Little Ted’s Restaurant and Bar was nestled in a dense business block catty-corner from Superior Avenue and East 3rd Street, right across from the Cleveland Public Library, and was owned and operated by restaurateur Ted Miclau. From 1944 to 1955, people would have been able to see the neon signs and walk in for some chicken paprikash or steak and greens, while enjoying the novelty of air-conditioning on a hot summer’s day and televisions showing live broadcasts throughout the day. The restaurant was popular, with regular advertisements in local papers touting well-cooked meals for a decent price, as well as musical acts for the bar downstairs. Little Ted’s also regularly appeared in papers as the venue for various events: A luncheon for the local American Civil Liberties Union, where the national head spoke to the assembled about new legislation and what it meant for labor rights. A dinner for the Yugoslavian University Club, where college students could mingle and listen to talks about conditions abroad from the Plain Dealer's foreign affairs editor. And, on December 31st, a big blowout party where guests would be able to enjoy live music, party favors, hats, and noisemakers to ring in the New Year included with their purchase of dinner. By all accounts, Little Ted’s was a cornerstone of the community, and Ted Miclau was a pillar that rested on it. Born in Romania, Theodore Miclau was later apprenticed to a beautician, for whom he worked until he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1926, where he built up a chain of five beauty shops and parlors. While there, he earned the nickname “Little Ted” due to his short stature and gentle speaking voice. With the repeal of the Prohibition Act, he purchased and renovated an old building and opened up one of the first legal nightclubs in the city, “Little Ted’s Garden.” Unfortunately, the Chicago Mafia had a vested interest in ensuring the bars of the city did not compete with their own now-legal speakeasies. Not without paying for protection, at least. “...one night, gangsters kidnapped me from my night club… They stuck a gun in my ear, beat me up, and threatened my family unless I bought their protection.”

The Chicago Mafia’s scare tactics did not end with this incident, and Miclau was forced to flee back to Romania in 1937. He would not return to the United States until 1943, and chose to re-settle in Cleveland, where he attempted to renovate an old nightclub called “the Showboat.” The project wound up falling through, and Miclau purchased a property at 304 Superior Avenue Northeast, renovated it, and named it “Little Ted’s Restaurant and Bar,” which would become quite an upstanding establishment and the start of a chain of “Little Ted’s” businesses. These included Little Ted’s Black Angus Restaurant, Little Ted’s Loop Cafe, Little Ted’s Latin Lounge, Little Ted’s Towne Casino, and Little Ted’s Pearl Motel. However, Little Ted’s had a secret. It was not just a family restaurant that hosted police balls and big meetings and wedding receptions… its basement was also a safe space for gay men to socialize and cruise. Pre-Stonewall Cleveland had few options for members of the queer community to get together safely. Civil rights groups like the Mattachine Society and G.E.A.R., the Gay Educational and Awareness Resources foundation, would not come to the city for decades. And openly queer bars and nightclubs like Snickers or the Five-Cent-Decision were even further off. In his very directly titled essay, “The Cleveland Bar Scene in the Forties,” John Kelsey described a world of uncertainty and shifting safe spaces. Gay men had no option to be open due to Ohio’s existing anti-gay laws, and had to make do with bars owned and operated by straight people for straight people, hoping that they would be willing to tolerate gay patrons. This created a boom-and-bust cycle as gay men spread information via word-of-mouth—printed guidebooks like Bob Damron's Address Book would not exist until 1964— about a new bar that was willing to accept their business, only to become disenchanted and leave or find the bar failing, at which point they would jump ship to a new place. Some bars and clubs had staying power, like the upscale Cadillac Lounge at East 9th and Euclid, with its fine decorations, live music, and beautiful murals. However, the Cadillac had a strict dress code and a “twelve-inch rule” for male patrons that was enforced by its owner, Gloria Lenihan, with all of the fierceness of a prom chaperone at a Catholic school. This rule prevented any male customers from making physical contact, or getting closer than a foot apart from each other, while on the premises. Little Ted’s, by contrast, had no dress code and there seems to have been nothing to prevent two men from shaking hands or getting chummy at the bar. However, these more lax standards carried a special danger. As John Kelsey wrote, “Here things were more informal; almost anyone was let into this large, dark room, and there was no dress code. Yet you had to watch yourself there; sometimes rather shady characters, such as shakedown artists, would turn up in the weekend crowd.” An event just like what Kelsey described did occur on May 26, 1952, where a 48-year-old veteran named Walter Koppitch bonded with a younger patron via stories of their mutual times in the military, and invited him home… only to be robbed. The younger man stole Walter’s wallet, containing $14, and his watch. The thief was later apprehended. Now, whether Walter was a gay man, or if he was just a kindhearted veteran looking to help a fellow out, his experience was not the first nor the last shakedown a Little Ted’s patron received. In the end, however, this is all that ties Little Ted’s to the queer community of Cleveland in the early twentieth century, a handful of lines in an essay, a few crimes and "crimes" between men, and the occasional whisper. The restaurant is gone, abandoned in 1955 when Little Ted’s moved locations, and Ted Miclau died in 1991. With him, died the only man that could give a definitive reason for why he opened his restaurant to the queer community during a time when queer people were forced into hiding. The building that hosted the business was torn down to make room for the expansion of other businesses and even the numbering system has changed. Little Ted’s, like many other pieces of Cleveland’s history, is now dead and buried with the man that built it.

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In late 1933 former bootlegger and globe traveler Ernie Gantt opened the world’s first Tiki bar in Hollywood, California, naming it “Don the Beachcomber.” Gantt decorated the interior with masks, totems, and idols he collected during his Polynesian adventures and served his exotically named, high-strength rum cocktails to an enthusiastic post-prohibition crowd. Soon after opening, the laid-back island vibe and convenient location just off Hollywood Boulevard drew the attention of Hollywood stars looking for an alternative to the stuffy and formal nightclubs of the era, causing the bar’s popularity to skyrocket. Word of the Beachcomber spread, causing countless imitators to open copycat bars. The most notable was Vic Bergeron’s Trader Vic’s in Oakland, California, which invented many Tiki mainstays like the Mai-Tai and Crab Rangoon.

Seven years after Gantt opened the Beachcomber in Hollywood, Sammy Brin introduced Tiki to Cleveland by opening Club Zombie inside the Hawley House Hotel on West 3rd and St. Clair. Featuring tropical-themed decorations with fake palm trees disguising the supporting columns and split-bamboo-covered walls, Club Zombie quickly became Cleveland’s most popular nightclub and laid the groundwork for the Kon-Tiki and other Tiki bars across the city.

Tiki’s popularity rose exponentially following World War II when veterans who returned home from the Pacific spread stories and memories of the tropical shores they enjoyed while on leave. They and those who grew weary of their daily routine looked to Tiki, which allowed them to temporarily escape their daily grind to a distant, imaginary tropical paradise for a drink or two at happy hour or a backyard cookout. Another reason for the rise of Tiki was the excitement regarding the addition of Hawai’i as the 50th state in the union. Tiki culture emerged and evolved into a distinctly American blend of the global sounds of Exotica music, westernized Chinese food, Caribbean rum, and Polynesian-inspired décor that dominated American culture in the mid-20th century.

In 1958 the Sheraton Corporation purchased the four-decade-old Hotel Cleveland on the southwest side of Public Square for $10 million and embarked on a $5 million renovation and modernization project. An essential part of the project was a 3,000-person capacity ballroom atop a large parking garage designed to entice suburbanites to return to the downtown nightlife scene. The second significant aspect of the project was the closure of Hotel Cleveland’s flagship restaurant, the Bronze Room. For over forty years, the formal and stately Bronze Room allowed politicians, executives, and other high-echelon Clevelanders to dine and dance in luxury; however by the late 1950s, consumers began to want more than just a meal when they went to a restaurant. They now wanted an exciting and entertaining experience, and the stiff and formal atmosphere of the Bronze Room offered little to these new discerning patrons. In response to this nationwide shift in consumer demand, Sheraton’s management partnered with former actor Stephen Crane, owner of Hollywood’s standout Tiki restaurant the Luau, and replaced the aged Bronze Room with the third restaurant in a new, national chain of Tiki restaurants named Kon-Tiki. This new chain joined two other major Tiki chains, Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s, and soon every major American city would host at least one Tiki bar.

Sheraton named the Kon-Tiki chain after the primitive balsawood raft that explorer and anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl used to travel over 4,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean in 1947. Heyerdahl’s voyage atop his raft, the Kon-Tiki, was an experiment hoping to prove his radical theory that refugees fleeing South America arrived and populated Polynesia rather than migrants sailing from the Asian mainland. Heyerdahl’s voyage on the primitive raft enraptured the American public, who kept apprised of his progress via long-range radio transmissions. The book and subsequent documentary film he produced about the trip became a massive success, topping Cleveland’s bestseller list in 1950, eventually selling over fifty million copies in more than seventy languages.

