"Three years ago my wife and I purchased the front and back bar[the front counter and the back cabinet with the mirror] from the Tecklenburg Hotel." ... "We literally designed and built our house around it!"

"As we disassembled it at the auction, we found that it is composed of 9 major components that are wooden pegged together. The wood is a combination of oak, walnut, and maple. The front counter is a solid plank of walnut, 16 feet long. It must have been a big tree! Amazingly, the original stained glass was unbroken and intact. Denise and I could lift and move every piece except the mirror, which takes four men to lift. We didn't strip and refinish any of the wood, but spent hundreds of hours gently cleaning every inch with oil soap and water. Many of the carvings are intricate, so we had to use small tools similar to dental picks. The wood was filthy from decades of smoke and dirt. The small half-moon beveled mirrors were completely undetectable, and we were shocked as they appeared beneath the grime. The bar is now restored to its former glory, and glows when the sunlight shines into the room.

Our most significant find was in the attic of the old building. The owner said that there might be some 'extra pieces' upstairs. What we found in a junk pile was the original hand rail and three crown pieces for the back bar. We have identified these from an early 1900's photo. We had previously seen a photograph from the 1940s, and the center crown piece and the handrail had already been removed. It's a miracle that they had not been thrown away in over sixty years.

Unfortunately, we were not able to find any identifying labels or marks indicating the manufacturer. I sent a photo to Roger E. Kislingbury, author of "Saloons, Bars, and Cigar Stores". He replied that the bar was built by the R. Rothschild & Sons Co., 158 W. 5th St., Cincinnati, Ohio, in the 1880s-1890s."