Hughie's Tavern

The bar at 400 Jasper Street, at the corner of South 4th and Jasper Streets, has a history stretching back to the years before Prohibition. During the late 1890s and early 1900s the building housed a grocery store. By World War I it was being used as a bar, with Samuel Rosenberg as proprietor from 1918 through at least 1921. Rosenberg would later run a different bar at 575 Van Hook Street.

According to the 1927 Camden City Directory, Walter Evanuk was the proprietor by that year. The previous year he had been operating a saloon at 629 Ferry Avenue. Walter Evanuk lived with his wife Susanna at 436 Jasper Street. The bar was licensed and operating as Walter’s Cafe in the late 1930s, and Evanuk continued through the mid-1940s.

The 1947 Camden City Directory shows that the bar was then called the Zenie Cafe, operated by Tony and Zenie Stepanuk, who lived next door at 402 Jasper. By 1959 the bar was again known as Walter’s Cafe. Walter Evanuk passed away in February of 1967 at the age of 72.

The 1966 Bell Telephone directory lists the address as the Jasper Cafe. In June of 1967 an application for the renewal of the liquor license was submitted under the name of Jasper Tavern Inc., with principals Hugh J. Powell, Anthony Potts, and Joseph F. Powell. The 1970 Bell Telephone directory still lists the Jasper Tavern. In the late 1970s the bar was known as Hughie’s Tavern. In 2003 the bar at 400 Jasper Street and the house at 402 were both unoccupied and boarded up.