Schmidt, William (1850?–1905), nicknamed “the Only William,” was the most famous American bartender of the nineteenth century. Arguably, he was also the first cocktail bartender to achieve celebrity for the artistry of his drinks rather than the force of his personality. His 1891 book, The Flowing Bowl: What and When to Drink, introduced new patterns, techniques, and ingredients to the bartender’s art and a spirit of creativity that, though anomalous in its day, has tendrils that reach deep into the mixology of today. From 1888 almost until his death he was a regular presence in the pages of the New York newspapers and hence, through the practice of syndication, in the national ones. Indeed, such was his fame that he became proverbial: the standard against which all other mixologists were measured.
Schmidt was born in Heide, northwest of Hamburg, Germany. According to his death certificate, that was in 1850, although his photographs suggest a man rather older than that. In any case, he worked for a time in Hamburg before coming to America in 1868. There, he settled first in Chicago, where he ended up as bar manager at the Tivoli Garden, the city’s largest, most luxurious beer hall, until it closed in 1882. He next surfaced in New York, on a warm day in May 1888, when a reporter from the New York Sun found himself in George Hillen’s Bridge Exchange, a large saloon right next to the Brooklyn Bridge, and witnessed a virtuoso display of bartending and mixology from the elaborately mustachioed German behind the bar. Before the year was out, Schmidt would have seven more major articles devoted to him, in both the Sun and the New York World. With that, his reputation was made: he was “William of the Bridge,” “William the Learned,” or, once he left Hillen’s, “the Only William.”
Schmidt’s stock in trade consisted of a theatrical but precise style of bartending, a good deal of imagination in combining ingredients and in naming the combinations, and an ability to describe what he was doing in complete paragraphs of articulate, ornamental speech. All three qualities made him the perfect subject for the press of his day: his descriptions were detailed and amusing, his drinks unusual, and his showy bartending a perfect subject for the engravings and photographs with which American newspapers were beginning to abound.
In November 1889, after a few months in Europe (where he was offered, among other jobs, the directorship of the bar at the new Eiffel Tower), Schmidt opened his own bar in New York, on Broadway just above Park Row. That business failed quickly and had to be sold. Unusually, Schmidt stayed on as head bartender, working there, with the occasional hiatus, until just before his death in 1905. There he poured his drinks in arcs, gave them fanciful names, talked to anyone who would listen (particularly if that person was a journalist), and made himself an institution.
Schmidt’s book only cemented his position. The Flowing Bowl was the most elaborate bartender’s guide to come out since Jerry Thomas’s seminal work of 1862. Unlike that work, however, which contained only a handful of drinks original to Thomas, its 229 recipes included over a hundred that were, as well as can be determined, the author’s own creations. What’s more, ingredients new to the American bar abound, including orange bitters, digestives such as Fernet Branca and Calisaya, and liqueurs such as parfait amour, kümmel, and crèmes de cacao, menthe, vanille, violette, and roses. See orange bitters; aperitif and digestive; Fratelli Branca; parfait amour; and kümmel. There are also a number of soda fountain ingredients, including acid phosphate, various fruit syrups, and ice cream. The drinks’ names are just as novel: to cite a few, there are the Angelus, the Broker’s Thought, the Weeper’s Joy, the Brain-Duster. Ultimately, The Flowing Bowl is the first truly personal cocktail book.
For the rest of the 1890s, Schmidt remained the dean of American mixologists. In 1899, the influential and hugely popular
With the turn of the new century, however, Schmidt’s style of mauve-decade mixology was being eclipsed by a more minimalist aesthetic. He soldiered on nonetheless, until the end of 1904, when, faced with a pay cut, he quit his job. He was dead within three months. His death certificate gave the cause as “senile dementia,” but a sentimentalist would no doubt attribute it to heartbreak. He left no survivors and is buried in an unmarked grave on Long Island.
Few, if any, of Schmidt’s drinks made it into the canon of drinks that a bartender was expected to know. But if his recipes have faded away, the space he opened for creativity, his expansion of the bartender’s palette, and his clever use of publicity and the media permanently changed the culture of mixed drinks.
“He Will Be Missed.” New York Sun, April 14, 1889, 5.
“‘The Only William’ and His Latest Summer Brew.” New York Sunday Telegraph, June 29, 1902, 2.
“‘The Only William’ Is Dead.” New York Sun, February 10, 1905.
“William, King of Bartenders.” New York Press, October 13, 1889, 1.
By: David Wondrich