On January 23, 1961, the 230-seat Kon-Tiki restaurant opened its doors, welcoming Cleveland to the Tiki heyday. Keeping with the idea of an exciting dining experience, Crane designed the restaurant with the diner’s experience in mind. After passing through the large wooden doors beneath the prow-shaped awning, guests waiting to be seated had their view of the restaurant’s dining room obstructed by panels and rock-lined walls; this allowed their anticipation to build and lent an aura of mystery to the restaurant. When it was time to be seated, guests went to one of six individually themed rooms after crossing a running stream that fed rock-lined ponds from a waterfall and a wooden bridge with intricately carved balusters featuring Tiki idols. Whether they sat at the bar in the Aikane room, the intimate patio room, or the large Māori Long Hut with room for fifty, diners at the Kon-Tiki would experience what, at the time, people considered an authentic Polynesian atmosphere while eating dishes with exotic names such as opiopioi moa, kalua maia, laiki, kihapai, and omaomao prepared by a chef brought in from Hong Kong.

The food menu was undoubtedly important, but the cocktails set the Kon-Tiki apart from competing restaurants. Drinks such as the Tahiti, Luau Grog, Zombie, Jamaica Sangaree, and Guatemala Cooler showcased Tiki’s international influences, while their vague descriptions in the menu ensured patrons would experience the unknown. The drinks served by the Kon-Tiki were a blend of house-made syrups, fresh fruit, and various spirits served in unique mugs, stemware, and hollowed-out pineapples that distinguished them from traditional American cocktails. Adding to the entertaining atmosphere, some were even lit aflame before being presented to the customer.

Tiki resonated in American pop culture mainly because of its sense of escape. However, the late 1960s ushered in the arrival of jet-powered passenger planes that offered an actual escape to a tropical island. Additionally, worldwide decolonization struggles and the increased availability of modern media began to educate the American public that Tiki’s agglomeration of so many distinct cultures masked a more sobering reality. A group of white men developed Tiki culture by taking sacred symbols from peoples across the world, using them as mugs to hold cocktails. They did so while yearning for a wholly manufactured version of a culture that just a few generations earlier had been the target of a campaign of cultural genocide led by missionaries and imperial powers to force “civilization” onto the island inhabitants and now was a target for nuclear tests, military occupations, and hordes of tourists.

The Kon-Tiki closed its doors in early 1976, portending the end of Cleveland’s Tiki era until the resurgence of high-quality crafted cocktails led Stefan Was to open Porco, now Cleveland’s only Tiki bar on West 25th that, like other modern tropical bars, has shifted away from cultural exploitation while retaining the focus on well-crafted fruit-based drinks. Was managed to find the wooden exterior doors and other decorations from the Cleveland Kon-Tiki and incorporated them into Porco’s interior design. As fate would have it, patrons who are looking for a well-crafted tropical drink pass through the very same doors that welcomed 2,000 curious Clevelanders to the Sheraton-Cleveland Kon-Tiki more than sixty years ago.

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While Chinese people have been immigrating to the United States as far back as the 1848 California Gold Rush, they only moved to Cleveland in the late 1800s, numbering fewer than 100 until 1900. These settlements in Cleveland were spurred on by discrimination and acts of racial violence in the western United States. The most disturbing of these incidents was the 1871 Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre, which resulted in the lynching of 19 Chinese residents. Cleveland’s Chinatown became the theater for a wide array of historical events such as the 1911 visit by Dr. Sun Yat-sen and the Tong Wars. While the racial violence and discrimination did not cease upon entering Cleveland, the Chinese managed to build a strong community based on a love of Chinese culture, community aid, and a willingness to struggle for their democratic rights.

Chinese immigration to the United States sprang from a wide variety of factors that exposed the conditions of China itself. Corruption and opium consumption led to the disaster that was the First Opium War in 1840, which provided the foundation for the colonization of much of China. Additionally, a lack of economic opportunities in China led Chinese people to emigrate in search of gold, jobs, and education. Chinese immigrants worked in the gold mines of California and moved on to the Transcontinental Railroad. They moved east as racial discrimination grew, finding work as laundrymen and restaurant workers in cities across the United States. To protect their businesses, the Chinese formed merchant associations known as tongs, which functioned as both guilds and gangs. The feuds between tongs frequently got out of hand, leading to attacks from racist neighbors and police. Fearing the “Yellow Peril” associated with Chinese immigrants, the U.S. government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, restricting immigration until World War II. Around the same time, a small population settled in Cleveland, creating what would become one of the nation's most notable Chinatowns.

Cleveland’s Chinese community started as a tiny enclave along Seneca Street (later West 3rd) but shifted two blocks east by the early 20th century to the block of Ontario Street immediately north of Public Square. Much like other Chinatowns across the United States, most Chinese businesses in Cleveland were restaurants or laundries. After moving to Cleveland from Chicago, Wong Kee opened the first Chinese restaurant in the city on Ontario Street and then opened a more prominent one called the Golden Dragon on the northwest side of Public Square. Businessmen formed tongs to protect their interests. Over the decades, the two main tongs that emerged were known as the Hip Sing Tong and the On Leong Tong.

While the Chinese faced a great deal of racism from surrounding communities, one notable exception was the congregation at Old Stone Church which was located on Public Square at the southern edge of the small Chinese settlement. Seeking to win converts and aid the local Chinese, the congregation sent missionaries, provided Chinese-language church services, and protected Chinese immigrants from racist policemen. Two notable members of the congregation, Mary and Marian Trapp, founded a Chinese Sunday School, and their efforts were rewarded with an embroidered depiction of Jesus Christ made by the students. With these successful efforts, the church would serve as both a school and community center. The founding of businesses and support from Old Stone Church established the Chinese as crucial contributors to the local economy and gave them local support.

With the establishment of a stable Chinese community came the concern for issues in China itself. Centuries of dissent against Manchu Qing authority in China crystalized into the Chinese Revolutionary Movement, which succeeded in 1911 after nearly two decades of trial and error. One leading figure of the movement was the exiled revolutionary and future president of the Republic of China Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who frequently visited communities in the Chinese Diaspora to raise funds for the revolution. Sun notably visited Cleveland in April 1911, raising money at Old Stone Church, and having his likeness depicted in the Cleveland Press. Months later, the Chinese Revolutionary Movement culminated in the Xinhai Revolution, ending Manchu rule and continuing the tradition of Cleveland’s Chinatown being involved in Chinese affairs.

The tongs of Cleveland had many feuds during their existence, but it was only in 1925 when what became known as the Tong Wars that they gained attention from the police. Wong Bao led the Hip Sing Tong while the brothers Wong Kee and Wong Xing swapped the responsibility of leading the On Leong Tong. The brothers’ leadership of the tong was also tied to the Golden Dragon restaurant, which they jointly managed for many years. This relationship to the tongs and the Golden Dragon restaurant also likely existed for Bennie Shea Lin, who was related to the Wong brothers and wrote a brief article on the Golden Dragon in 1964. Soon, the police arrested local Chinese residents in many raids, including many who were not in the tongs as well. Many Cleveland residents disputed these arrests, standing in solidarity with the Chinese community. One notable example was Reverend William Foulkes of Old Stone Church, who defended his Chinese neighbors over WHK radio. The raids and arrests ceased, but racial violence remained.

As the Tong Wars raged on, Chinatown moved to Rockwell Avenue. The On Leong tong had already purchased land along Rockwell Avenue and the purchase was apparently one of the causes of the Tong Wars. As the businesses on Ontario Street were torn down after the Tong Wars, many Chinese put their resources towards the new On Leong tong Headquarters on Rockwell. They donated ebony tables, chairs, drums, gongs, and other artifacts to the building. Various Chinese businesses soon moved to Rockwell and the area became the center for the Chinese community as the Great Depression began.

While the Chinese had found difficulty in settling in the United States, their love of Chinese culture and community aid gave them a sense of mission and made Cleveland’s Chinatown regionally and even nationally prominent. As in other cities, they created a strong business community that was organized via tongs. Their education at Old Stone Church attracted the attention of figures such as Sun Yat-sen. Their efforts to protect their democratic rights during the Tong Wars and support for the United States and China during World War II played a vital part in undoing the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. Cleveland celebrated by naturalizing one Zhu Yun On under the name Bennie Shea Lin, the first Chinese American to be naturalized since 1882. The Chinese faced many difficulties during their early years such as tong feuds, racial violence, and the police, but they overcame such challenges through strong community aid and a willingness to fight for their rights.

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In 1989 the Silver Grille restaurant at the Higbee Company’s downtown department store closed its doors. The 10th-floor space later became a special-event center managed by the nearby Ritz-Carlton hotel. This was a noteworthy transition because, in a very real sense, dining at the Silver Grille had always been a special event.

