City Spirits: Skytop

GREEN BAY – The Skytop Supper Club was built in Preble in the late 1920s at what is now 2294 Manitowoc Road, Green Bay.

George M. Ray opened it as the Silver Slipper Café on Nov. 14, 1930, “specializing in steaks and seafood.”

However, with the advent of Prohibition, the timing was bad, or by design.

“For the second time in three years, a flying squadron of federal prohibition agents pounced simultaneously on 11 Green Bay and Brown County soft drink parlors [Feb. 14, 1931], and arrested 16 persons, including three women,” a Feb. 16, 1931, Press-Gazette article stated.

“So smoothly were the raids carried out that the ‘grapevine’ did not get an opportunity to work…”

About 50 federal agents from Milwaukee and Chicago, under the direction of Wisconsin Deputy Prohibition Administrator W. Frank Cunningham, participated in the raid, which caught nearly one dozen businesses serving alcohol, including the Silver Slipper.

George Ray and his wife, Emily, were arrested and taken to the county jail.

The Silver Slipper was one of the first of the 11 businesses to be padlocked.

The couple was held on a joint bond of $1,000.

They pleaded not guilty, and in April, George was sentenced to six months in jail and given a $250 fine.

By July, the business was open again under Mrs. Ray.
George then appears on liquor licenses until 1936, when it was purchased by Kathryne Houck and her husband, Ed Jr.
Kathryne ran the Silver Slipper as a “tavern” and “roadhouse,” while Ed ran the New York Bar in Preble.

Ed, known also as “Happy,” was in and out of trouble through the 1920s, including an incident when a group of men broke into a Mercer hotel and tried to drill a hole in the safe.

“Three of the men are believed to be from a Chicago gang of robbers, and the names given by some of the men are thought to be fictitious,” a Press Gazette article stated.

During Kathryne’s tenure at The Silver Slipper, which lasted through 1944, the bar’s history becomes very colorful.

An April 1984 column by the Press-Gazette’s Lois Kerin tells of the Vern and Judy Krawczyk family — who later owned the building — and their discovery of a hidden door behind lilac bushes on the property “where customers entered and went down,” along with brass numbers and wiring above the bedrooms it contained.

A 1940 census may confirm its operation as a brothel, with six young women living with the Houck family at 829 Ohio Street — half of those ladies coming from the Chicago area.

A December 1938 Press-Gazette opinion piece speaks of the ongoing issues in Preble at that time.

“The most pernicious evil that has developed in the Green Bay community has been made evident in a certain fringe of taverns outside the city limits where “the oldest profession in the world” has moved into these bars, bag and baggage. Prostitution will receive its own particular rating according to an individual’s opinion concerning the best method of handling an age-old problem, but a combination of prostitution and high-pressure salesmanship on liquor guzzling will eventually blow any roof off,” the article stated.

In 1939, the town of Preble put a stop to construction of a “tourist lodge” by the Houcks at their Ohio Street address (now known as Danz Street) in a residential district.

The construction plans showed “a reception room at the front, 12 bedrooms along a central corridor and a dance hall,” the Press-Gazette relayed.

The building was then dialed back to a “two family apartment.”
Kathryne was also arrested numerous times for being open after hours and filling bottles with cheaper grade liquor.

The final case was dismissed in May 1945, as she no longer owned the tavern.

In 1946, James Watson changed the name of the bar to Skytop, but the Silver Slipper name resonated with locals who continued to call the stretch of road by the business “Silver Slipper Curve” and “Silver Slipper Hill.”

Watson also continued to repeatedly violate the closing law while owning the bar, and the state started action to keep him from getting a liquor license.

The suit was dropped after the town of Preble refused to grant anyone a liquor license that was running the bar.

In 1952, the bar was under the management of Ken and Emily Pelkin.

The Pelkins were followed by Eddie and Mona Joepeck and Rita May Campbell.

In 1957, it was purchased by Marge and Linus (Dick) Selissen, who ran it as a supper club until 1972, when they sold it to their daughter and son-in-law, Vern and Judy Krawczyk, who welcomed customers for another 33 years.

The business closed in 2005, and the building was razed in 2017.