Primary Name: Jack Zavodsky

Filed as: Zavodsky, Jack

Also known as: John Zavodsky

Born: May 16, 1864 – Bohemia

Died: February 17, 1951 – Chicago, Illinois

Occupation / Association: Bartender; cook; hotel worker; night patrolman

Associated places: Juneau, Alaska; Circle City Hotel; Occidental Hotel; Seattle, Washington; Chicago, Illinois

Organizations: Juneau Men’s Igloo

Keywords: Circle City Hotel, Occidental Hotel, introduction of cocktails in Alaska, Juneau pioneers, Alaska Gold Rush era

Biography

Jack Zavodsky was a charter member of the Juneau Men’s Igloo.

Zavodsky was born in Bohemia on May 16, 1864. He came to the United States in 1889 to join his father on a farm in Kansas.

At age fourteen, he had run away from home to Wild Horse, Colorado, where he worked as a railroad section hand. He later returned to Kansas and eventually made his way west to the Pacific Coast, working as a cook and bartender.

Zavodsky arrived in Juneau aboard the steamer Alki in 1896 and went to work at the Circle City Hotel, owned by George Miller and Lockie MacKinnon, where he worked in the dining room and kitchen.

According to local accounts, Zavodsky introduced the cocktail to Alaska. When a patron asked for a cocktail in the hotel bar, Jack stepped behind the bar and asked what kind he preferred. “Make it any kind,” the man replied. Zavodsky mixed a whiskey cocktail, and it quickly became popular among other patrons.

George Miller later made him head bartender until Jack Olds, owner of the Occidental Hotel, hired him at $60 per month plus room and board.

Zavodsky spent several years working for Juneau businessmen as a night patrolman for business houses.

He left Juneau around 1941, moving first to Seattle and later to Chicago. Zavodsky died at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Chicago on February 17, 1951.

Sources

• Daily Alaska Empire, February 23, 1951.