By 11:30 a.m., the line was hundreds of people deep, lining the South Pugh Street sidewalk and stretching well down East College Avenue.
They were there for the day they knew was coming since December, when All-American Rathskeller owners Duke and Monica Gastiger announced they were not offered a lease by their building’s new owners, the Herlocher family, and would be closing the doors on the iconic State College bar in January.
After more than 84 years of continuous operation, opening just three days after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the Rathskeller, at least for now, had its last call on Saturday. Spats Cafe, the Gastigers’ Cajun and Creole restaurant above the bar that also was the Skeller’s kitchen, served diners for the final time after 30 years in business.
But as patrons returned in droves to reminisce and enjoy the longest continually operating bar in Pennsylvania one last time, the building’s new tenants announced their plans, which will keep the location much the same as it’s been.
Tom and Kelley Trosko told the Centre Daily Times that they signed a lease that will begin in March. The Troskos have been patrons of the Skeller for nearly 30 years and Tom Trosko, a 1995 Penn State graduate, worked at the bar for several years before moving on to a career as a landscape architect.
The Troskos and their children moved to State College from Baltimore in the fall and said they are committed to keeping the atmosphere of the Skeller.
“If I was not going to be who I am, I’d be concerned that it was going away, too,” Tom Trosko told the CDT. “The bar is a part of the family. If it’d go away, it’d be like a relative passed. I respect it. I understand it. We want to keep it intact and keep it going.”
The memorabilia that has accumulated over the years and lined the walls will change — the Gastigers have already removed some of it. And what the bar will be called is still uncertain. The Troskos, who hope to open this spring, are willing to negotiate purchasing the Rathskeller business and the Gastigers have said in the past they would be open to the idea.
The Herlochers have previously said the new tenants were committed to operating the bar ‘the way you’ve always known it.’
But in the basement tavern at 108 S. Pugh St. on Saturday, it was all about marking the end of an era.
For Duke Gastiger, who has owned the Skeller since 1986, it wasn’t a day to be sad.
‘It’s an aura of warmth and love and fun,’ he said. ‘There are so many faces that are so familiar for years and years. Plus a lot of the staff that worked at either Spats or the Skeller have come back so we get to relive those times as well. It’s all good feelings.’
The Gastigers are the last in a line of owners that have been personally selected by the previous one.
It started with ‘Pop’ Flood, who ran the Green Room Restaurant and opened The Rathskeller and Gardens in 1933. Wanting to focus on the restaurant, Flood sold the bar in 1934 to C.C. ‘Doggie’ Alexander, who changed the name to the All-American Rathskeller and operated it until 1958.
That’s when Dean Smith, ‘The Dean of the Skeller,’ took ownership and during his 22-year tenure the bar expanded into the back room and grew its reputation.
Before the Gastigers took over, John ‘Johnny O’ O’Connell operated the Skeller from 1980 to 1986 and organized the first record breaking ‘case race,’ selling cases of Rolling Rock pony bottles to set a world record.
Rathskeller co-owner Duke Gastiger, front right, talked with friends and longtime customers on the bar’s final day on Saturday.
‘It’s all friendships,’ said Lou Pacchioni of State College, who worked at the Skeller in the 1980s and was on hand for last call Saturday. ‘Friendships with owners – nobody bought the place without being a member of the place beforehand. It’s basically unrelated people that were family. An owner handed it down to the next owner. It was like it was being inherited.’
Pacchioni reminisced about the Skeller with Chris Busko of Huntingdon, who worked with him for a few years in the 80s.
‘I staggered in here back in 1986 or ’87 and they hired me,’ Busko said.
‘It was the dead of winter, and he came in wearing shorts and a T-shirt,’ Pacchioni said of Busko. ‘We said ‘He’s either going to be our biggest nightmare or he’s going to be our best friend.’ So we made him our best friend.’
Busko was there the night Timothy Leary, the psychologist and psychedelic advocate, stopped in. Leary had been at Penn State to debate G.Gordon Liddy one night in 1990.
‘He made last call and he helped sweep the floor up,’ said Busko, who still has a photo of himself with Leary from that night.
In a famous bit of Skeller lore, Leary so admired the bar’s table tops bearing years of carvings by patrons that he asked to buy one. So Gastiger sent him one. In return Leary sent back a handwritten letter and a check for $1, which, along with a photo of Leary, had hung in the bar for the next 27 years.
Photo by Onward State
Busko’s is one of innumerable memories made in the Skeller, even if they can sometimes be a little fuzzy.
‘A lot of half memories, nights that are blurry but I came home happy and that’s the main memory,’ said John Apperson, who came to State College from Long Island as a Penn State student and has stayed ever since graduating in 2002. ‘I probably spent a couple thousand days here. I just wanted to get one last night in before it’s sadly not here anymore.’
Jill Wood is a Penn State graduate as well, and now a faculty member. For her, the consistency of the Skeller over the years is what has made it special.
‘It was always the same,’ Wood said. ‘The Skeller was always exactly what you needed it to be. It was good food, good beer, nice people. You could always rely on it being the Skeller.’
And for many people, the staff and patrons are family.
‘We all know it’s the end of an era,’ said Chuck Felts, who has worked at the Skeller for the past year and a half and was working for the final day on Saturday. ‘This is probably one of the tightest bar staffs in the entire town. We’re close knit, and it’s like a family breaking up too. It’s not just a bar closing.’
Added fellow Skeller employee John Kline, ‘Every time we go to work we see the same regulars, so they’re like our friends and families.’
Some of those regulars pitched in on Saturday, spending the final few hours helping out the staff as well.
Felts said he believes if Prohibition came back, people would still want to go to the Skeller to hang out.
‘It’s the character of the place,’ he said. ‘People can get a beer or a glass of wine anywhere. It’s about coming here.’
That much was clear over the past month, when not only locals and students stopped in but people returned from all over just to make sure they had a drink at the Skeller once more.
In the days before and after Christmas, Felts kept seeing an elderly couple — he estimated they were in their 70s — come down Pugh Street and into the bar. On the last day they told him they had to go back home. They had canceled their Christmas plans and driven from Illinois to State College to spend some time at the Skeller.
‘An elderly couple drives halfway across the country just to get bar time – that’s not a bar, that’s an institution,’ he said.
‘I’ve been all over the world. I did 22 years in the military and I’ve been to tons of bars,’ Felts added. ‘Never, ever in all the places I’ve been have I been in a place quite like the Skeller. Ever. It’s amazing. It’s our home.’
Photo by Onward State.
Like their staff and patrons, the Skeller has been home for the Gastigers as well and they’ve gotten the chance to meet generations of families who all feel a connection to the downtown watering hole.
‘Today and yesterday we’ve had three, and in one case four, generations of families that have come in to pay their respects to the Skeller,’ Duke Gastiger said. ‘That’s what’s sad… a lot of kids who came up going to football games when they were five or six years old won’t have the opportunity to come in and have a beer at the Skeller. That’s the sad part to me.’
By the end of the night on Saturday, Gastiger said he expected he would be numb and that the end of the era would really hit him on Monday, when he would no longer need to follow his regular routine of getting into work at 7 a.m.
But for Gastiger — who with Monica will open later this year RE Farm Cafe at Windswept, a farm-to-table restaurant they’ve been planning in Patton Township — the Skeller’s last call wasn’t a time for sorrow, but to celebrate and remember all that had come before.
‘There’s so many good times here with so many people, it’s hard to be sad.’
Video by Centre County Report
