100 years ago: Ottawa dealt with Prohibition locally

Prohibition went into effect in Illinois on Jan. 17, 1920.

Forty-four Ottawa saloons were closed, left to become either soda parlors or transform into more illicit venues.

One such saloon owner was John Kenney, who was able to circumvent Prohibition at his Geiger Court establishment for five years before federal agents busted his bar.

“Some Prohibition officers came by and purchased high-point beer in Kenney’s establishment,” said Tom Aussem, owner of Awesome Ottawa Tours. “They came in, witnessed people at the bar and saw all the bottles on the bar.”

Authorities came back, dressed in their agent uniforms, and grabbed Kenney’s arms, pinning him, preventing him from removing the evidence from the bar, but Kenney had other ideas.

“Kenney had a device on the bar he was able to trigger,” Aussem said. “The device triggered an arm that swept all the way across the bar and pushed everything down into a hole in the floor and down to the basement, breaking everything on a rock and sending the beer down into the sewer.”

Aussem prepares his tours ahead of time; he was initially working on a tour he called “Wine through Time” before he uncovered what looks like a ring of corruption within the 1920s Ottawa City Hall.

“There were two brothels in Ottawa at the time and from the evidence I’ve seen, George Weeks, the former mayor, was protecting one of them,” Aussem said. “The one he was protecting was very busy and vibrant; the other was already failing. My tour went from all of these cool stories about Prohibition to malfeasance on the part of the city government.”

Aussem said there are all sorts of stories from the Prohibition Era that show how creative people had to be to get their alcohol. With Ottawa being the county seat, it meant the La Salle County Sheriff's Office scared off a lot of the gang activity seen in Streator, La Salle-Peru and Oglesby.

Aussem spoke of Thomas Rilley, a La Salle County deputy who decided one day in 1920 to play a prank on A.J. Ziegler, a travelling booze salesman who was working for the All-in-One Penetrating Oil Company.

“A.J. asked the busboy if anyone wanted a little hooch and the bellboy went and told Rilley,” Aussem said. “They were staying at the Clifton, the preeminent place in Ottawa back then. It had a zero booze policy. The cop went back and got into his civilian clothes and for the cost of $31, he purchased a quart of apricot brandy and a quart of gin.”

Rilley didn’t have all the money on him, though, and asked Ziegler to come with him to the Mahoney Building, the former location of the mayor’s office before the current City Hall was built. He arrested Ziegler right in the mayor’s own office.

Aussem said Naplate had its own local institution in a two-story building that held the Feed Store after its nefarious past, owned by Bethel “Homeboy” Robinson: The first floor was a chicken joint and the basement was the one-armed bandit (a slot machine). The upstairs was a brothel.

“Twenty-one people got busted there,” Aussem said. “But look, you took a lot of livelihoods away when you banned alcohol. The Ottawa Brewing Association was doing great business when they got put out of work. Ottawa had 44 saloons in 1919. Now you’re forcing them into either being soda parlors, which didn’t work out, or pushing them to supplement their income by moving into gambling and prostitution.”

• This is the first story in a series commemorating the 100th anniversary of Prohibition, exhibiting the stories and the effects the short-lived 18th amendment had on the area.