Originally published on Oct. 16, 2008.
Despite assertions to the contrary, Pancho Villa never drank here. But just about everyone else did - from mayors and bankers to cowboys and Indians.
The same could probably be said for a few reporters, judging from the florid postmortems that ran in the local papers after the Legal Tender fell to urban renewal in the waning days of 1969.
By its final "last call," more than 100 "happy mourners," including the mayor, a bank vice president and several city honchos, had drained the taps.
Not long after, the wrecking ball had its way, pounding down yet another landmark in Tucson's once-thriving barrio.
"At one time, the Legal Tender had the longest bar in Tucson," says Eddie Jacobs, whose father, the late Eduardo Jacobs, bought the place in the 1930s, soon as Prohibition ended.
Born Downtown in what is now the Sosa-Carrillo-Frémont House, the elder Jacobs was a third-generation descendant of Tucson pioneer Leopoldo Carrillo.
Two decades or so after Carrillo came to town, the walls started going up between 1875 and 1880 for what would become the two-story brick home of banker William C. Davis. Soon after, the original Legal Tender went in a few doors to the west on Congress Street.
Old photos show a pressed-tin ceiling and gambling tables at the ready.
Then around the turn of the century, the Davis home was remodeled for commercial use, and the Legal Tender moved in for good at 80 W. Congress St.
Rooms were let on the second floor to women described as "happy girls."
Later on, those rooms became rentals and apartments, says Jacobs, renting from $6 to $8 a week for a room, $45 to $55 a month for an apartment.
So what kind of folks wanted to live above a bar? "People who liked to drink," says Bella Bowerman, Eduardo Jacobs' daughter and sister to Eddie.
Besides the long bar, the Legal Tender also had tables and booths, remembers Jacobs. "In the 1940s, a cafe operated there but it did not do too well. That area was made into a dance floor."
Here, bands from the Indian reservation played ranchero music well into the waning hours every weekend.
"About 70 percent of the people were Mexican or Indian, but we also had people who came from Pantano Road," says Jacobs, 74, who worked as a relief bartender during the mid-'50s.
"Rowdy? Oh, yes. We would call the paddy wagon and help the guys into it. They had some fights, too. The bartenders were the bouncers there. I didn't do too much because I worked on Tuesday nights. It was slower."
Saturday nights, natch, were the busiest. "We had a female bartender and a male bartender then," says Jacobs.
"They didn't want me to work there," adds Bowerman, 76, who did help out at another family enterprise, the old Riverside Auditorium. Located on West Congress Street near the banks of the Santa Cruz, it hosted everything from wrestling matches to marathon dances.
Besides the Legal Tender, Eduardo Jacobs, who died in 1975, also owned several liquor stores around town, including one nestled inside the Legal Tender. "It sold packaged goods," says Jacobs. "If they ran out at the bar, they used that. We had the same liquor license for both."
For a time, Eduardo Jacobs also owned the Roskruge Hotel, as well as the Rialto Theatre, which his son, Eddie, later turned into a Spanish-language-movie theater.
In 1966 and 1968, Eduardo Jacobs threw his hat in the ring as a Democrat for the state Senate but did not win.
Though his bar was leased out to others in the 1960s, Eduardo Jacobs passionately fought what he saw as its coming destruction.
"Dad was against urban renewal. He used to take me to the meetings," says Jacobs.
Not that it did any good. A few months before the saloon's demise, Eduardo Jacobs, surveying the happy crowd inside the Legal Tender, remarked to a Star reporter, "A year from now they'll be dancing to the same tune - only at another place."
But never again at this site. Today we know it as that patch of greenery called La Plaza de la Mesilla, where Pancho Villa, in statue form, holds forth.
