Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles looking at South Pugh Street between College and Beaver avenues, from the earliest days of The Farmers’ High School and the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania through the boom years of the 20th Century, down to today and into the future. Saturday’s story focused on early development. Today’s story looks at some Pugh Street landmarks during what could be called the middle period. Next weekend’s story will tell of doing business on Pugh Street today and what the 100 block may be like tomorrow and in the years to come.
Wayne Michael remembers his first legal beer as though it were, if not yesterday, perhaps the day before.
‘I had it right here,’ Michael said, standing with a friend outside the All-American Rathskeller on South Pugh Street.
It was in the spring of 1964, Michael recalled, ‘and one of the guys in the dorm knew it was my birthday. He said, ‘Come on, I’m going to buy your first legal beer,’ and we came down here.’
Michael, who lives in Berwick, returned to the scene of the non-crime while on a visit to his son, who works in Happy Valley, and reminisced with a friend and their wives about his college days in the early ’60s.
‘Everything is pretty well changed,’ Michael conceded. ‘Except the Rathskeller. Even the bathroom still looks like it did in ’64.
Duke Gastiger hears that a lot.
‘I don’t think there is an alumni who comes back to State College who doesn’t stop in and say hello,’ said Gastiger, who’s owned ‘The Skeller’ – arguably one of the town’s most popular drinking establishments – since 1985.
The basement beer garden still attracts student traffic – ‘We had a pretty good first quarter,’ Gastiger reported. But while members of today’s senior class are sipping brews and sending text messages, there always seem to be a few senior citizens sitting at the bar or at a booth savoring the memories. For the nostalgia-impaired, stories on The Skeller’s website help them recall. This one, for example, under the heading ‘1930s’:
‘On November 6, 1933, Prohibition was repealed. A State College resident, ‘Pop’ Flood, owner of the Green Room Restaurant, saw the perfect opportunity to expand his business. Three days later, on November 9, 1933, ‘The Rathskeller & Gardens’ opened for business, becoming the fourth-oldest licensed bar in the state. At this time, no liquor was sold anywhere in State College, and according to the law, only beer was allowed to be sold in public taverns. Also during this period, Rolling Rock got its start in Latrobe, Pa. ‘Pop’ thought it was a logical choice to bring together a local pub with a local beer, and so began the tradition of rock ponies at the Skeller. A year after giving birth to the ‘Rathskeller & Gardens,’ the Floods decided to turn their full attention to the Green Room Restaurant. So in 1934, C.C. ‘Doggie’ Alexander bought the bar, and changed the name to the ‘All American Rathskeller.’ ‘
That association with local favorite Rolling Rock continued down through the years, and former students of a certain age still remember the ‘case races,’ annual attempts to break the world’s record for selling – and consuming – packages of ambrosia in little green bottles.
The Skeller story for the 1980s explains:
‘In 1980, John Patrick O’Connell, a k a ‘Johnny O,’ bought the Rathskeller from Dean Smith. Not only did John perfect the ‘Case Study’ during his tenure, he also set an unbeatable record which earned its way into The Guinness Book of World Records. On November 9, 1983, John decided to throw an anniversary party to celebrate fifty years of Skeller tradition. ‘Come on down early,’ John said, ‘we’ll try to set a case drinking record.’ Little did he know his customers would pack the bar by noon. At 2 a.m., the case sales had reached 903, beating the existing record, held by a bar in Germany, by over 200 cases. And so, the case races began.’
Like many traditions, the Case Race eventually died out. Its demise was hastened by the sale of the Latrobe Brewing Company to an international conglomerate and the severing of Rolling Rock’s ties with western Pennsylvania.
The memories remain, however, of the case races and of another Penn State drinking-and-sporting tradition: the Phi Psi 500, in which participants ran from one bar to another – six in all – and had to drink a beer before moving on to the next stop on the course.
‘I sure do remember that,’ Gastiger said. ‘The first couple of races, people actually cared about their times. They taped quarters to their arms – I think beer cost 50 cents back then. They came in, ripped the tape off, tossed the two quarters on the bar, drank their beer and left.’
And with more than 1,000 runners – ‘for the people who had to count the quarters, it made for a long day,’ Gastiger said.
