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http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060510/COLUMNIST0102/605100397/0/COLUMNIST0102
Nashville, Tennessean Wednesday, 05/10/06
Demonbreun saloon location cleared in '70s urban renewal
By GEORGE ZEPP
I have a brass token that was in a box of junk I bought in Memphis for 75 cents. On one side is "Good for 5¢ at bar" and on the other is "B.R. Demonbreun, 113 Pub. Sqr."
Was B.R. Demonbreun maybe honored with a Nashville street named for him? — John R. Setters, Whites Creek
Nashville saloon-keeper Bynum R. Demonbreun was actually a great-grandson of the early Nashville settler honored in the naming of Demonbreun Street.
His ancestor, a Quebec fur trader whose real name was Jacques-Timothe Boucher Sieur de Montbrun (1747-1826), arrived here about 1769. De Montbrun is remembered for having spent some of his earliest days in a still-visible bluff cave along the Cumberland River. The family name later became Anglicized.
Bynum Demonbreun's saloon on the south side of Nashville's Public Square, opposite the courthouse, appears in city directories at least as early as 1889, when it was two doors down at 109 Public Square. Both there and at 113 he apparently lived in residential space above the saloon, something once common for shopkeepers.
Demonbreun's token, designed to encourage patrons to spend more than its worth, was a common promotional device, past and present. The current Boscos Nashville Brewing Co. on 21st Avenue South has issued a wooden one in recent years good for a free beer.
In B.R. Demonbreun's time, he faced great competition. By 1899, when he was in the three-story building at 113 Public Square, his saloon was one of 156 listed in the city directory. By contrast, only 57 restaurants were listed that year.
The easy availability of intoxicating drink and its effects on the Nashville citizenry eventually spawned an opposition movement.
A "moral wave" gained strength among church groups and others the first years of the 20th century, targeting strong drink and gambling. Even in earlier decades, the temperance movement was viewed by business and agriculture industry leaders as a way to improve working habits among the laboring class.
"Before and after the Civil War and into the 20th century, southern leaders wanted to deny liquor to blacks and poor whites out of fear that alcohol would inflame passions and increase crime," now-retired Tennessee Tech University historian Calvin Dickinson wrote.
In late November 1908, the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union met to join forces by organizing the Temperance League. Politicians and newspapers took sides.
Democratic Gov. Malcolm R. Patterson responded to the growing movement by sending the entire legislature a message in January 1909: "Prohibition is profoundly wrong as a governmental policy, and in a country where the largest measure of freedom is accorded, it becomes intolerable."
Legislators didn't listen. The same month prohibition passed in the state Senate and House, and withstood the governor's veto.
Manufacture of liquor also became illegal in the state that February, with all distilleries and breweries required to close at midnight Dec. 31, 1909.
With so many Nashville saloon keepers facing economic ruin, a businessmen's group formed to help them find other jobs.
Demonbreun's saloon along with most of the rest suddenly appeared in the city directory under a different heading, "Soft Drinks." Few could generate even the rent money off that market. The new directory heading was soon missing entirely.
Access to intoxicating beverage didn't disappear, but went underground. Nashville's bootleggers, basement and back alley speak-easy restaurants and clubs filled the void. They thrived — closed only on Sundays and bothered by only occasional police raids — until prohibition was lifted in Nashville in 1912.
Demonbreun's name disappeared from the city directory by 1912, possibly indicating his retirement. He died in July 1920 at age 59, Demonbreun family researchers said.
"National prohibition did not work in Tennessee in the 1920s (until its repeal in 1933) any better than state prohibition had since 1909," Dickinson observed.
Demonbreun's old saloon space opposite the Davidson County Courthouse lived on in city commerce. By 1924, it had become one of several Nashville news shops run over the years by the Zibart brothers, Samuel and Leon. Leon's sons, Alan and Carl, became well known for their long-operating Zibart's bookstore on Church Street.
By 1938, the little building housed a fruit stand operated by John J. Hill. Finally the address served a series of liquor stores: Jonas Taylor's in 1940, Bradley's in 1941, Matt's in 1942 and ultimately Sol's Liquor Store from 1944 to 1970.
The entire block was vacated by 1971 and razed by 1973 in Nashville's push for urban renewal around the courthouse.
Virtually all the distinctive Italianate buildings, many dating from the 1850s, that surrounded the once-crowded Public Square met the same fate. Their ornate stone and brick fronts are a fading memory to some, but unknown to many current Nashvillians.
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