One contributor to the eatery’s special-event status was its décor: an immersive Art Deco experience. Short for Arts Décoratifs, Art Deco was the height of fashion when Higbee’s opened in 1931. And a meal at the Silver Grille was a celebration of everything Art Deco stood for: luxury, glamour, hope and the power of progress. Entering the restaurant, guests were met by a red marble fountain stocked with goldfish. Ornate grillwork complemented the green-colored walls, bronze light fixtures and floor-to-ceiling columns bathed in purple light. Uber-modern aluminum tables with black marble tops dotted the room. Even the name of the restaurant’s manager sounded innovative: Mrs. Kenneth McKay (yes, Kenneth was her first name) previously taught restaurant management at Columbia University. The space was conceived by Rorimer-Brooks Studios in collaboration with Philip Lindsley Small, who designed Shaker Square and nearby Moreland Courts. Small also architected numerous structures for John Carroll and Case Western Reserve Universities, as well as opulent homes in Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights.

“Patrons of a certain age” may recall that the food also was an event. Many might wax nostalgic about the creamed chicken and chicken pie: famous, according to architectural historian Richard E. Karberg, for its sheer “WASPishness.” More could cite the innovative Puerto Rican salad with mangoes, avocados and dates. But invariably topping the nostalgia list was the Grille’s welsh rarebit: melted cheese over toast, garnished with almonds. At one time or another, every child has insisted that this 18th-century British delight is actually called “Welsh Rabbit.” And believe it or not, they’d be right: The Columbia Guide to Standard American English states that “rarebit” is a variant of “rabbit” — believed to be an insult to the Welsh, whom the English claimed ate the cheese dish “instead of the rabbit meat they lacked.”

And speaking of children, every Silver Grille hamburger, hot dog or french fry arrived ceremoniously in its own little stove, truck, teepee or space capsule—originally tin and later cardboard. At Christmastime, youngsters might order a Christmas tree adorned with tiny sandwiches, followed by ice cream shaped like a snowman or molded into a wreath with lighted candles.

The Silver Grille also was part of a larger experience—an all-day, all-Higbee event that frequently included live music and fashion shows in the restaurant. Female patrons, often with children in tow, would arrive early via the Shaker, Van Aken or Windermere (now the Green, Blue, and Red) rapid transit lines. The Silver Grille served breakfast as well as lunch, so folks could dine-and-shop-and-dine-and-shop. So in addition to feasting, a full day might include getting a manicure (6th floor), trying on dresses (2nd floor), picking up pet supplies and even pets (4th floor), purchasing live plants and books (5th floor), sitting for a photo shoot (7th floor), perusing furniture (7th floor), and tempting kids with Higbee’s massive toy collection (4th floor). The latter, of course, is where Mrs. Parker bought the Red Ryder BB gun that would surely shoot Ralphie’s eye out.

Despite an ownership change in the late 1930s, Higbee’s and the Silver Grille survived the Depression. Both thrived well into the 1960s. After all, this was the heyday of the “soup-to-nuts urban department store”—Higbee’s shared the lower Euclid Avenue area with Bailey’s, Halle’s, May Company, Sterling-Lindner-Davis and Taylor’s department stores.

By mid-century, Art Deco was falling out of favor so management softened the Silver Grille’s look by installing banquettes (booths), painting over the grillwork and installing a gazebo over the fountain. By 1962 the restaurant’s color scheme was pink, green and red (ouch). Some Art Deco elements were restored in 1982.

Beginning in the late 1960s, however, downtown slowly ceased to be Cleveland’s preeminent shopping destination. Suburban shopping malls—replete with Bailey’s, Halle’s, Higbee’s and May Company stores—sprang up from Eastgate to Southgate to Westgate. More and more Cleveland residents relocated to the burbs, and a car ride to the mall largely usurped a train or bus trip to downtown. Nonetheless, the Silver Grille remained in business until late 1989 when the Higbee’s Public Square store downsized. Today, Higbee’s is folded invisibly into Dillard’s (albeit without a downtown store) and the Silver Grille is merely a memory adorned with melted cheese and eye-piercing BB guns.

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In the mid 1970s, local rockers could see (mostly local) bands playing out in a downtown club called The Round Table. Fans may have noticed that this was no ordinary bar. With its high ceilings, heavy furniture, classy fixtures, stained glass windows, and ornate murals portraying beer consumption through history, the Round Table looked like a decaying millionaires’ club. Virtually everything was made of dark, finely carved quartered oak. Ornate carvings. Bas reliefs. Gilded figures. Fancy paneling. Dominating the scene were an immense oaken bar and an impressively engineered curved staircase, remnants of the building's past life as a luxe dining destination.

Weber’s Restaurant (est. 1904), successor to The Casino restaurant (1894-1904), was a sumptuous food palace inconspicuously hidden behind 43 feet of frontage at 242 Superior Avenue just east of Public Square. During the heyday of The Casino, the building was directly across from old City Hall (present site of Howard M. Metzenbaum U.S. Courthouse). For almost 70 years Weber’s and its predecessor were a see-and-be-seen destination for politicians, lawyers, celebrities, newspapermen, and big spenders. Its heavy meals like roast goose, lobster, sauerbraten, and chicken pie led Cleveland Press reporter Julian Krawcheck to quip, "Wives who knew their husbands had lunched at Weber's scrimped on the evening meal at home." 

The three-story building that housed The Casino and later Weber’s was built in the early 1890s by wealthy German immigrant and brewmaster Leonard Schlather. At the time, Schlather was already in his sixties, having achieved immense success with his L. Schlather Brewing Co. — once Cleveland’s largest brewery. Architects Israel Lehman and Theodore Schmitt (who also designed the Cuyahoga County Courthouse on Lakeside Avenue) blended Flemish and Victorian styles in the new restaurant’s design. Arriving through separate entryways, male and female patrons were met by a giant dining room with tables for almost 200 patrons. To one side was an oyster counter; on the other a massive oak bar. Adjacent to the bar was that amazing staircase, which Cleveland Press writer Winsor French once described as “drifting to the second floor in one graceful curve . . . it alone is worth going to the place.” A wood carving of the Schlather family crest was built into the staircase adjacent to the bar. At the top of the stairs were private dining rooms and a giant banquet hall with large windows overlooking what was then called Superior Street. The establishment’s third floor comprised rented living quarters for bachelors. This later became a meeting area for the nascent City Club and an early home to the John Marshall School of Law.

The Casino’s run ended in 1904 when John A. Weber bought the building and changed the eatery’s name to Weber’s Restaurant. Weber's was the original meeting place of the City Club for four years in the 1910s. In 1927 Ivan Kaveney bought the establishment from Weber and his son Walter, but Kaveney kept the Weber’s name. Kaveney operated the restaurant until he died in 1959 and the restaurant was shuttered. Over the last decade, the place’s cachet had waned: more run-of-the mill food served by “morose men using the ‘thumb in the soup bowl’ technique” (the latter recollection drawn from a somewhat hyperbolic article by the Plain Dealer’s George Condon). The restaurant remained closed until 1963 when Broadview Savings and Loan bought and re-opened it as the Round Table. Ironically, the building became a formally designated local landmark in 1977—just before the Round Table was shuttered. No buyers could be found and the structure was demolished the next year. Fortunately, Broadview promised the Cleveland Landmarks Commission that the interior woodwork would be kept intact. Thus the staircase was reinstalled at a Westlake restaurant called The Atrium, which has since closed. The massive bar found a new home at Gamekeeper's Tavern (now the Bull & Bird Steakhouse) in Chagrin Falls. Original glasswork was installed in several area restaurants.

Today, the Superior Avenue site is occupied solely by the 200 Public Square Building (built in 1985 by the Standard Oil Company) and an adjoining parking garage on the building’s eastern edge next to the Arcade. To create the new structure, the Cuyahoga and Williamson buildings along Public Square also were demolished.

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Most Clevelanders associate Stouffer’s with frozen food and (for those with long memories) restaurant icons like Top of the Town and Stouffer’s on Shaker Square. But these are just part of a story with more parts, more players, more breadth and more history than most of us know.

The Stouffer tale starts at the old Sheriff Street Market on land adjoining what is now Rocket Arena. In 1898, seven years after the Market came into being, James B. Stouffer and his son Abraham E. Stouffer opened a Sheriff Street stand called the Cottage Creamery Co. In 1905 they incorporated as the Medina County Creamery Company. James Stouffer died in 1908 and in 1916 the family and the business moved from Medina to Lakewood. By this time Cottage Creamery Co. was Northeast Ohio’s largest manufacturer and wholesaler of dairy products, and it grew exponentially in 1920 when the company merged with Fairmont Creamery Co. of Omaha, Nebraska.

Two years later Stouffer and his wife Lena took over a milk stand owned by the creamery and turned it into Stouffer Lunch, a buttermilk and sandwich store on the lower level of the Cleveland Arcade. Lena’s Dutch apple pie is often credited for the restaurant’s near-instant success. By the close of the 1920s the company (whose leadership now included Abraham’s sons Vernon and Gordon) had become the publicly owned Stouffer Corp., with restaurants in Cleveland's Citizen's Building (840 Euclid Avenue) as well as in Detroit and Pittsburgh. A Philadelphia location opened in 1931 and in 1936 a Playhouse Square and two New York establishments made their debut. Abraham Stouffer passed away the same year.

