The Matchcover Storyteller

If you get the RMS Bulletin by mail, it comes in black-and-white.  If you get it online, it arrives in glorious color, and that’s the way this photo is being offered  — this collection of 6 very different matchcovers for Schiro’s Tavern in Madison, Wisconsin.   It’s really that simple  —  I was attracted by this photo, posted  in the RMS Facebook page by an RMS member. What follows is also due to info supplied by another RMS member!

So  —  Giuseppe “Joseph” Schiro was born in 1894 in Sicily and arrived in the United States in 1911.  He landed in the Greenbush neighborhood of Madison, sometimes called “Madison’s Ellis Island” as a point of entry for so many immigrants.   It was home for the rest of his life.  He married and worked at a machining firm and at Madison Gas and Electric before opening Schiro’s Tavern at 933 Regent Street shortly after the end of Prohibition in 1933.  He owned it until 1964. (Regent St. was the northern boundary of “The Bush”.)

There are several newspaper references from 1934 and 35 on Schiro’s efforts to secure a liquor license; it appears to have been an on-again, off-again thing until license was finally granted.  The tavern was popular  — a son recalls that Joe was called “The Goodwill Ambassador”, “The Mayor of Regent Street” and “Father Joe”.  The same son recalls finding a homeless man freezing on the street (you should understand what a winter night in Madison could be like).  Joe gave him a bed near the furnace; the man stayed and did odd jobs for the tavern after that.

So what happened in 1964 that Schiro’s closed?  It was called Triangle Redevelopment.   Madison underwent two major redevelopment programs in the 1960s and The Triangle  — Greenbush – was one of them.  It began in the late ‘50s; it was contentious and ultimately displaced 233 homes and 33 commercial and industrial properties.    The neighborhood was destroyed.

Schrio’s closed  —  but not before some accusations and investigations related to the propriety of Madison city aldermen involved in representing property owners (including Schiro’s) on everything from bonding and insurance to financial settlements in the Triangle  redevelopment..  Joseph Schiro died in 1981, age 87.

The matchcovers themselves are colorful, old and you’ll note that all six pictured here have differing manumarks.

I was probably 18 or so when Schiro’s closed.  I never knew it, but now. — I kind of miss it!