Retrospect: Old Mammoth Spring Hotel takes modern turn as sports bar
Killarney’s (earlier Dilly’s) tried to be a sports bar. Its new owner, Jim Wasley, has now taken the concept all the way with the renamed 4th Base on Main Street at Waukesha Avenue in Sussex, once the center of the old Village of Templeton.
Wasley bought the tavern July 24, then brought in as many as 20 employees at a time to perform extensive repairs and remodeling, and reopened it Aug. 4.
The story of this bar and grill began in 1887 with the anticipated arrival of the Wisconsin Central Railroad, which was laying tracks from the Fox River Valley south through Lisbon toward Waukesha.
On Oct. 19, 1887, the Waukesha World published this notice: “Mr. Fred Hummell of Hartford was in the village Saturday, trying to secure a lot on which to build a hotel.”
He was actually in east Sussex, which would shortly break away from the unincorporated Village of Sussex under the leadership of its founder and namesake, James Templeton.
Hummell made sure that the emerging Village of Templeton knew his name, and which side he was on, when the citizens of Sussex protested walking a mile to the new East Sussex, where Templeton had moved the former Sussex post office.
Sussex got its post office back, but Templeton kept his, too. And Fred Hummell gained not only the northeast corner of Waukesha Avenue and Main Street for his new hotel, but also the southeast corner, as well, for his home. (Hardee’s restaurant is there today.)
Initially, Hummell took advantage of a local attraction, Mammoth Spring, bubbling up on 13 acres south of Silver Spring Road, which some Milwaukee investors had recently purchased from William Weaver Sr.
Those investors wanted to cash in on the the spring water’s supposed medicinal benefits, notably an alleged cure for diabetes, then known as Bright’s disease.
Hummell named his establishment Mammoth Spring Hotel, hoping to attract the healing water’s “patients,” serving them with room and board and a tavern.
Fred Hummell, then in his 60s, also attracted a number of members of his extended family to Templeton.
The Waukesha Dispatch reported its Jan. 15 edition that the 75-year-old Fred Hummell had died at 11 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 13, 1897, at his homestead after a short illness.
Two hours later, his daughter, Mary Binderman of Peru, Ill., also died in her father’s home from the shock of his death and pneumonia, the paper said.
Fred’s body was shipped to Hartford for burial; Mary’s went to Peru.
New owners took over the hotel, and the extended Hummell family pulled out of Templeton.
Some of the new owners were the Tom and Jim McCluskey families, Stanley Stasieluk, Annie Brown and the Dave Perotti family. The building was transformed several times, once into an ice-cream shop and later into a grocery.
Soon after World War II, Bernie Krueger took ownership of the tavern-hotel-restaurant. The former Brook Hotel owner lured the Sussex Lions Club to leave that establishment as its headquarters and follow him to his new venture.
Krueger also attracted the Land O’ Lakes teams from Sussex to his tavern as they celebrated the 1950-51 basketball grand championship, with its trophies and banner ending up on his back bar.
A succession of owners followed Krueger’s departure. Mike and Della Gales opened it as Club Midel, featuring fine food. Don Laurence and Lacy Lauer tried it out as the Don Lucy Bar.
Others followed, until it became Club 74 and later Zimmerman’s. Bob Ische bought it in the 1980s, naming it Dilly’s. Dilly’s later became Killarney’s, its last incarnation before Wasley took it over.
The new establishment will face a newly resurfaced and widened Highway 74 and roundabout intersection with Main Street and Waukesha Avenue by the end of October, at least according to Wisconsin Department of Transportation officials.
Side note: A voters’ revolt in 1971 against Village President John Karnera led to the election of barkeeper Harold Tobin, who had thrown his hat into the ring just a couple of days before the election.
He served three years before he resigned, one of the shortest terms ever served by a Sussex village president.
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New owner makes over Killarney ’s as 4th Base
It
began in 1888 as
Mammoth Spring
Hotel.
It began in 1888 as Mammoth Spring Hotel.
Most people today know it as Killarney's.
| 4TH BASE - Al Wasley, the owner of Rookies Sports Bar & Grill in Okauchee, recently bought the former Killarney's Corner and reopened it Monday as 4th Base, a sports bar. The building first opened for business Feb. 9, 1888, as the Mammoth Spring Hotel. |
The 36-year-old Wasley, who also owns Rookies, a sports bar in Okauchee, bought Killarney's Corner last week and has been refurbishing the 120-year-old building since then with the help of about 20 workers for its opening Monday.
The former owner of the Carousel near Richmond School at Lisbon and Richmond roads, Wasley went into the sports bar business in 2001 when he bought the Silver Saddle in Oconomowoc and renamed it after his son as Wolfgang's Pub.
Wasley and his wife, Tracie, named Wolfgang, now a 12-year-old student at Pewaukee Middle School, after composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Wolfgang's sister, Riannon, is a schoolmate at Pewaukee Middle School, and his older brothers, Cody and Shawn, attend Pewaukee High School.
Wasley once owned four sports bars, but downsized to just one, Rookies, until he bought Kilarney's.
He has completely refurbished the front room with a new bar top, new wood floors, new pool tables and dartboards, and has added large-screen TVs to view sports.
The dining room in the back will remain the same, but with a new lunch menu, starting off with "a lot of appetizers," Wasley said in an interview Monday.
The back room will not serve dinner until Friday's fish fry, and won't sport a full dinner menu until Monday. The new menu will offer larger portions at reasonable prices, Wasley said.
Neighborhood changes, too
The Killarney's-to-4th Base changeover is just the latest at Waukesha Avenue and Main Street, the heart of old Templeton.
The state's intersection-widening project took out Berger's Olde Templeton Inn last year. (Wasley said he plans to hire some of its former employees to work at 4th Base.)
This year the village is refurbishing Waukesha Avenue north to about Good Hope Road, and railroad gates will go up at the Wisconsin Central railroad crossing there before the end of the year.
The rubble remaining from the old Mammoth Spring Canning Co. has been removed, and Bielinski Homes is working on a new development plan for the site, including the abandoned water-filled quarry of the former Templeton Lime and Stone Co., which once served Sussex and Lisbon as a swimming hole.
History
Fred Hummel opened the original Mammoth Spring Hotel on Feb. 8, 1888. He hoped his new establishment would cater to patrons of the supposedly medicinal Mammoth Spring waters nearby, but that business plan didn't pan out.
Hummel died suddenly at the hotel on Jan. 10, 1897, at age 75. His daughter, a Mrs. Binderman of Peru, Ill., was visiting at the time and was reportedly so affected by her father's death that she died two hours later.
Tom and Jim McCluskey replaced Hummel as the proprietor, and the dynamic Annie Brown took over during the Great Depression and ran an ice cream parlor there.
Stanley Stasieluk took over the ice cream parlor. The Dave Perotti family later ran a grocery store on the site.
The modern era began about 1950 when Bernie Krueger took over the place, calling it Krueger's Tap, though it was also known as Bernie's and Bernie's Tap.
Other notable owners were Mike and Della Galles, who combined their names to call it Midel's or Club Midel.
It became Don Lucy's Club under Don Lawrence and Lucy Lauer and later Club 74 (for Highway 74).
It became Zimmerman's in the 1980s, Dilly in the 1990s and finally Killarney's at the turn of this century.
Wasley said Killarney's former owners are retiring from the business, though the extended family owns the Copper Dock restaurant on Friess Lake.
Staff writer Peter Abbott contributed to this report.