel Johnson, dictionary compiler himself when he said, “Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.”
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People’s eating habits didn’t change, it was forced upon us. Tired of not having good places to eat. Never supported a sports bar, will not support a Drive and Shine.
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