Anthony & The Pool Hall

Are there any skeletons in your closet? There is one in my family that I know about. A family legend is that my Grandpa Anthony Raczkiewicz at some point had a “game room” and made $100 a day and was often raided. My mother remembers hearing these stories but it was “before her time.” She always assumed gambling was involved. It was kind of fun to try to confirm this story. After Anthony came to the U.S. from Poland in 1912, the first job I found listed him as a laborer (Polk Directory of 1914). He then got a job at Keifer Tanning Company on 260 Front St. SW and worked there a few years. In 1921, Anthony left the tannery and was a clerk at Charles (Powlski) Powlowski’s Billiards at 612 Bridge St. NW. This location had opened in 1916 as the Buddy Theater, opened by the Buddy Brothers. It seated 500 and was “handsomely decorated in old rose and white” when it was a movie theater. (The Moving Picture World, Vol. 27, p. 457.) Interestingly, at the time Anthony worked at the billiards room, Grand Rapids had been “dry” for several years, beginning at midnight, April 30, 1918 and the state soon followed with Prohibition voted in. It was not repealed until 1933. Alcohol usage during this period was illegal but definitely continued “underground.” Pool halls must have been a popular entertainment with 13 listed in the city the year that Anthony became a clerk. The owner, Charles Powlowski, was from the same part of Poland as Anthony and also immigrated to Grand Rapids and married his wife the same year my grandpa Anthony married Pauline. Powlowski also had a soft drink store at 511 Bridge St. NW. The year after Anthony began as a clerk in the billiards room in 1922, he (misspelled as: Radzkiewicz) was listed in the city directory as the owner of the one at 612 Bridge St. NW. At this point, the billiard rooms in the city had grown to 30. Anthony had five competitors on Bridge Street alone. In 1923, he was listed as co-owners with Mr. Czarnopis. This may have been Stanislaw Czarnopis who came to the US with Anthony’s brother Jan. The number had grown slightly to 33 pool halls in Grand Rapids. By 1924 the number grew to 34 but Anthony was no longer running one of them and there was no longer a listing in the city directory for this billiards room so it likely went out of business. It is unclear if gambling or alcohol contributed to the money made or the demise of his business. Apparently there was a pool hall later in this same location. A person posting on the Facebook Page “Grand Rapids History 1960 and Before” named Matthew Farage, posted that his grandfather Aman Farage owned it beginning in 1927. My sisters, mother and 1 have looked for the building but it is no longer on Bridge Street. Image: By MarkBuckawicki - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31443698