Welcome to the Tiki Central 2.0 Beta. Read the announcement
Celebrating classic and modern Polynesian Pop

Tiki Central / Locating Tiki

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

Pages: 1 1 replies

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."

The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin :

June 30th, 1939 - I did notice that in the pre-opening ads and articles, nothing is written about the Hei Tiki room and all that is mentioned is that their are "unique interiors designed by Alden Nelson", this may have been to keep under wraps the Hei Tiki room as it being something rather avantgarde for the day, and as the after opening write up seems to imply caused quite a stir...

July 8th, 1939 -

July 15th, 1939 -

September 17th, 1939 -

Note sure how long this place lasted but mention of the club runs into 1940.

Pages: 1 1 replies