Yesteryear: Hotel Lincoln
by Pat Sides
The Hotel Lincoln was one of Evansville’s finer downtown hotels in the first half of the twentieth century. Located at Fifth and Main streets, the Lincoln opened in 1915 on NW Fifth Street; a later section (left) was positioned between two smaller shops in the 400 block of Main Street. (The large building looming in the background is Old National Bank.)
The Hotel Lincoln is perhaps most famous for the Blue Bar, which was located in the building’s basement. With a seating capacity of 300, the bar opened soon after Prohibition was repealed in 1933 and continued operating for a while after the hotel closed in 1965.
For decades, jazz lovers flocked to the popular bar to hear such musicians as Boots Randolph, who regularly played his famous “Yakety Sax†there from 1957 to 1961. Two years after the Lincoln closed, it was razed to make room for a new Old National Bank building.
