Zayat Sample Room / Market Boutique

Saloonist Almer Cone catered to "theatrical people" seeking something more dramatic than the usual bar fare. His saloon at 224 N. Main Street was called The Zayat. Cone claimed it was "the swellest sample room" in all of Oshkosh. You'd never guess that by peering through his plate-glass window on Main Street. On the other side of that window, Cone had placed a tall, wooden partition that prevented passersby from seeing who was at his bar or what they might be doing there. Such discretion was necessary for a place like this. The traffic through Cone's saloon included buyers and sellers of sex. Cone even provided discreet stalls at the rear of his saloon where the transactions could be carried out on-premise. Some members of Oshkosh's anti-saloon contingent argued that Cone’s partition facilitated the debauchery. Others considered the barriers necessary to save the innocent from being corrupted by such spectacles of vice. Partitions like Cone's were made illegal in a number of other Wisconsin cities, but not in Oshkosh. Here, the uninitiated realized they might be better off not seeing what Cone and his patrons were up to.