Bavarian Inn, St. Louis

Last Updated on June 19, 2023 by Dave Farquhar

I’ve driven past the old building dozens of times. An old-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.

Bavarian Inn, St. Louis, in 2023
The Bavarian Inn in St. Louis was once a popular German restaurant. It closed in 1996 after 50 years in business, and has been vacant since sometime in 2001. In 2022, a developer restored the building and put it up for lease. The old sign in the parking lot across the street is visible in the foreground.

The building it occupied dates to 1913. Newspaper advertising from that decade indicates a Kroger grocery store operated in the space in those early years. During the 1930s, a business operated there under the name Baierische Bierstube, which translates to Bavarian Beer Hall, foreshadowing what was to come.

The Bavarian Inn opened at 3016 Arsenal 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. A bar/event hall took over the former Black Forest space in 2007.

Enter MJ’s Bavarian Inn

In January 1995, the Eiseles sold the Bavarian Inn to Mike Sredojvich and Joe Heinkel, who briefly operated it as MJ’s Bavarian Inn. Jerry Berger, the longtime gossip columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 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. Most of the Alibi’s lettering on the parking lot sign has peeled off, but was still readable for a number of years after Alibi’s was gone.

City records indicate the Eiseles sold the property in December 1997, financed the sale, then foreclosed on the new owner in 2002, after Alibi’s had closed. Then they resold the property in 2002. It changed hands multiple times over the ensuing two decades but remained vacant. More than one legal entity with Bavarian Inn in its name has owned the property over that timeframe, but they had no direct connection to the Eiseles.

Hermann Eisele died in 2014. Theresa Eisele died in April 2017.

Why Bavarian Inn closed

Bavarian Inn sign
This weathered sign in the parking lot is the most prominent indication left of the once-popular Bavarian Inn.

It’s an oversimplification to blame the interstate highway system, but it played a part. Bavarian Inn’s location was directly on the old Route 66, and its replacement, Interstate 44, routed out-of-town travelers a mile north. That eliminated hungry travelers finding it by serendipity, meaning it had to rely on business from locals. I-44 was built in 1956. And that may have played a role in the original owners selling in 1963. Local business was enough, for a time.

The problem was, the local population was declining, even then. It started out slow and steady but accelerated over time. In 1950, the city of St. Louis had a population of 850,000. In 1960 and 1970, it was 750,000 and 622,000, respectively. 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. There were almost no travelers, and 55% as many locals.

And the demographics of that local population changed over time. Much of St. Louis’ population of German descent moved to the suburbs during those decades of population decline. The varied populations who moved into the area they vacated, especially in the 1990s and after, 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. That points to changing tastes. Italian restaurants boomed in popularity starting in the 1950s and never really let up, and the rise of pizza in popularity in St. Louis starting in the 1950s definitely came at the expense of traditional German food.

The future?

As of 2021, a legal entity called Bavarian Inn LLC is the registered owner of the long-vacant property. In early 2022, the City of St. Louis issued a series of permits for various renovations. And in June 2022, the city issued a series of more extensive permits. The developer restored the building, making it look like a turn-of-the-previous-century storefront again. They put the ground floor up for lease as retail space and turned the second floor into apartments.

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2 thoughts on “Bavarian Inn, St. Louis

  • September 5, 2018 at 9:37 am
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    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.

    • September 5, 2018 at 5:19 pm
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      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.

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