The Phi Psi 500, too, eventually passed into history. As the Penn State Alumni Libraries ‘Student Traditions’ feature explains:
‘A more recent tradition, popular during the seventies and eighties, combined two traditional Penn State passions: drinking and raising money for worthy causes. The first Phi Psi at Penn State was sponsored by the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. Twenty-four men competed to raise money for the Centre County Hospital Fund. Each ‘runner’ followed a prescribed route to six local bars, buying a beer at each stop. After the sixth stop contestants dashed to the finish line to complete the race. Quickly becoming an annual ritual, the event soon expanded. In 1982 more than 1,400 runners participated. As crowds increased, rowdy behavior and traffic problems began to tarnish the event’s image. Spectators on rooftops threw firecrackers, water balloons and trash bags on runners. In 1987, City Council pressured Phi Psi to phase in non-alcoholic beer at the bars on the route. Although organizers vowed to continue the race, the elimination of alcohol had a negative effect. Attendance declined precipitously, and the tradition had run its course after nineteen years.’
Up the slight Pugh Street hill, locals participated in their own athletic tradition – bowling – at the Dux Club.
The 16-lane Dux Club, at 128 S. Pugh St., was the largest bowling center in the region when the Seven Mountains Bowling Association was formed in 1957, Centre Daily Times bowling columnist William J. Moerschbacher reported in 2004. In its heyday, the Dux Club offered keglers their choice of candle pins, duck pins or ten pins.
And while the Pugh Street Parking Garage now occupies the site, memories – and mementos – of the Dux Club live on. One lane from the old bowling alley, for example, serves as the bar top at the State College Elks Club.
Across Pugh Street at the southeast corner of the Beaver Avenue intersection sits the Glennland Building, erected by O.W. Houts and Grover Glenn.
‘The five-story Glennland Building, built in 1933 with forty apartments and offices, was for forty years the tallest building in State College,’ Jo Chesworth wrote in ‘Story of the Century: The Borough of State College, Pennsylvania, 1896-1996.’
It was and remains an architectural marvel.
Randy Hudson, in his essay ‘Downtown Architecture: Solid Citizens Among the Beige Brick Boxes’ in the March 1987 issue of State College magazine, wrote:
‘When people say that a large building can’t be civilly placed into the fabric of downtown State College, have them consider the Glennland Building. …
‘The Glennland, at the corner of Beaver Avenue and Pugh Street, State College’s first – and for decades only – large, mixed-use building, comes perilously close to being simply a seven-story extrusion of its site. But, it is redeemed by its craftsmanship, color, and fine front courtyard. The courtyard, a small-town version of New York’s Villard Houses at the base of the Helmsley Palace, gives sorely needed respite from the stream of Beaver Avenue traffic. The side walls of the building’s U-shape make the court more sheltered than an open plaza could be. Materials and detailing contribute to the Glennland’s success: its brick is a handsome golden color, in contrast to the ubiquitous beige or brown utility brick (oversized for economy) now overused in State College. Decorative limestone and terra cotta details enliven entrances and cornices.’
But many people were attracted less by the courtyard and more by the surprise in the Glennland’s basement: the area’s first indoor swimming pool.
Chesworth reprinted a portion of an April 1933 article from The Times:
‘NEW GLENNLAND SWIMMING POOL WILL OPEN TODAY’
‘Pool Is Largest Indoor One In Pennsylvania – Exceeds ‘Nat’ In Pittsburgh’
‘Underwater Lights, Sunlamps And Fireplace Are Features of Local Enterprise’
‘State College residents will have the opportunity of inspecting the largest indoor swimming pool in Pennsylvania today when the new Glennland Pool located in the partially finished apartment house on Beaver avenue and Pugh street opens for public inspection.
‘The pool dimensions are ninety by forty feet, the same in length but ten feet wider than the Natatorium in Pittsburgh. The pool swimming schedule calls for mixed swimming all day Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon. Women only will be permitted in the pool on Tuesday morning and on Thursday evening. Men only will swim in the pool on Tuesday evening and on Thursdays from 9 to 6 o’clock.’
The lower floor of today’s Glennland apartment-and-office complex was built over the pool, remnants of which can be seen in the hallway tiles.
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