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Bavarian Inn, St. Louis
Dave Farquhar St. Louis October 19, 2017 September 10, 2017
I've driven past the old building dozens of times. An old German-style restaurant building still stands at 3016 Arsenal, with a faded sign across the street that reads, "Bavarian Inn. Free Parking. Customers only." Here's what little I can find on the story of the Bavarian Inn, St. Louis.
The Bavarian Inn in St. Louis was once a popular German restaurant. It closed about 20 years ago, in 1997.
As its name suggests, it was a German restaurant and bar. It opened in 1946.
Eisele's Bavarian Inn
Its longest tenured owner-operators, German immigrants Hermann and Theresa Eisele, met at the Bavarian Inn while working there for its original owners in the early 1950s. They married, then bought the Bavarian Inn in 1963. They owned and operated it until 1995. It offered live German music on Friday and Saturday nights by various bands, including the Waterloo German Band.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the restaurant consistently received good reviews from local food critics.
In 1966, the Eiseles bought another German restaurant, Eisele's Black Forest, at 3126 Cherokee Street. They operated it until 1995.
Enter MJ's Bavarian Inn
In January 1995, the Eiseles sold the restaurant to Mike Sredojvich and Joe Heinkel, who briefly operated it as MJ's Bavarian Inn. Jerry Berger lamented that one night a week it was doing Karaoke. "Thus does old St. Louis die, one institution at a time," he wrote in the June 11, 1995 issue.
As best I can tell, the Bavarian Inn made its last appearance in Zagat in 1997, but it appears it actually closed sometime around August 1996. By late 1997, a short-lived nightclub named Alibi's was operating in its place. Alibi's closed sometime around 2001. Some of the old Alibi's signage is also still visible.
Hermann Eisele died in 2014. Theresa Eisele died in April 2017.
Why it died
The declining population probably did in the Bavarian Inn as much as anything. In 1950, St. Louis had a population of 850,000. By 1980, it was 453,000 and it faded to 395,000 by 1990. The decline slowed but in 2000, the population was 346,000. The intersection of Gravois and Arsenal was a much lonelier place in the late '90s than it had been in 1950.
Changing demographics probably also played a role. Much of St. Louis' population of German descent moved to the suburbs in the 1970s and onward. The minority populations who replaced them had their own eating and drinking preferences.
Oddly enough, even though Italian food made its way into the suburbs, the St. Louis German institutions did not.
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2 thoughts on "Bavarian Inn, St. Louis"
Jeff Kerr
My grandmother Sofie Ebersbach waited tables at the Bavarian Inn from the late '40s through 1963. She loved the place and, according to my mother, was quite popular with the regular crowd. She walked to work from her home on Miami (later Spring).
Family lore has it that my great grandfather Wilhelm Ebersbach owned the place in the twenties or thirties but lost it in a checkers game at Tower Grove Park; I've never substantiated that tale.
Dave FarquharPost author
Great stories, thank you for sharing. I think it was one of the longtime co-owners' obituaries that said it opened in 1946 but that doesn't mean it didn't operate under a slightly different name before that. The St. Louis city records for the property don't list a date of construction for some reason, but the building looks 100 years old to me. I know how family tales go but there's often an element of truth in them, at least.