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Tiki Central / Locating Tiki / Marine Club's Hei-Tiki Room, Madison, WI (restaurant)

Post #774582 by TikiTeddie on Tue, Mar 28, 2017 1:52 AM

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Name:Marine Club's Hei-Tiki Room
Type:restaurant
Street:110 E. Wilson
City:Madison
State:WI
Zip:
country:USA
Phone:
Status:defunct

Description:
Could this actually be the first tiki bar, meaning a bar with tiki in the name? Again, stumbled across this one by accident but seems to be one of the early bars that adopted the Hei-Tiki craze of mid-1939, that was inspired by Truman Bailey's book Polynesian Adventure that came out in January 1939. Amazingly there is a news write-up that describes the bar - "Drawing on the work of anthropologists, all the colors of this room Nelson (the designer Al Nelson) used are the authentic basic colors of this group (Polynesian) of South Sea islands, he said. To complete the tropical effect, zebra skin lounges line the room and the zebra skin motif is repeated in the chandelier coverings. To round out the South Sea effect, sago palms rise gracefully against the bamboo walls, which although wallpaper, fooled many patrons into believing that it was actual bamboo."