An old haunt of author F. Scott Fitzgerald and gangster Al Capone has reopened for the first time since 1984: the bar and restaurant at the old Commodore Hotel on Saint Paul’s Cathedral Hill.
Owner John Rupp says the restored 1934-vintage bar was the brainchild of a well-known Hollywood set designer, who tried to create an art deco bar with the feel of venues being built on the great transatlantic ocean liners of that era.
The bar was to celebrate the end of Prohibition, a time that attracted Chicago gangsters to Saint Paul because authorities looked the other way as long as they didn’t make too much trouble.