The original Park Tavern was located at 7201 Minnetonka Blvd. at Louisiana. It is unclear when the building was built – one possibility is 1906.
In 1925 until about 1937 this was Erickson’s Confectionery and Texaco Station, owned by Gust Erickson, Sr. Gust was born in Sweden and came to the U.S. in 1910; in 1920 he was working as a stoker at a gas light company. By 1925, according to the caption on the photo below, Gust became the proprietor of his own store (listed as a grocery store in the 1930 census) with his wife Signe (aka Selma). Their children were Gust Jr., Berger, Carl, Arnold, and Ethel. Also listed in the household in the ’30s were Catherine and Walter.
As Prohibition ended, many of these confectioneries reverted to taverns, which were different from the previously dreaded saloons in that women were welcome and men were better behaved. This became Art and Esther’s Tavern (no last name that we can find) in 1938 and ’39; the 1941-42 directories list only Esther’s Tavern.
In 1945 it was the Corner Tavern, owned by Mrs. Louise Howard. It may have changed names after that, but in 1948 the liquor license still belonged to Louise Howard.
In 1952 the bar’s liquor license was transferred from E.J. Danielson to George G. Harrison and J. Phillip Jordan. A November 1952 ad announced that it was under new management. By that time it was called the Park Tavern. The Harrison family (George, his brother Bud, and their mother) lived up above the bar. The mother did the cooking and the brothers fixed pinball machines. The bar would have jars of picked pigs’ feet and pickled hard boiled eggs.
Ben Weber bought the tavern on September 9, 1957. At that time it seated 80 people.
Many patrons (some too young to go in at night) remember the games, including bumper pool and skeeter ball. Jonny Lewis supplied this photo of a game called Duck Hunt:
In 1979 the City decided to widen Louisiana and decided the PT had to move. The City bought it and in 1980 the Tavern was relocated to 3401 Louisiana. “Although the road widening will now not cut into the property, the city had no use for it,” reported the Minneapolis Star. After unsuccessfully trying to rent it out, the City decided to demolish it. The bulldozers made short work of the building on August 18, 1981.
The site became a municipal parking lot.
The new Park Tavern was a success – it was soon expanded and bowling was added. Ben Weber died in 1990 and left the bar to son Phil and daughter Diane. In 1999 the complex was remodeled to accommodate 200 people. Automatic scoring, 20 lanes of built-in bowling bumpers for children, a cosmic sound and light show, and new seating were added. The Park Tavern is one of the city’s most popular venues today.
On September 1, 2024, tragedy struck when a drunk driver hit the gas instead of the brake and plowed into the patio of the Park Tavern, killing two people and injuring four.
Those killed were:
Kristina Marie Folkerts, 30, of St. Louis Park was a server at Park Tavern and had three daughters. Folkerts died at the scene when she was pinned under the runaway car.
Gabriel Quinn Harvey, 30, of Rosemount was a health unit coordinator at Methodist Hospital. He was also a nursing student who was on track to graduate in December. Harvey, like the other injured victims, was at Park Tavern to celebrate a colleague’s departure from the hospital.
Those injured were:
Laura Kathleen Knutsen, 37, of St. Louis Park. Knutsen was a nurse at Methodist Hospital for nine years, much of that time spent in the intensive care unit. She was celebrating her last day as a registered nurse at Methodist on Sunday evening, and was scheduled to begin her studies this week to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist at St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minn. The gathering of Methodist staff was to celebrate her departure. Knutsen was in serious condition at HCMC after the crash.
Tegan Laine D’Albani, 34, of Golden Valley suffered broken legs, pelvis, ribs and dislocated knees. D’Albani, who has worked at the intensive care unit at Methodist for six years, has a young son. D’Albani was in serious condition at HCMC.
Theo Nikolai Larson, 33, of St. Paul works in the intensive care unit at Methodist and did so while he navigated nursing school. He was admitted to North Memorial Health Hospital with multiple skull, facial and orbital fractures. According to the criminal complaint, Larson has also suffered “complete memory loss.” He was being treated at North Memorial Health Hospital.
Six other victims suffered less severe injuries.
The driver of the car was Steven Frane Bailey, 56, of St. Louis Park. He was apparently trying to park in the lot at the Park Tavern. His blood alcohol level was 0.325%, more than four times the legal limit for driving in Minnesota. Court documents show Bailey has five drunken-driving convictions on his record dating back to when he was a teenager. Officers approached Bailey’s SUV and heard him on the phone saying, “I hit the gas instead of the brake and went right through a thing,” and, “I’m probably going to jail.” He was was charged with two counts of criminal vehicular homicide and nine counts of criminal vehicular operation.