For the next two decades the Stouffers kept manically busy, diversifying as well as opening and managing more foodservice establishments. In 1946 the company launched its still-renowned frozen food business. This burgeoned into a nationwide operation selling partially cooked take-home meals created largely at a frozen foods plant that the company built on Woodland Avenue in 1953. So successful was the prepared foods operation that a retail business known as the 227 Club was launched, with stores often situated next to Stouffer’s restaurants, including the one at Cleveland’s Shaker Square. Additional manufacturing operations opened in Gaffney, South Carolina, and Springville, Utah. In 1966 Stouffer’s christened a new manufactory in Solon and the Woodland Avenue facility closed.

By this time, Stouffer’s also was in the hotel business, having purchased the Anacapri Inn of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1960. Other hotel purchases followed, including the 1977 opening of Cleveland’s own Stouffer’s Inn on the Square (formerly the Hotel Cleveland and Sheraton-Cleveland Hotel and now the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel). In 1962 Stouffer’s reached Anaheim, California, with three restaurants in Disneyland. Stouffer Corp. was purchased by Litton Industries in 1967 and six years later Litton sold Stouffer’s to Nestlé. For a time (1966-1972), Vernon Stouffer (1901-1974) owned the Cleveland Indians—hardly a great business proposition during the Tribe’s “Sad 60s.” By 1990 the Stouffer’s name was attached to 68 restaurants and 40 resorts and hotels. However, plans already were underway to tighten the company’s focus and, by 1996, Stouffer’s had completely exited the hotel business (sold to the New World Development Co., owner of the Renaissance/Ramada chains for ~ $1.5 billion). Stouffer’s also walked away from foodservice, although a few establishments live on as Select Restaurants. The company now was free to concentrate solely on food products manufactured and sold through Nestlé, which it still does to this day.

Mid-Century was a golden era for Stouffer restaurants in Cleveland. Complementing its flagship Playhouse Square restaurant, the company’s first suburban restaurant opened on toney Shaker Square in 1946. Festooned with chandeliers and busied by black & white-clad waitresses known as “Stouffer Girls” (possibly a nod to the celebrated Harvey Girls) the space, previously The Shaker Tavern, exuded charm and sophistication. Stouffer restaurants rarely were lauded for five-star food but Shaker Square eatery still became so popular that people began asking staff to freeze menu items to take home. Thus arose Cleveland’s 227 Club, immediately west of the restaurant and a companion pub called The Tack Room.

Stouffer’s at Shaker Square remained popular through the 1970s. In 1981, however, the restaurant and adjoining Tack Room were repurposed and rebranded as New Orleans-themed Vernon’s at Shaker Square and a Pacific Rim restaurant called Pier East (the east-side counterpart to Stouffer’s Pier W. on Lake Road. which had opened in 1965). For a time Pier East was a venue for regular jazz performances and broadcasts staged in collaboration with public radio station WCPN. Both restaurants survived until the early 1990s when Stouffer’s began its staged departure from the restaurant business. The site is now a CVS.

By the mid-1950s Stouffer’s reached the sky with a vertigo-inducing collection of “Top of” restaurants. Each of these 16 swanky establishments capped a skyscraper: Top of the Rock in Chicago’s Prudential Building, Top of the Flame in Detroit’s Michigan Consolidated Gas Building, Top of the Hub in Boston’s Prudential Center, Top of the Mart in the Atlanta Merchandise Mart, and so forth. The most famous of the “Tops” was Top of the Sixes at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York, which claimed to have served 10 million meals between its opening in 1957 and 1973. In “The Wolf of Wall Street,” infamous stockbroker Jordan Belfort refers to it as a place “where Masters of the Universe could get blitzed on martinis and exchange war stories.” Top of the Sixes closed in 1996 and became the Grand Havana Room, a cigar lounge populated by heavy wood, copious leather, ostentatious humidors and financial moguls. Located on the site of the former William K. Vanderbilt House, an 1882 chateau, 666 has for decades confronted beastly debt-management problems involving the Kushner and Trump families.

But in Cleveland the top story was Top of the Town, which opened in 1964 on the 38th floor of the recently completed Erieview Tower. Like the other “Tops” the view from its multiple dining rooms was amazing, the food decent and the atmosphere convivial. Glass and silverware clinked. Stouffer Girls and tuxedoed waiters hovered. A series of “mirror murals” depicting iconic Cleveland structures graced the walls. Musicians played to the dine-in crowd and to all of Northeast Ohio via WJW radio.

For a time, Top of the Town occupied an odd niche in Cleveland’s downtown dining scene. The Theatrical had more panache. Swingos Keg & Quarter had better food and more star power. Higbee’s Silver Grille was glitzier and, like its neighbor Kon Tiki, was closer to the heart of downtown. But Top of the Town—despite its lonely presence in a sea of parking lots and snails-pace urban-renewal projects—had the views! For decades magnificent lake and city vistas kept people coming.

By the 1990s, however, Top of the Town was losing its edge. Downtown dining—except for the Flats—was less popular and the restaurant and its food were getting a bit rough around the edges. Top of Town, like all Stouffer’s foodservice operations, was getting tired. In January 1995 Top of the Town closed and within a year the company was out of the foodservice business. For three quarters of a century, Stouffer’s had been a go-to priority in Northeast Ohio. At one time or another, in addition to its Erieview and Shaker Square eateries, the company purchased, operated and eventually closed John Q’s, the Roxy Bar & Grill and The Rusty Scupper in Cleveland; Pier W and a Stouffer’s restaurant at Westgate; and The Cheese Cellar and James Tavern in Woodmere. Most of these—on a clear day—could be seen from Top of the Town.

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On September 15, 1921, Martin Daly used a silver spade to break ground near East 107th Street signifying the start of construction on Wade Park Manor, a high-end residential hotel. The announcement of plans for the hotel were made a year earlier by Daly, George Schneider, and Edwin Henn. Projected to cost $4,000,000 and contain 150 suites and 500 rooms, the hotel, its promoters predicted, would be “the last word in family hotel construction, equipment and service.”  

Residential hotels were built to serve the same purpose as a home or apartment but with the addition of different amenities and a community. Unlike transient hotels they were meant for semi-permanent or permanent stays. The first floor had public spaces and included a dining area for residents and visitors. Residential hotels were occupied by singles, widows and widowers, or young couples more so than families due to room sizing. Wade Park Manor followed this same pattern, catering to the middle and upper classes.

Headed by Daly, Henn, and Schneider, the Wade Park Manor Company commissioned George B. Post & Sons to design the hotel and John Gill & Sons as building contractors. Post & Sons was a well-known architecture firm that had designed The New York Stock Exchange, College of the City of New York, and the Cleveland Trust Company. They had their hand in the creation of other Cleveland hotels including Hotel Statler and Fenway Hall. The lead architect, Sydney Wagner, designed the building in the Georgian Revival style. The exterior was built of red brick in a U-shape that helped maximize lighting through the building. The lobby, made of stone and marble, was in the small vestibule that projected from the curve of the U at the center of the building. Attached at the back of the hotel was a three-story garage. Wade Park Manor boasted a variety of public spaces including a ballroom, dining room, library lounge, sun parlor, porches, and an enclosed heated sunroom on the roof. 

The interior was as well thought out as the exterior with the winning contract for furnishing going to Albert Pick and Company at over $500,000. Albert Pick and Company, once the third-largest hotel chain in the United States, had since become a hotel equipment supplier. The furnishings for Wade Park Manor were designed in the English style best exemplified by the grand fireplace and paneled walls found in the first-floor library lounge. Some of the rooms were outfitted with small kitchenettes including a sink, storage space, an outlet for appliances, and an electrical cabinet. Residential hotels provided dining services so it was expected that most residents would eat food made by hotel staff, but Schneider recommended small kitchens for cases when the hotel food was insufficient.  

Wade Park Manor opened on January 4, 1923, welcoming residents and visitors alike. Not only was it home to many Clevelanders, but the first floor acted as a social gathering place accessible to the public. Wade Park Manor soon became the exclusive, luxury place to be. There were conventions, weddings, small group meetings, and women’s events hosted at the Manor over the years. The hotel hosted some well-known guests including former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, Walt Disney, and Jack Benny. With its proximity to Severance Hall, Wade Park Manor also often housed several Cleveland Orchestra musicians. Outside famous individuals and large events, many people from the surrounding area also came and enjoyed dining at Wade Park Manor. The Lincoln Room, which opened at Wade Park Manor in 1942, was marketed as “the ultimate in dining facilities” and often the go-to spot for wedding anniversaries and celebrations. Others recount visiting Wade Park Manor for Sunday breakfast.

