1906 Pabst-Era Hotel Reborn as a Wood-Fired Restaurant
110 Cottonwood Avenue, Hartland, WI 53029
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Wood-fired Mediterranean menu; entree pricing typical of upper-mid casual dining. Check website for current menu.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1906 · Pabst Brewing Company Hotel · Watertown Plank Road Hostelry
The building at 110 Cottonwood Avenue in downtown Hartland was constructed in 1906 along the Watertown Plank Road, a major nineteenth-century east-west route across southern Wisconsin. For roughly its first sixty years it operated as a hotel, with ownership periods including the Preston and Milski families and the Pabst Brewing Company. Pabst's involvement reflected the common turn-of-the-century practice of breweries owning the hotels and taverns that sold their product.
In 1967 the building was purchased by Margrit and Max Meier, Swiss immigrants who reopened it as the Hartland Inn. Their menu blended Wisconsin supper-club staples with Swiss specialties, and the restaurant became a regional fixture for more than five decades. The upstairs guestrooms ceased operating during the Meier era; the downstairs continued as a full restaurant.
On the night of June 29, 2019, a kitchen fire engulfed the restaurant. The Hartland Fire Department responded to a 10:30 p.m. alarm; heavy smoke and flame damage closed the property. The building remained shuttered for several years through redevelopment work led by the Balestrieri Group.
The restaurant reopened in late January 2025 as The Inn under new owners Matthew and Madeline Armistead. The new concept centers on wood-fired Mediterranean cooking, with seasonal pasta and pizza programs. The restoration retained the historic shell of the 1906 building.
Sources
The Hartland Inn ghost stories belong to the pre-2019 era of the building, when it operated as Max Meier's restaurant. They circulate through Wisconsin paranormal databases and were collected by the Shadowlands Haunted Places Index when the restaurant was still in business.
The most cited account is set in the basement. According to staff testimony preserved in regional aggregators, late one evening around 2002 or 2003, bussers were folding napkins at table nine after closing when they heard a scream rising from the basement. One went down to investigate. The space was dark and empty. She returned and asked her coworkers if anyone had been below. No one had.
A second recurring report describes a young girl in a Victorian-style sailor outfit seen in the basement. Sailor suits for children were a common late-Victorian and Edwardian fashion across the United States, particularly through the 1900s and 1910s — the period when the building first opened. The sighting accounts are brief and consistent in their details, but no documented historical death of a child has been tied to the property.
With the building's full reconstruction following the 2019 fire and its 2025 reopening under new owners, it is genuinely unclear whether any of the prior reports continue. Hauntbound treats the basement-scream and sailor-outfit accounts as folklore from the pre-fire restaurant rather than active phenomena.
Notable Entities
Dine in the 1906 building that operated as a hotel under Pabst Brewing Company before becoming Max Meier's Hartland Inn. The current restaurant, reopened in January 2025 after a 2019 kitchen fire, serves wood-fired Mediterranean cuisine. Staff in the prior Hartland Inn era reported a screaming sound from the basement and the apparition of a young girl in a Victorian sailor outfit.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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