DeMark’s Tavern

Dennis Tully: In this photo of the DeMark’s Bartenders, I see Jim at the far right, Rocky in the cowboy hat, Nick at far left. Anyone else know the rest? Meatball bomber and deep fried mushrooms were my favorites – plus a few beers!!! Photo from around 1972.
DeMark’s Bar and Restaurant, 1600 Albert Street, in May of 2023.
It has been a long time since this city could boast of a local boy performing with a varsity athletic team at a major university but in Nick DeMark, University of Wisconsin sophomore cager, Racine has an outstanding representative, one who should receive many honors before he graduates two years hence.
Racine Journal Times, January 18, 1934. It has been a long time since this city could boast of a local boy performing with a varsity athletic team at a major university but in Nick DeMark, University of Wisconsin sophomore cager, Racine has an outstanding representative, one who should receive many honors before he graduates two years hence.

Michael DeMark: Nick DeMark, the star athlete, was the son of Roger, the primary proprietor of DeMark’s Bar until he passed away in 1939, and Rose, about which the article about Italian recipes was written. The whole family, including 9 children, lived above the bar. Nick worked for the IRS, and was Racine County Treasurer for a time. Some of the other children were Tony, a lawyer, Louis, who was Postmaster of Racine for many years, Frank, a dentist (my father), Joe, who worked at Johnson Wax, Louisa, Helen, Mary and Teresa. There is an incredible history of the family, titled Descendants of Luigi DeMarco and Maria Francesca Porcaro (parents of Roger and Rose), that is over 900 pages long, which was created by my cousin, Melissa Mularski. If you’re interested, I could ask if she would mind sharing it with this group. There is a ton of Racine history intertwined with the DeMark family history.