Barbershops: Two Bits for a Shave, Haircut & a Bath

Shower Baths 25¢. It’s a sign few today have ever seen. Sixty or more years ago some barbershops offered bathing as well as the usual shave and a haircut. Hard though it may be to believe men ever took baths at a barbershop, it actually happened across the country and it happened in Ahnapee/Algoma. This man's domain was also a place for news, newspapers, conversation and, sometimes, even singing. Well over 100 years ago Barbershop quartet singing had its origins in barbershops which were almost community centers. Men harmonized while waiting for service and the rest is history. How much singing went on in the barbershops of Ahnapee/Algoma is unknown, but Algoma had at least two singing barbers, Russ Zimmerman and Mickey Dettman.

Now Algoma’s Community Improvement office at 308 Steele, Timble’s barbershop was a fashionable spot for the nattily groomed man. It was also a popular spot for bathing. Shower Baths was neatly painted along the lower edge of the shop’s large front windows into the 1960s, but by then the sign was probably there because it was never removed. Maybe Stanley Timble left it there so kids would ask their parents why a barbershop advertised bathing, thus learning a little about how some of their grandpas lived.

Men  with their own homes were able to take care of their personal needs, but it was not quite so easy for the unmarried men living in hotels or rooming houses. Boarders, drummers and other traveling men took care of their foremost grooming necessities at a barbershop, a place which also supplied information about the town and its people, all while getting a shave and a haircut that cost 2 bits, including a bath.

In a 2004 interview with Millie Rabas, she said her Kirchman Hotel lacked bathtubs and flush toilets until 1937. Before that, the rooms had little commodes so guests could wash or take what was called a sponge bath. Chamber pots under the beds for nighttime use were convenient for guests who were able to avoid using the backyard outhouses – separate for men and women - in the dark. In the morning the maids emptied the washbowls and chamber pots into a pail and then dumped the contents into the outhouse. Before Ms. Rabas installed a bathtub, male hotel boarders and overnight guests had to bathe at Timble’s, or Pflughoeft’s barbershop at an earlier time. How the barbershops heated so much water for bathing generations ago remains a question.

Some of the Kirchman Hotel boarders lived there for years, just as boarders who rented a spare room in a private home. For the nearly 40 years that Nick Paradise lived in the hotel, he had the first room on the right. Poly (Leopold) Fax was there more than 30 years and died there. Both men worked tailoring and pressing at Kohlbeck’s, which was diagonally across Steele from Timble’s or a few steps from Pflughoeft’s. They could spruce up on their walk to work. Living at the hotel, the men were like family members who gave Millie their coupons during the rationing of World War ll. Fred Austin, who worked for Kashik’s meat market, lived in the hotel, as did elderly Gus Willems who came after living with a private family for about 15 years.

In his early years, Willems drove the Dycksville stage, a responsibility that included the mail, the horses and the passengers. As the eldest of the siblings, it was his duty to help provide for his family. In a day when Indians lived in Kewaunee County, they often appeared along Willwm’s route but, unlike what the next generation learned from movies at the Majestic, they never caused problems. They did want beer and liquor. If Gus ever supplied it, nobody knew it. The Record never uncovered incidents to report. Willems’ reminiscences provided conversation in the barbershops as much as the hotel lobby.

For a brief time in 1885 the city lacked a barber, prompting the Enterprise to carry a story about the popular “tonsorial artist” Gus Schuller who traveled to Ahnapee to cut the stubbles from a number of men.

W.H. Kelley was not a full service barber, and when he relocated to the second floor of the Baumann building, he reduced his prices to make up for the inconvenience of climbing steps. Billy Dingman was advertising hair dying as early as 1873. Dingman’s shop was in the Cream City House, now the site of Steele Street Floral. George Timble said those who weren’t satisfied with their shave at his Gem Shop would have their whiskers refunded. Frank Ollinger advertised himself as a barber and hair dresser in 1876.

 

* Timble's Barbershop

Maybe Stanley Timble’s shower bath sign was a hold over from his dad’s tenure at the shop. George and Stanley conducted their barbershop in the facility once known as the Klatt building. During the early days of silent movies, the Klatt building was the site of Algoma’s Gem Theatre and it was George Timble who owned the Gem Theater and the Gem Barbershop.

The theatre didn’t last long, but long-lasting was Timble's offering of bathing facilities in his barbershop. One hundred years later, there are salons that offer movies - on a flat screen with a remote - in addition to nail care, massages, facials, waxings and more. George Timble was on to something that never crossed his mind!


Note: It was in 1923 that George Timble replaced the building above and constructed the brick building that remains today, the last two-story structure to be built in the Steele St. business district. The 20' x 60' structure housed the barbershop, apartments upstairs, radio, TV and appliance sales and service, a clinic and now Community Improvement of Algoma.

Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River? c. 2001; Commercial History of Algoma, WI, Vols. 1 & 2, c. 2006 & 2012; interview with Ms. Millie Rabas, 2004. The hotel photo was taken by the blogger in 2007, the 1907 postcard is from the blogger's collection and the ads are from the Commercial History and used with permission.