There was no fork in the road in 1967 when Wisconsin turkey farmer Clarence H. Hartwig, Sr. opened the Gobbler, a supper club and motel in Johnson Creek, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Chicago about halfway between Milwaukee and Madison. Interstate 94 was relatively new, and Hartwig wanted to attract attention to his space-age getaway.
In its new life as a theater, the Gobbler doesn’t serve food, a fact that may disappoint people with fond memories of dining there. But Manesis has saved a compelling piece of architecture. “It is one of the most important midcentury buildings in the state of Wisconsin,” says Jim Draeger, the state historic preservation officer at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. “I’d been very concerned about that building. The 1950s and early ’60s were an experimental period of American architecture. Buildings like the Gobbler that push the edges of popular architecture taste are important. They are iconic buildings you use to understand all the other buildings.”
Manesis was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1960s when he first visited the Gobbler. The 61-year-old now owns a Milwaukee trucking and warehouse company and has been driving dragsters since 1980 at the Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wisconsin. “I would bring girls to the Gobbler,” he recalls. “A steak was $16 and I made $1.30 an hour, so I had to work a long time to go on a date. It was a miniature Playboy Club. The waitresses had neat little outfits—they had turkey feathers coming out of their suits instead of the little bunny tail.”
The original supper club had a beauty shop, barber shop, and gift store in the basement. A 35-ton dance floor with a disco ball hung over the bar from the ceiling. Manesis had it excised. “We had to be very careful,” he says. “We could have [destroyed] the ceiling and the venue would have been junked. The dance floor was made of plywood, steel, and tons of drywall and plaster. A two-story kitchen was where the stage is. That kitchen served the main floor and it was a way to bring food to people upstairs. All of that had to be removed.”
“The first year we’re trying to establish the Gobbler as a going business,” Manesis says. “Making money is far behind giving folks a good time at an affordable price.” v
