Collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
Cincinnati’s newspapers spared no superlatives describing the Atlas Hotel. They claimed it belonged among the Seven Wonders of the World. So it is curious that the place barely survived a year. The Atlas opened in the spring of 1892 and was located at the southeast corner of Richmond Street and Central Avenue, just a block from City Hall. Here is the Cincinnati Post [May 23, 1892]:
“Leaving the vestibule, with its mosaic floor and granite walls and beautiful mirrors, one is confronted with a glittering splendor. The bar, with its massive columns of antique oak, its beautiful mirrors, and all of its accessories of latest architectural beauty, tables and chairs of the latest designs, all furnished by the well-known bar fixture artists, the Huss Bros. Company. Up broad steps carpeted with carpets from the best looms in the country—from the well-known houses of John Shillito & Co. and Alms & Doepke, the visitor finds himself in well-lighted halls, into which open 25 rooms, with electric bells and speaking tubes connecting each room with the office, furnished with new and elegant furniture from the well-known house of Kreimer Bros., with papering and decorating done in a truly elegant manner by Lewis Voight & Sons.”
Rooms, for gentlemen only, were offered at 50 cents, 75 cents and one dollar a night. The owners of this magnificent establishment were Gustav A. Benz and Frank Beck, who had made their reputations as saloonists at other locations. Frank’s bar on Sycamore and Gus’s, two blocks south of the Atlas at Central and Seventh, were of a decidedly different flavor than the new hotel. Both drew a rough clientele and were associated with illegal gambling.
In opening a high-class hotel so close to City Hall (or, as they put it in their opening announcement, “one square north of the new City Building”), Beck and Benz hoped to entice customers from the many men who had business with city officials. Council meetings often ran into the wee hours, as did the various committees and commissions and the Atlas Hotel stood ready to accommodate men “if you miss your car or train” according to their advertisements.
Just three months after opening their magnificent hotel, the owners dissolved their partnership. Gus Benz sold his shares to Beck, who became sole proprietor. Since Benz seemed to have provided most of the initial investment, this placed a significant burden on Beck.
Adding to Beck’s headaches, the Atlas Hotel also employed a lazy and dishonest bartender. Beck fired the miscreant and, looking for a quick replacement, promoted one of the hotel’s waiters, a very polished and hard-working fellow named Louis Deal. According to the Enquirer [March 24, 1893]:
From Cincinnati Enquirer, March 24 1893
“The young man did so well, was so clean and polite and honest, according to the statement of Mr. Beck, that he decided to install him permanently in his bar as the barkeeper.”
Apparently Beck did not consider that Louis Deal’s race might be an issue. Deal was Black and in Cincinnati in 1893, the color line was essentially impermeable. The Enquirer reported that Deal’s promotion brought an almost immediate response:
“The fact that Frank Beck had a colored barkeeper was soon nosed about, and it was not long before a number of people called upon him and demanded that Deal be discharged from the place. Beck refused to comply with the request. He said that Deal did his work better and was more satisfactory than any man who had ever held the place, and so long as he did his duty he intended to keep him where he was.”
Beck’s unwavering support for his employee incensed the other barkeepers throughout the city. Although it would be three or four years before Cincinnati’s publicans unionized, the very idea of an African American barkeep at the Atlas Hotel led to organized opposition. The white bartenders got together and elected George Bear of the Gibson Hotel as their spokesman. Bear called on Beck and, according to the Enquirer [March 28, 1893] offered him two choices:
“He could either discharge Deal or the barkeepers of the city, or at least the more prominent ones, would issue 100,000 dodgers [flyers or handbills], which they would distribute around the city, calling attention to the fact that the Atlas Hotel was the only first-class establishment in the city that employed a colored man as a regular barkeeper.”
In the 1890s, “first-class establishment” was code for “whites only.” Beck, faced with a substantial loss of business, folded and reluctantly dismissed Louis Deal. George Bear told the Enquirer that Cincinnati’s saloons were not ready for integration:
“It might be true that there were colored barkeepers in other cities, but he did not think the people of Cincinnati were ready for it yet.”
In making his decision, Beck claimed that business had been far less lucrative than he could absorb, even without the threat of an organized protest. As it turned out, Beck was just weeks away from declaring bankruptcy. By the end of April, advertisements appeared for a sheriff’s sale of the building and furnishings of Frank Beck’s magnificent Atlas Hotel.
The white barkeepers celebrated, of course, but their treatment of Louis Deal came back to bite them as they attempted to enlarge their union. According to the Enquirer [December 17, 1896]:
“The efforts of the local Waiters and Bartenders’ Union, which is composed exclusively of white men, to affiliate their colored brethren with the union which has been going on for some time, is not meeting with much success.”
The Atlas Hotel sold for just over $3000, less than a third of its market value, to a partnership comprised of a local contractor and a saloonist. The change in ownership radically shifted the clientele, as demonstrated by a brief item in the Cincinnati Post [March 16, 1894]:
“Mrs. Belle Miller, the woman who tried to strangle Mrs. Rosina Wortman during a fight at the Atlas Hotel, on Central Avenue, and was prevented by Sergeant Kane from throwing her victim out of a fourth-story window, was remanded by Judge Gregg Friday, to await the result of the latter’s injuries.”
Frank Beck licked his wounds and went back to operating a dive bar, this time in partnership with his wife, Bertha. He did well enough that there are reports of him sponsoring prize fights and wrestling matches.
Louis Deal was arrested in September 1893, six months after being fired from the Atlas Hotel, for violating the midnight law. That was a charge usually filed against barkeepers, suggesting that he was tending bar someplace. Most subsequent city directories, however, list him as a waiter or porter at various restaurants. Deal died from consumption in 1903 and he is buried at the Union Baptist Cemetery in Price Hill.
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