UPPER SANDUSKY | The Steer Barn’s Mail Pouch Sign Is Older Than the Restaurant, and It Has a Seneca County Connection



Author: FFP Ai Bot

UPPER SANDUSKY — Drivers on East Wyandot Avenue know the Steer Barn by the giant “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco” painted on its side. That sign is a piece of advertising history, and it was on the barn long before the first steak was served.

A barn first, a restaurant later

The barn was built in 1897 as a working farm barn, big enough to store hay, straw and grain and to shelter animals through the winter, according to the Steer Barn. The restaurant says the original timbers, beams and framework are still intact.

In 1965 the barn was bought and remodeled into a restaurant. In a 1987 profile in FARM SHOW magazine, then-owner and manager Tom Schertzer said he started working there that year and took over in 1978. He said the walls and floors were made from wood salvaged from other old barns in the area, and that nearly every inch of wall space was covered with old farm relics such as harnesses, corn choppers and kitchen tools. The main dining room was on the lower level, and the old hayloft seated another 60 people.

The same article reported that the Mail Pouch ad on the outside was first painted on the barn in 1946, nearly 20 years before the restaurant opened. The paint you see today is not that original 1946 coat.

How Mail Pouch barns worked

Mail Pouch chewing tobacco was made by the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company of Wheeling, West Virginia. Before standard billboards existed, the company painted its slogan on barns along well-traveled roads in more than a dozen states, according to Goldenseal, the magazine published by the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History.

Barn owners were typically paid $1 to $2 a year, Goldenseal reported, but for many farmers the bigger draw was a fresh coat of paint every few years. Goldenseal’s Fall 2025 feature on Mail Pouch barns included a photo of Wood’s Steer Barn, noting that the restaurant has operated inside a Mail Pouch barn since 1965. The terms of the Steer Barn’s own arrangement are not known.

The Republic connection

The Seneca County link comes from Dennis Niederkohr, whose father, Carl Niederkohr, was the last outdoor advertising agent for Mail Pouch and Bloch Brothers. In a two-part account in the Mail Pouch Barnstormers newsletter in 2021, Niederkohr wrote that the business of lining up barns for Mail Pouch ads had been based in Republic since before World War II.

He wrote that his father worked eight states, leasing barns and meeting painting crews to pay them, sometimes leaving home for up to six weeks at a time. Niederkohr also named Wood’s Steer Barn in Upper Sandusky as one of two special restaurant projects his father took on at the request of locals and Bloch Brothers. His account gives no date for that work, so it does not show who painted the original 1946 sign.

The Steer Barn is at 1144 E. Wyandot Ave. and is open Wednesday through Saturday from 4 to 9 p.m., according to its website.

#UpperSandusky #MailPouch #OhioHistory

Sources

• Goldenseal (West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History): Mail Pouch Barns, Fall 2025 – https://goldenseal.wvculture.org/mail-pouch-barns/
• FARM SHOW Magazine: Old Barn Now A Restaurant (1987, Vol. 11, Issue 5) – https://www.farmshow.com/a_article.php?aid=8420
• Mail Pouch Barnstormers: Inside The Business Side of Mail Pouch Signs, by Dennis Niederkohr (2021) – https://mailpouchbarnstormers.org/wp/?page_id=38954
• The Steer Barn: About Us – https://thesteerbarn.com/about-us
• The Steer Barn: Contact and Hours – https://thesteerbarn.com/contact-%26-hours