Crystal Bar

4279 Holt Road, Holt, Michigan

Status: Still Standing / Open

Opened: Circa 1920

Architect: Unknown

The concrete block and brick-faced building, located at 4279 Holt Road, was built sometime around 1920. It is believed to have originally been a blacksmith shop – the floor is made of thick concrete, indicative of horseshoeing spaces.

John Fry owned the bar from about 1929 through 1949. Early on, likely in the final years of prohibition, it operated as a pool hall. Under Fry’s ownership, the establishment was called the “Holt Restaurant” and later “John’s Bar.” It is recalled by longtime residents that John Fry had one arm and wore a leather strap around his missing limb, he is also believed to have lived above the bar. Fry moved to Ovid in 1946 and died there in 1956.

After John Fry, the bar entered the hands of Clarence Yeadon. Yeadon’s daughter is named Crystal and it is generally accepted that Mr. Yeadon named the bar after his daughter. The earliest instance of the name Crystal attached to the bar is 1948.

In the early years of the bar, in the fall of each year, there would be a Feather Party. A Feather Party was essentially bingo, but the winner would not win a standard prize – they would get some kind of live bird: chicken, duck, turkey, or something like that. They would go to the basement to retrieve their live prize.

By the early 1950s, the Crystal Bar was owned by Stan and Jessie Jackson. A frequent community recollection is that the Jacksons had a pair of boxer dogs that lived at the bar with them on the second floor. Stan and Jessie owned the bar through 1964.

Don and Rita Rink purchased the bar in 1964 from the Jacksons. They ran the bar through 1993, when it was sold to Harold Darbor. The Darbor family still owns the establishment today and it is known as Darb’s Crystal Bar.

The sign, now synonymous with the Crystal Bar, that reads “Holt is too small to have a town drunk so we all take turns” was put up in the early 1970s and was painted by Sterling Silver Alf. Alf also painted the “Crystal Bar” text on the front window of the business, likely around the same time. Television personality Charles Kuralt once mentioned the bar and the Alf sign on his trips across America.