Although seen as the go-to place, there were multiple controversies around racial discrimination when it came to events being held at Wade Park Manor in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1947 there were claims that the management at Wade Park Manor had asked the Jewish Children's Bureau not to hold events there after discovering that there were black teachers in attendance. A second incident occurred in 1951 when the Delta Sigma Theta sorority was asked to cancel a dance at Wade Park Manor; the Manor had belatedly discovered Delta Sigma Theta were a group of African American women. In 1952, facing years of public backlash, management finally changed course, approving an application for the Boule Affair, a black men’s fraternity meeting. Cleveland Call and Post was prompted to publish an article with the headline "Wade Pk. Manor Quits Jim-Crow for Boule Meet."

Wade Park Manor remained a residential hotel for the upper and upper-middle classes until June 1964 when it was purchased by the Christian Residence Foundation. After purchasing the Manor, the Christian Residence Foundation renovated and transformed the hotel into a “full-service apartment house for single and married retired persons.”  Wade Park Manor, having lost its residential hotel status, lost its name in 1984 when Judson took ownership in 1983 from the Christian Residence Foundation. Newly named Judson Manor, the building underwent $7.3 million in renovations that were completed in 1985.

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Some classic restaurants bank on culinary excellence. Others feature great ambiance or perhaps famous clientele: celebrities, gangsters, politicians and so forth. However, the claim to fame for Kiefer’s – the venerable German eatery – might be the strangest: the longest-closed hostelry that still has a sign out in front.

This is not to say that Kiefer’s didn’t have great food and good karma. Quite the contrary; Kiefer recipes for signature dishes like wiener schnitzel are still floating around the Internet. But since the restaurant closed in 1991, virtually everything around West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue has changed. Art galleries. New residences. Revamped buildings. A huge park planned for nearby Irishtown Bend. In fact, the only vestiges of an earlier time are the St. Malachi complex and the lonely Kiefer’s sign at 2519 Detroit Ave. The giant Seymour building in which Kiefer’s was located dates to the early 20th Century, and it too is getting a major facelift – a conversion to affordable housing.

The story of Kiefer’s begins in Paradise – the name of the restaurant that previously occupied the space. Kiefer’s, on the other hand, began as a beer and bratwurst stand launched by William and Anna Kiefer at the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936. When the event closed in late 1936, the Kiefers bought out Paradise and renamed it Swartzwald (“Black Forest” in German). It was a good time for German and central European cuisine and the establishment thrived. Expansions swallowed an adjoining carpet store, furniture store and barber shop and by the 1940s the eatery’s seating capacity topped 400. William baked and prepped. Anna handled the cooking and bookkeeping. Otto Thurn and his oompah band entertained patrons and conducted singalongs. Heavy wood paneling, Teutonic murals and copious beer immersed patrons in the Black Forest. President Jimmy Carter once held a nationally televised meeting there.

The restaurant's early years coincided with the rise of the Bund. Seeking to promote favorable views of Nazi Germany, the Bund was populated primarily by American citizens of German descent. In 1939 and 1940 the Schwartzwald was a hotbed of Bund activity. Soon, however, Schwarzwald (like most German terms) became an undesirable moniker, so the couple renamed their establishment “Kiefer’s.”

In 1960 the Kiefers sold out to a syndicate headed by Jack and Joseph Klingbeil but the menu changed little: everything from paprikash to pig’s knuckles. A second consortium headed by County Treasurer Francis E. Gaul bought Kiefer's in 1976, seasoning it with a slight Irish flavor. The rediscovery and renovation of Ohio City was just beginning at this time. That was fine for Kiefer’s but it also was a harbinger of increased competition. Nonetheless, when Gaul shuttered the restaurant in 1991, he blamed a recession and the 18-month renovation of the Main Avenue Bridge.

Signs of change are everywhere along lower Detroit Avenue. That’s a great thing for the most part. But when the Seymour Building overhaul is complete, the one remaining “sign of other times” will probably disappear.

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On the one hand, it was a bucolic, glass-walled, red-meat Mecca with unobstructed water and city views. On the other hand, both the Cuyahoga River and the city of Cleveland were increasingly dark, smelly and bereft of life. Moreover, travel to and from the restaurant was the kind of creepy, nail-biting experience that only a golem could love: a dim and bumpy ride to an isolated peninsula in the Flats.

Such were the contradictions that, by the middle of the 20th century, defined Jim’s Steak House. But through most of the restaurant’s life, negatives and setbacks hardly seemed to matter. In fact, in the eight years after its founding in 1930—when Cleveland and the Flats were still bustling—Jim’s Steak House served 280,000 steaks. Untold thousands of quality meals would follow until the eatery finally shut down in 1997.

“Jim” was James Kerkles, a Greek immigrant who arrived in the US in 1905. In 1930 he and his wife Hilda opened their restaurant on West 9th Street. They relocated to the Flats’ famous Collision Bend within a year, occupying a building that previously housed the Lumberman’s Club restaurant. (Ironically, the Lumberman’s Club had just moved downtown.) Jim and Hilda’s timing was ideal: The Eagle Street Bridge had just opened across the street and visitors would be able to view the newly completed Terminal Tower across the river. But like the two arteries leading to Jim’s (Scranton and Carter Roads) there were plenty of potholes ahead. On June 15, 1939, Kerkles died at the age of 53. From that point on, Jim’s Steak House would, in effect, be Hilda’s Steak House. The following year, the decision was made to make Collision Bend more navigable, which necessitated the restaurant’s demolition.

The new Jim’s opened within two years, only a few dozen feet southwest of the previous location. Accordingly, its address jumped from 1782 Scranton to 1800 Scranton. Such progress! Hilda later remarried and by the end of World War II she and her nephew Ray Rockey were the meat and potatoes of Jim’s Steak House. Hilda managed the money—keeping the restaurant in the black while hiring only white women as waitresses and clothing them in all-white uniforms. Ray handled most of the day-to-day operations, working constantly and living in an apartment above the restaurant. "It's like taking care of a baby that never grows up," Rockey once said.

The formula worked: Blue collars from the Flats, white collars from downtown and wet collars from the river and nearby fire station filled Jim’s during the day. At night couples, partiers and glitterati swilled Johnny Walker Black ($0.75 in 1950) and devoured strip steaks ($4.50 in 1950). The Goodtime ferried diners to and from Cleveland Indians games. Heavy food was de rigueur: red meat, no soup, no salad (except head lettuce) and no vegetables except onions (which were fried). 300 to 400 people was a decent day’s attendance.

In the 1960s the building was remodeled, with giant glass windows offering diners a more panoramic view of the city. Weeping willows and birch trees (planted over the years by Hilda) added to the ambience.

Hilda died in 1974 at age 75 and Ray Rockey assumed full control of what was still a thriving operation. But like graffiti emblazoned across the Flats, the writing was on the wall, and a lot of it spelled “competition.” By the late 1970s myriad entertainment options had popped up on both the East and West Banks. The Flats had always had niche bars and eateries (Pirates Alley, Otto’s Grotto, Harbor Inn, Flat Iron Café), but this was different: The area actually was becoming a destination of choice—not just for pubby drinking and dining joints like Fagan’s and the Cleveland Crate and Trucking Company but for high-end eateries such as the Watermark and Sammy’s.

The worst body blow landed in 1991 when the city closed the Eagle Avenue lift bridge for a two-year renovation. In a lawsuit, Ray Rockey claimed that, as a result, Jim’s lost 65 percent of its business. Rockey died in 1995 at the age of 71, three years before the Ohio State Supreme Court awarded the restaurant $483,000 in compensation. By that time the bridge had reopened (1993) but Jim’s had shut down (1997). The bridge closed for good in 2005. New occupants of the restaurant space—the River House, the Aqua club, the Mega Nightclub—soldiered on until 2011 when the building was demolished.

Readers responded en masse to a May 2020 Cleveland.com article on Jim’s Steak House. Virtually everyone heaped praise on the restaurant. However, the most vivid account may have come from Bruce Tyler in Cleveland Heights who recalled, “As restless 9-year-olds, [we] ran out back on the lawn toward the river before the food arrived. We watched in awe as an enormous ore boat negotiated the tight river bend. The water was an unhealthy shade of brown, with some iridescence on the surface, and rising bubbles would stretch a bit before they popped, as if trapped in goo. I thought about this sight last year when we kayaked on the river around the same location and saw blue water, not brown, and saw herons in the shallows. Thank you environmentalists everywhere.”

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Two things about iconic hostelries. First, many had larger-than-life owners (consider Mushy Wexler’s Theatrical or Herman Pirchner’s Alpine Village). Second, their repute often was magnified by the renown of their customers (politicians, rock stars, actors, gangsters, etc.). Jim Swingos Keg & Quarter fits both bills. From 1968 to 1984, this eatery and adjoining hotel were the raucous hub of an otherwise moribund downtown.

