Rooted In Community: Imperial Bar has a long history, including final New Year’s Eve party before Prohibition
- Laurie Craig
- Dec 31, 2025
- 5 min read
Original Ashby and Leak saloon built in 1891 gutted by fire in 1906; building became the Louvre Theatre before reopening in 1917 as a mercantile store and then the current bar
By Laurie Craig
Juneau Independent
New Year’s Eve celebrations are normally lively and loud, but the last night of 1917 was an especially big event. That was the final day of legal drinking in Alaska for the next 15 years.
Jan. 1, 1918, ushered in Alaska’s “Bone Dry Law,” voted by Alaskans and approved by Congress. It was two years prior to national Prohibition enacted under the Volstead Act, the 18th Amendment.
The forerunner of today’s Imperial Bar survived Prohibition after starting life in 1891 under various names and owners. Its colorful background includes founders dashing off to the Klondike and Nome gold fields in the late 1890s, near-total destruction by fire in 1906 followed by reconstruction soon after, and the addition of a third floor in 1935. Today, Front Street’s J.J. Stocker Building houses one of downtown’s most popular bars and eateries.
The building’s origins are noteworthy. Two brothers, Thomas and Oscar Ashby, arrived in Juneau in 1884 from Missouri. They joined with William Leak in 1891 to build a saloon on pilings on the beach. The pilings remain in place today, although fill material has been added beneath the building. The saloon’s first name was Ashby and Leak.
The second name was The Missouri, after the Ashbys’ home state. The third name — Louvre Theater and Bar— came in 1896, the same year gold was discovered in the Yukon Territory. As the Louvre, the building gained notoriety for its live musical and theatrical productions as advertised in the Douglas Miner on Sept. 23, 1896.
An advertisement (left) in the Sept. 23, 1896, Douglas Miner for the Louvre Theatre and Bar promotes musicians and actors. At right, a formally dressed orchestra at the Louvre in 1904 poses in front of the elaborate stage surrounded by many costumed performers. (Alaska State Library Historical Collections ASL-P344-112)
The Louvre Theatre’s reputation grew, conjuring a grand place of entertainment in the early 1900s. After the theater closed in 1917 it was converted to a mercantile store in 1918. It became known as the Imperial before the end of Prohibition in 1933.
The building’s existence as a saloon has a storied history. A 1904 photo reveals a large, formally dressed orchestra posing in front of an elaborate stage surrounded with many costumed performers. Twenty years after its founding, Juneau had progressed from a log cabin mining camp to a town laid out similarly to today. A detailed 1904 Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map shows how little downtown’s layout has changed.
At the height of its popularity, the Louvre was devastated by fire.
“It looked as though the entire waterfront was doomed,” declared the Douglas Island News on March 21, 1906. The Louvre caught fire on a windy night and burned, killing one of the performers. The building was destroyed, but the fire did not spread to other wooden structures in the tightly packed downtown business district.
“The wind, which had been blowing a gale, suddenly died down and the firemen gained the fight, not however, until the Louvre was a mess of ruins,” reported the newspaper. It was rebuilt the same year in 1906.
Joe Stocker bought the saloon in 1914 a few years before the Alaska Bone Dry Law took effect Jan. 1, 1918. For the next 15 years, the Front Street building variously housed a mercantile, a cigar store and a billiard parlor.
Prohibition, officially enacted in 1920 for most of the country, was an interesting time for America as well as Alaska. Liquor manufacture, sale and possession were banned. But like many other laws, people found ways around it. Juneauites became entrepreneurial, too. Moonshine stills were erected in the woods. Barrels of product were hidden in remote locations. Kegs were distributed at night by seagoing smugglers slipping beneath the pilings of downtown’s buildings to unload their contraband.
A slender book published in 1990 by Ralph Soberg reveals the author’s clandestine tasks as a young Juneau boat captain in 1928. In “Confessions of an Alaskan Bootlegger,” author Soberg describes the secrets of manufacturing, distribution and pricing. He reports evasive actions he and a trio of cohorts took to avoid prohibition agents while supplying customers. Encounters with the law and some jail time are part of the story. The book features a map of secret locations around Juneau that readers today will understand. Soberg’s slim memoir has a prologue by George Sundborg, who among other illustrious public roles, served as an editor of the first Juneau Independent newspaper.
According to Soberg, local moonshiners fermented and distilled a mixture of sugar, corn and cornmeal to make liquor that was sold surreptitiously, sometimes through the ladies of the red light district, which included much of downtown’s upper-floor apartments.
Within five weeks of the end of Prohibition in 1933, Joe Stocker obtained one of the first alcohol licenses granted in Alaska. Two years later he added a third floor to his building as well as his name. The 1935 facade appears similar today.
Stepping inside the Imperial in 2025 a visitor can find a dual-purpose interior. Evidence exists of the building’s past when it was divided down its length into a saloon and a restaurant. A long bar lines one wall while a kitchen is tucked into the other half. Today, the Imperial is known for its popular meal of “smash burgers” as well as adult beverages. And as times have changed, nonalcoholic drinks are served at the bar by customer demand instead of prohibition agents.
A saloon has flourished on Front Street since 1891 despite 15 years of closure for Prohibition, the Depression, two world wars, the flooded collapse of Douglas Island’s Treadwell Mine complex and the 1944 closure of the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mine.
• Rooted In Community focuses on unique and historic buildings in Juneau, and the present-day businesses and people occupying them. Laurie Craig, an artist, advocate and avid researcher of Juneau’s historical treasures, can be contacted at lauriec@juneauindependent.com.
