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The Student Prince storefront on Fort Street in downtown Springfield on an overcast late-summer day. A two-story building with a rough fieldstone-faced ground floor and red-brick upper floors, two white sign panels reading 'Student Prince' in red blackletter lettering above the entry, a vertical neon blade sign with a beer-stein illustration mounted high on the brick, a red barrel-vault awning over the doorway carrying the Student Prince crest, flanking display windows holding silhouetted stein figures, a black wrought-iron lamppost and post-mounted lantern beside the entry, and parked cars and an orange traffic cone along the curb in the foreground.
Things to Do · Food & Drink
The Student Prince and The Fort, 8 Fort Street, Springfield, August 2019. Photo by Simtropolitan, source, CC BY 3.0.

The Student Prince (The Fort)

Springfield, Hampden County

Category
Food & Drink
Town
Springfield
County
Hampden
Price
$$

The Student Prince, known locally as The Fort for the Fort Street address, opened in 1935 in downtown Springfield and has run as a German-American restaurant and tavern ever since. The dining room is dark-wood and low-ceilinged, decorated with a collection of hundreds of beer steins donated by regulars over the decades.

The menu centers on traditional German dishes: sauerbraten, wiener schnitzel, jägerschnitzel, bratwurst, and sauerkraut, alongside American pub standards. The bar pours a long list of German lagers and wheat beers. A Christmas carol sing-along every December is a longstanding Springfield tradition.

Visiting

The Fort serves daily, with lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday and dinner service on Sunday. It’s a few blocks from the Springfield Museums and MGM Springfield; complimentary valet parking is currently offered Wednesday through Saturday after 5pm, with street parking nearby.

Sources