Jim Swingos (1941-2015) was born into a Greek immigrant family. After graduating from Benedictine High School (the first non-Catholic ever to do so) he matriculated to Ohio State University as a Criminology major. Swingos ultimately found this too depressing a career path and joined his father in the bar business. Numerous restaurant-management positions followed until, in 1968, he purchased the faltering Downtowner Restaurant at East 18th Street and Euclid Avenue. The price was a pittance: 16 months in back rent.

Thus the Downtowner Restaurant became Swingos Keg & Quarter, serving garlic-drenched food to businessmen staying at the adjoining Downtowner Hotel. In 1971 Swingos bought the hotel—a dicey move given that Cleveland was hardly the world’s destination of choice. "Cleveland's hotel business was dead,” Swingos once recalled. “And I was trying to support a hotel with a restaurant. Then I got a call from a promoter wanting to make a booking for Elvis."

Suddenly no-one was singing Are You Lonely Tonight? at the Heartbreak Hotel. Elvis’ advance men blew in, liked what they saw and booked four floors. Moreover, Elvis wanted to use the hotel as the base of operations for a Midwest tour. Swingos quickly renamed the place Swingos’ Celebrity Inn and from then on, it was Shake, Rattle and Roll. “We were booked by every big name, little name and everyone in between. The one exception was business travelers: You get someone like Led Zeppelin in town for a concert. They stay with us. They get done with the concert and they want to party and make noise. Below them may be a businessman who needs his sleep for a big meeting the next day. We lost the businessmen in the commotion."

Swingos’ restaurant and hotel thrived without the suits, catering to a near-continuous parade of actors, musicians, athletes and the almost famous. In fact, the place was featured in Cameron Crowe’s 2000 movie "Almost Famous," which told the story of an uber-groupie whose real-life counterpart once plied Swingos’ halls and rooms. More publicity came courtesy of the Rolling Stones, who wore their "Swingos: Have you slept there lately?" T-shirts for a spread in Rolling Stone magazine.

Naturally, the rockers were a handful. Ian Hunter, leader of the British group Mott the Hoople, noted that Swingos was "a place you remember checking in and out of, but you can't remember anything in between.” The Who’s Keith Moon once walked up to female patron in the K&Q bar, slapped a pair of handcuffs on her and casually walked away. Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore engaged in a late-night screaming match with Yul Brenner. Members of Kiss flaunted 10-inch heels and 10-foot tongues. Led Zeppelin, the four horsemen of havoc, were among Swingos’ favorite guests. "I loved Led Zeppelin, because they always traveled with their accountant," Swingos remembered. "Whatever damage they did to their rooms, the accountant always took out his checkbook and paid for everything down to the penny. I didn't mind because I always got new stuff for whatever rooms they stayed in after they left."

But the game changer was Elvis: “Always our biggest draw,” according to Swingos. “[The first time Elvis came] he ordered a chopped steak and a Boston strip steak. They had to be cooked well-done. He requested that I bring the meal up and that I cut the strip into tiny pieces for him. Then he inspected the cut-up steak and asked me to put it back together like a jigsaw puzzle before he would touch it.”

Which is not to say that non-rockers didn’t add to the commotion. Sports stars and carousers like Muhammad Ali, Wilt Chamberlain and Billy Martin were frequent patrons. Basketball legend Dave Cowens once accosted a bartender. Jerry Lewis would make bizarre noises into the PA system and regularly change the locks on the door of his room. “He drilled them out himself,” recalled Swingos. Frank Sinatra—consistently generous and courteous (but also demanding)—became Swingos’ close friend. Down at the bar, a cacophony of locals mingled with celebrities. “The FBI would be in one corner; Hells Angels in another; mob guys at the bar; and George Forbes and the Stokes brothers at a table.”

Through it all, the Keg & Quarter restaurant managed to maintain not only dignity but quality. Its food received consistently high ratings from critics and customers. Male waiters—exceptionally well-trained and always dressed in tuxedos—buzzed around, consistently adhering to Swingos’ mantra that customers are always right, even when they aren’t.

Swingos expanded his foodservice empire. He opened two additional restaurants at Nick Mileti’s Coliseum (where he was listed on the Cavaliers roster as “team dietician”). He also took over Marie Shriver's at the Statler Hotel, renaming it Swingos at the Statler. And when he cashed out at 18th and Euclid in 1984, he opened the moderately successful Swingos on the Lake in the Carlyle Apartment (now condo) complex on Lakewood’s Gold Coast.

But none of Swingos’ other endeavors matched the success or notoriety he achieved at East 18th and Euclid. For more than 15 years, Swingos was the shining center of a comatose universe. "In the 1970s,” explained former WMMS program director John Gorman, “downtown was dead. There was no reason to come. That is, until Jim Swingos gave them a reason."

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The famous (and infamous) Theatrical Grill was a mainstay on the equally famous (and infamous) “Short Vincent” Avenue off East 9th Street in downtown Cleveland. In fact, the histories of the restaurant and the street are largely comingled, particularly in the middle decades of the 20th Century. When former truck driver Morris “Mushy” Wexler and his brother-in-law Micky Miller purchased the 70-year-old former brewery in 1938, Vincent Avenue already was wall-to-wall cacophony. In addition to Micky’s Bar and Grill (the Theatrical’s original name) food could be had at Frolics, Kornman’s, Leo’s, Stouffer’s and the Tastee Barbeque. Wants of a baser nature were satisfied at the Roxy Theater/Burlesque and Jean’s Funny House, which also was known as Jean's Fun House, Jean's Novelty Shop and Jean's Novelty and Magic Shop. Cobblers, barber shops and dry cleaners kept Vincent Avenue denizens looking natty. Up and down the one-block street, gamblers, sports figures and racketeers mingled with celebrities, lawyers, newspapermen and tourists. The south side was seedier; the north side had a somewhat more reputable image. The road in between was affectionally known as the “Gaza Strip.” But north side or south side, Short Vincent was an A-list destination for many of the 900,000 people who lived in Cleveland before the war, as well as those from nearby suburbs like Cleveland Heights and Lakewood. And the Theatrical was Short Vincent’s crown jewel.

A sense of living and playing on the margins enhanced that allure. Even reputable businesses on Short Vincent were regularly patronized by underworld figures, mob bosses and gamblers. Alex "Shondor" Birns – for a while, the Theatrical’s silent partner since convicted felons could not hold a liquor license – held court at his personal table. Birns’ nemesis, Danny Greene, often shared the premises, although the restaurant, frequently referred to as “Switzerland,” was strictly neutral territory. Jack Licovoli, boss of the Cleveland Mob hung out there but never drank. Even Mushy Wexler ran Empire News Service which, using Western Union telegraph technology, apprised bookies of changes in the line for horse racing and football. Wexler was frequently at odds with the taxman, the Liquor Control Board, and even the Kefauver organized crime Committee. Banned for a time from racing horses, Wexler also owned one of the world’s largest horse stables in the country in Lexington, Kentucky. One of the horses that Wexler raised finished second in the Kentucky Derby and, the same year, won the Preakness.

Yet celebrities outnumbered gangsters. Frank Sinatra sang there for free. Marilyn Monroe paraded through with husband Arthur Miller. Georgie Jessel, Tony Bennett, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson and Judy Garland basked in their own glory. Joe Lewis, Pancho Gonzalez, Woody Hayes, and the entire New York Yankees baseball team swung by. Cab Calloway, Gene Krupa, Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie jazzed the place up.

A grease fire on September 14, 1960, completely destroyed the Theatrical. But Wexler rented a corner bar in the nearby Hollenden Hotel while his restaurant was being rebuilt, and he thus held on to most of his customers. A glamorous new Theatrical opened in October 1961 with a 750-customer capacity, a second-floor “Commerce Club,” oodles of Italian statuary, and an integrated undular bar and stage. “The end of expenditures on this pleasure palace is not yet in sight,” crowed Mushy Wexler in a July 1961 interview.

But while the end may not have been in sight, it nonetheless was coming. The Theatrical continued its reign well into the 1960s, but Cleveland’s decline had set in motion a slow downtrend for Short Vincent and the Theatrical. This was the era of Wexler son-in-law Irving "Buddy" Spitz, who assumed day-to-day control of the still-flourishing restaurant after Wexler suffered a heart attack in 1965. Shondor Birns objected to the transfer of power and his not-so-private partnership with Wexler was dissolved. Wexler eventually retired to his 27-acre farm in Solon, which supplied vegetables to the restaurant.

Throughout the 1960s businesses left the street and demolitions chipped away at the aging structures. By the end of the decade most of the north side of the street had been cleared to make way for the Central National Bank Building. Ten years later, south side establishments had been cleared to make way for National City Center. By 1978 the Theatrical was the only non-parking business left on Short Vincent. Wexler died in 1979.

