The Haunted American Club, Kohler: Room 209 and the Immigrant Workers' Hotel

The American Club sits at 419 Highland Drive in the village of Kohler, a few miles west of Sheboygan and about an hour north of Milwaukee. It is a red-brick Tudor Revival building with gabled wings and formal gardens, the centerpiece of the Kohler Company’s Destination Kohler resort, with a spa, championship golf at Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run, and restaurants including the Immigrant, the Horse & Plow and the Wisconsin Room.

Behind the luxury is a very different story. For six decades this was a boarding house for single men, most of them immigrants, who worked at the Kohler plant across the road. The ghost stories told about the hotel come from that working past: a grieving widow in Room 209 and a silent man in torn work clothes. Neither can be confirmed, and the hotel does not promote them, but they are the reason it appears in every list of haunted hotels in Wisconsin.

The ghosts of The American Club

The widow of Room 209

The story told most often is about Room 209, in the oldest part of the building, the east wing. According to the legend, a woman took her own life in the room after her husband was killed in a workplace accident, presumably at the plant where so many of the building’s early residents worked. Guests say they have seen a woman standing by the fireplace in Room 209, in some versions wearing a blue hat, and then found the room empty.

We could find no record of a death in Room 209, and there is a problem with the tale: for its first sixty years the American Club housed single men, not married couples, so it is not obvious why a widow would have been living here. That does not mean nothing happens in the room. It does mean this is a legend, and it may have grown from the general sadness of a building full of people a long way from home.

The silent man in work clothes

The second story is quieter and more unsettling. A guest reported seeing a silent, shabbily dressed man in a hallway, in dirty, torn clothes like a laborer’s at the end of a shift. When the guest spoke to him, he did not answer.

The story has a twist that gets retold in local radio and haunted-hotel round-ups: security footage is said to have shown the guest talking, with nobody visible in front of him. We have not seen the footage, and the hotel has never commented on it. People who know the building’s history tend to see the man as one of the workers who once lived here.

The original building after dark

Beyond those two stories, accounts are vague: a feeling of being watched in the older corridors, footsteps in hallways that turn out to be empty. The American Club does not talk about ghosts, and most guests come for the spa and the golf and sleep soundly. If you want the atmosphere, stay in the original 1918 building rather than a newer wing, and walk the corridors late in the evening when the resort is quiet.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 209: The room in the widow legend, with the fireplace where she is said to stand. A regular guest room you can ask for when you book.
• The original 1918 building: Where the immigrant workers lived and where both ghost stories are set, especially the east wing. Newer additions, such as the West Wing I extension, have no stories attached.
• The Wisconsin Room: The workers’ original dining hall, now a restaurant. A good place to picture the building’s first life.

History of The American Club

The village of Kohler grew up around the Kohler Company’s plant, and Walter J. Kohler, son of company founder John Michael Kohler, wanted it to be a model company town. Part of that plan was a place where the company’s single workers, many of them newly arrived immigrants, could live decently. The result was the American Club, designed in the Tudor Revival style by Richard Philipp of the Milwaukee firm Brust and Philipp, a friend of Kohler’s who also helped plan the village.

Walter Kohler dedicated the building on June 23, 1918, in front of several hundred people. According to Historic Hotels of America, residents paid $27.50 a month for room and board. The building was more than a dormitory: it offered a setting to learn English and prepare for citizenship exams, with night classes arranged at the Kohler Public School, and the company sponsored dozens of immigrants for citizenship every year, taking groups to the county courthouse on what it called Americanization Day. By 1930 it estimated that nearly 700 immigrants had passed their citizenship tests.

The original dining hall was redesigned around the middle of the century as the Wisconsin Room. The Kohler Company closed the boarding house in the late 1970s and spent millions converting it, and the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 1978. It reopened to the public as a luxury resort hotel in 1981, with guest rooms that display portraits and memorabilia of notable Americans such as Mary Pickford, Ernest Hemingway, John James Audubon and Lou Gehrig, a nod to the building’s role in helping newcomers become citizens.

Today the American Club is the heart of Destination Kohler, alongside the Kohler Waters Spa, the adults-only Carriage House and the golf courses at Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run. It is a member of Historic Hotels of America and has long been described as the Midwest’s only AAA Five Diamond resort hotel.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for Room 209, or at least a room in the east wing of the original 1918 building, when you book. Call the hotel after booking to make the request.
• Have dinner or a drink in the Wisconsin Room, the workers’ original dining hall, to get a feel for the building’s first life.
• Walk the gardens and the main corridors late in the evening, when the day visitors have gone and the old building is at its quietest.
• This is a luxury resort, so book early for summer weekends and golf events, when rates are at their highest.
• Combine your stay with Milwaukee’s haunted hotels, about an hour south, or our ghost hunt at Ringling House in Baraboo, about two hours west.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Hotel Retlaw, Fond du Lac: Room 717 and Walter Schroeder’s 1923 hotel
• The Pfister Hotel, Milwaukee: The 1893 hotel big league ballplayers talk about
• The Ambassador Hotel, Milwaukee: 1928 Art Deco hotel with a dark Dahmer connection
• Haunted hotels in Wisconsin

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Destination Kohler: The American Club
• Historic Hotels of America: The American Club history
• Wikipedia: American Club (Kohler, Wisconsin)
• B105 Country: Haunted hotels in Wisconsin
• Haunted Hotel Stays: Haunted hotels in Kohler, Wisconsin

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