In 1990, Buddy Spitz sold out to restaurateur Jim Swingos, the owner/proprietor of another legendary Cleveland eatery, the Keg & Quarter on East 18th Street and Euclid Avenue. Swingos later sold the restaurant to business people who unsuccessfully sought to make the place a comedy club, followed by a sports bar and (the final indignity) a “gentleman’s club” complete with pole dancing. The Theatrical closed for good in 1999 and – perhaps reflecting the longstanding practice of blowing up mobsters in parking lots – the building was demolished for a parking garage. For decades, in fact, that may have been Cleveland’s most galling custom: creating places to park by demolishing places to go.

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Beginning in 1893, and for nearly 100 years hence, Otto Moser’s was East 4th Street’s hippest hole in the wall—a cramped see-and-be-seen hangout featuring heavy food, boundless booze, and walls dripping with celebrity photos and theatrical playbills.

Otto Moser was a crusty Canton, Ohio, native born in 1865. He came to Cleveland as a boy, lived most of his life on East 73rd Street (known as Otis Avenue until 1906) and launched his famous restaurant before the age of 30. His timing was perfect and his restaurant’s location was ideal: Until the 1920s, the area around East 4th Street (called Sheriff Street until 1906) was the heart of Cleveland's theatrical district, featuring a dozen or more theaters. For nearly 50 years Otto’s restaurant, located in the still extant Krause Building, fed and watered untold thousands of actors, comedians, musicians, acrobats, mimes and impersonators, in addition to show patrons and other downtown denizens. The Krause Building, incidentally, was built by William Krause, who sold and rented theatrical costumes—another example of “right place, right time.”

Otto’s celebrity customers (writers, newspapermen and politicians, as well as performers) achieved photographic immortality by signing and gifting publicity stills that Otto displayed in glass cases and on the restaurant’s walls. Currently under the stewardship of Cleveland State University, Otto’s collection is a theatrical Who’s Who of entertainers that includes Fanny Brice, Helen Hayes, Al Jolson, Sarah Bernhardt, Eddie Cantor, Maurice Evans, Edward Everett Horton, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Paul Muni. Will Rogers once stated that he would “shoot the place full of holes” if he did not see his picture mounted on the wall during his next visit. Plain Dealer writer Marianne Evett visited Otto Moser’s in 1991 and recalled in a subsequent article that “All three Barrymores are there: dashing John surrounded by women; a sleek and gray-haired Lionel; and a very young and vulnerable-looking Ethel staring soulfully from a portrait that might date from her 1902 tour. A youngish W.C. Fields in a scruffy beard wears a tramp costume. George M. Cohan has his autograph scrawled across his forehead. Edwin Booth glowers as Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice." John Philip Sousa gives an austere look from a frame behind the bar.

“And,” Evett continued, “there are others whose fame didn't last. Who was H. Lawson Butt, star of The Garden of Allah in 1913? Young Harry Pilcer, with his carefully parted waves of hair? The Elmore Sisters? Lulu Glaser, who signed her name on December 3, 1901, or Jessie Merrill, who wrote "To the 'boys' with best wishes from the Telephone Girl?”

Although plenty close to (among others) the Hippodrome (1907), Park (1883) and Cleveland (1885) theaters, Otto Moser’s was especially proximate to the esteemed Euclid Avenue Opera House. Built in 1875 on Sheriff Street (a secondary entrance faced Euclid Avenue) the Opera House quickly became Cleveland’s premier showcase for all manner of “legitimate” entertainment—quickly marginalizing the aging Academy of Music on Bank (now West 6th) Street. Owned for a time by Marcus Hanna, the Opera House was largely destroyed in an 1892 fire. However, Hanna rebuilt and the theater reopened on November 11, 1893, quite possibly the same night that Otto Moser’s restaurant came into being directly across Sheriff Street. The Opera House closed and was demolished in 1922 to make way for an S.S. Kresge store. By this time, Cleveland's theatrical epicenter was moving east and “moving pictures” had become entertainment’s biggest draw.

Despite his bistro’s welcoming ambiance, Otto Moser was nonetheless obligated to observe the era’s social and legal canons, and that meant “men only.” But ever the egalitarian opportunist, Otto got around the ban by creating a private “Cheese Club” in the restaurant’s basement. The gathering spot featured a giant wheel of cheese in the middle of the room and served beer to both sexes. The Cheese Club quickly become a destination unto itself, catering to entertainers, politicians, journalists and members of notable families. Theater folk like Lillian Russell, George M. Cohan, Helen Hayes and Eddie Foy put on private shows, told stories, sang songs and recited poetry. A tunnel under Sheriff Street allowed patrons as well as performers to move freely and discretely between the Opera House and the Cheese Club.

By the late 1920s the Opera House was gone and Cleveland’s theater district had moved up Euclid. Yet Otto Moser’s remained unaltered, save for a dry spell during Prohibition. Even after Moser's death in 1942 the restaurant’s character changed little. The establishment was acquired by the Langham family who sold it to Helen Gilman and Moser bartenders Jack and Max Joseph in 1952. The heavy oak furniture stayed. Menu items were still named after celebrities. Food such as house-specialty corned beef and cabbage was still cooked in a downstairs kitchen. Festivities continued to be supervised by a giant plaster eagle with a cigar in its beak and a dusty moose head named Bullwinkle, whose antlers were festooned with customer-donated hats. One big change, however, was (ding!) the establishment’s first cash register: Moser had always thrown paper money into a drawer and piled coins on a marble slab behind the bar.

Dan Bir and Steve Dimotsis were the restaurant’s last owners, purchasing the establishment in 1977 from Nils Osbeck and David Butler, who had purchased it from John Pitt who had purchased it from Max Joseph. Dimotsis moved the restaurant to Playhouse Square in 1994, believing that the area’s renaissance would be better for business. Otto Moser’s continued to entertain performers appearing at Playhouse Square theaters, the Great Lakes Theater Festival and the Cleveland Play House. And naturally, he added more pictures to the walls. The restaurant carried on for another 24 years until it closed for good in 2018. By that time Playhouse Square was rife with after-show dining spots. But not a one displays photos of Dick Thompson “the Burglar” . . . or Haverley’s United Mastodon Minstrels (a 40-man blackface minstrel troupe) . . . or actor Jock McKay sporting kilts and a bagpipe.

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Literally and figuratively, Captain Frank’s covered the waterfront. On any given day, visitors to the East 9th St. Pier restaurant might be felled by wilting humidity or blistering wind. Once inside, they could order anything from hake to steak. Some remember the place as “wonderful” with the “best seafood.” Others describe it as “filthy,” “dimly lit,” and “a little creepy.” Many recall “fun times” in and out, but more than a few witnessed depressed, intoxicated or careless motorists drive their cars off the pier into the lake. Even the signage was fluid: Depending on the year, Captain Frank’s might be a “Lobster House” or a “Sea Food House.”

For 35 years, in fact, dichotomy and variety consistently defined Captain Frank’s. Patrons could enjoy the sounds of a nearby Cleveland Indians baseball game or watch planes take off and land at Burke Lakefront Airport. Or perhaps they’d watch a romantic sunset; converse with fishermen; absorb Lake Erie’s dubious smells; or fend off panhandlers, including one guy who lived outside the restaurant and called himself “Captain Frank.” The establishment was dry for its first five years, but later customers remember “power cocktails between double shifts,” free drinks for politicians, and compliant service to high schoolers.

Captain Frank was Frank Visconti, a Sicilian immigrant who emigrated to the United States in 1914, sold fish from a horse-drawn buggy and, for a time, operated the old Fulton Fish Market at East 22nd Street and Woodland Avenue. In 1953, Visconti bought an abandoned boat depot on the pier and turned it into one of Cleveland’s best-known restaurants. The structure burned in 1958 but reopened within a year. It flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, with great lake views, an indoor waterfall, festoons of fishing nets and frequently dirty lobster tanks providing all the ambiance families and couples could want. Notables ranging from Nelson Eddy, Judy Garland and Flip Wilson to Mott the Hoople and the Shah of Iran partied into the wee hours (or until they were asked to leave).

The structure itself actually housed several businesses; the Cleveland Seamen’s Service had offices on the north side of the restaurant and Visconti operated a luncheonette behind his restaurant. Old timers also recall a “custard stand” which may actually have been the luncheonette.

Visconti died in 1984. The restaurant limped along for another five years; but growing competition, increasingly mediocre food and service, and the fading allure of downtown were too much. New owner Rudolph Hubka, Jr., declared bankruptcy in 1989 and the building was demolished in 1994. Today, visitors to a reborn East 9th Street Pier can experience Mexican food, volleyball, bike tours and boat cruises. But the area’s offshore sights, sounds and smells can still invoke memories of untold fishy experiences.

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It didn’t live long. Its street presence was minimal and its food unremarkable. Nonetheless, The Last Moving Picture Company deserves a place in the pantheon of Cleveland restaurants.

Located at 1365 Euclid Avenue in Playhouse Square, “LMPC” was founded by Hamilton F. Biggar and several chums from Hawken School. Biggar (1947-2014) had launched the Mad Hatter dance club on East 18th Street, two years earlier, in 1971. He was the nephew of Jim Biggar, CEO of Nestle USA and Stouffer’s, so perhaps food was in Ham’s blood. In any event, the first-time restaurateur opened his bistro in a former Stouffer’s restaurant in the spring of 1973—four years after the State, Ohio, and Palace Theaters closed and five years after the Allen Theater went dark. Although the theaters had escaped demolition and Jacques Brel would soon open in the State Theater lobby, the district was largely comatose. But amidst all the emptiness, several interesting eateries opened at around the same time. The Elegant Hog was a pubby, wood-paneled hotspot. The Rusty Scupper, with its two-story atrium, was so festooned with ficus, philodendron and ferns that one might assume houseplants were on the menu. And Boukair's, a staple at 1520 Euclid, became the New York Steak House months before LMPC opened and was replaced within a year by the Parthenon. Thus, The Last Moving Picture Company was part of an admirable yet doomed movement to breathe new life into an area that was more “Playhouse Bare” than Playhouse Square. And people responded: Through the early and mid 1970s, suburbanites and business travelers flooded in.

In addition to its pioneer spirit, The Last Moving Picture Company should be recognized for a generous and maybe illegal “pour your own” policy. In effect, a restaurant patron ordering a mixed drink (say a Bloody Mary) would have a large ice-filled glass, a small carafe of Bloody Mary mix, and (yes folks) a bottle of vodka delivered to his table. Armed with these ingredients, the happy recipient was free to be his own mixologist. This, of course, was a recipe for economic and dipsomaniacal disaster since customers quickly discovered that they could forego the Bloody Mary mix entirely and pour themselves an eight-ounce, ultra-dry vodka martini for the price of a single drink. Neither the policy nor the customers’ livers lasted long.

But moving pictures are what made The Last Moving Picture Company truly unique. Cut into every wall of the restaurant was a movie screen, behind which were small closets containing an 8-millimeter projector and stacks of old films. Rushing frantically from closet to closet to change reels, a full-time projectionist would treat patrons to endless (and soundless) streams of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West and Harold Lloyd . . . sort of a sports bar for movies. Accordingly, the restaurant’s menu was a Hollywood smorgasbord: Fatty Arbuckle was a hamburger. Boris Karlov was a Polish sausage. Joan Crawford was a sirloin. Marilyn Monroe was (what else?) a cheesecake. Complementing the films and filets, the restaurant and upstairs bar featured countless kitschy accoutrements: a nickelodeon, a ticket booth cashier’s station, an old film projector repurposed to dispense beer. Music was piped through old floor radios. Placemats were laminated movie cards.

The Last Moving Picture Company did a door-busting business until, well, it didn’t. By the late 1970s most of the district’s restaurants had closed, including The Last Moving Picture Company. And while the eateries didn’t survive, Playhouse Square certainly did. In 1977 the Playhouse Square Foundation obtained long-term leases for the Palace, State, and Ohio Theaters. By 1991 each venue had reopened and, in the aggregate, were entertaining some 750,000 patrons a year. Ham Biggar—a champion squash player—went on to launch the 13th Street Racquet Club in a warehouse at Dodge Court and East 13th Street. He must have cringed when, just around the corner, his cinema-centric eatery became a McDonald’s. But 40 years hence, Biggar would surely be gratified to see that the golden arches are gone and that the curtain has risen on new generation of Playhouse Square theaters and bistros.

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Victoria and Michael Sokolowski opened Sokolowski’s University Inn in 1923 as a tavern at the corner of University Road and West 13th Street. For nearly a century, the family served up exceedingly generous portions of traditional Polish-style food, making it a popular spot for generations of visitors from every walk of life. Local heroes from steel workers to accountants. Hollywood types from Ursula Andress to Jimmy Fallon. Politicos from Lech Walesa to Bill Clinton. Rock ‘n rollers from Dion DiMucci to Trent Reznor. Celebrity chefs from Bobby Flay to Michael Symon.

When Sokolowski’s opened its doors in 1923, Tremont was rather different from the gentrifying neighborhood it became around the turn of the 21st century. For one thing, the area was called the South Side. The neighborhood was more densely populated. Poles rubbed shoulders with Ukrainians, Russians, and a host of other nationalities. Large families in small houses were the norm. And there were many more houses than there are today. Construction of Interstates 71, 90 and 490 resulted in the loss of hundreds of residential structures. In fact, when Sokolowski’s opened, homes along University Road rimmed the Flats as far west as West 14th Street. Homes also lined both sides of West 14th as far north as University. Abbey Avenue stopped at West 14th instead of West 11th. On the south side of Abbey in 1923 — just up from Sokolowski’s — there was a stable. Directly across Abbey from the stable there was a Horse and Dog Hospital.

Ironically, the freeway that lopped off the tavern's neighbors to the west also turned Sokolowski's into its modern form. The most dramatic evolution may have been Sokolowski’s expansion from bar to full restaurant. It wasn’t until the late 1950s — when iron workers building the Inner Belt bridge started coming in at lunchtime — that the family began serving cafeteria-style food. The establishment expanded over the years, including the addition of three new dining rooms. Sokolowski's remained a family-owned and -operated business through the generations, with successive owners growing up in the business and living next door to the restaurant.

Sokolowski’s was a cult favorite among Cleveland diners for decades before it began attracting attention from well-known food critics across the US. Sokolowski’s appeared on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” program on the Travel Channel in 2007 and on Michael Symon’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” on the Food Network in 2010. In 2014, Sokolowski’s won the James Beard “American Classics” Award — one of only five designations the prestigious New York-based foundation makes each year to honor "enduring, quality restaurants and food establishments that reflect the character and hospitality of their cities and communities.” Mike Sokolowski – grandson and namesake of the founder – observed at the time that winning a Beard award was "like winning the Oscar."

Like many small businesses, Sokolowski's University Inn did not survive the COVID-19 pandemic. On October 13th, 2020 – after three generations of family ownership across 97 years – the Sokolowski family announced that they would close the restaurant. In 2023, the property was purchased by a real estate developer.

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Before Hot Sauce Williams and Beckham's B&M Bar-B-Que ruled the east side, Scatter's Barbecue was Glenville's home for ribs, shoulder sandwiches, and fries soaked in Scatter's notable barbecue sauce. Herman "Scatter" Stephens, born in Birmingham, Alabama on June 1, 1920, moved to Cleveland in 1934 with his family. He graduated from Central High School in 1938 and attended West Virginia State College. After his college years, his family assisted in opening Scatter's Barbecue in 1952. It was not unusual to find his relatives, such as his mother, Emma Ricks, and aunt Nancy Stephens, in the restaurant assisting Scatter during the early years of the restaurant.

Located at 931 East 105th Street in the heart of Glenville's lively strip, Scatter's Barbecue was known for its shoulder sandwiches, where the meat was so tender it would "fall off the bone." The restaurant's walls were covered with framed portraits of prominent African Americans of the day, many of whom Scatter befriended, such as Sugar Ray Robinson and Count Basie. While Scatter's clientele included notable celebrities, many regulars were from the Glenville area. It was common for students from Empire Junior High School, located down the street, to stop by after school for a sauce-soaked paper bag of fries.

Scatter became an entrepreneur, owning not only a restaurant, but several businesses under the umbrella of Stephens Enterprises Inc. Herman "Scatter" Stephens owned Stephens Cigarette Service Inc., a cigarette and bowling machine servicing company, at 933 East 105th adjacent to Scatter's Barbecue, and the Silver Dollar Lounge. The lounge hosted his annual grandiose birthday parties, for which he issued an open invitation to "the world." By 1967, Stephens Enterprises expanded to include Stephens Real Estate, Stephens Vending Co., and the Lucky Bar. Scatter was a notable high-roller in Glenville, where he was known for having the latest Cadillacs, as well as a world traveler. In the summer of 1967, Scatter accompanied the Count Basie Orchestra to Europe for their tour. Since Scatter knew Count Basie, he was able to assist Cafe Tia Juana in booking jazz shows, featuring acts like saxophonists Eddie Lockjaw Davis and Sonny Stitt.

On September 10, 1967 at 2:30 A.M., tragedy struck when Scatter was shot in his Stephens Cigarette Service/Vending Co. store by a white assailant with possible mob ties. After being shot twice, Scatter stumbled out of the store and tried to escape to his barbecue restaurant, where the gunman followed him and shot him three more times.

Scatter's funeral took place September 21 at East Mount Zion Baptist Church. Some witnesses recalled the funeral being among the largest in the neighborhood in decades, with 3,000 mourners attending and traffic backed up for blocks. The funeral was just as impressive as his life; Scatter was buried in an $8,000 copper casket and the procession included 63 Cadillac Eldorados. Some of the attendees were rumored to be Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis, who were able to slip out without being photographed.

Scatter's family ran the restaurant years after his passing, eventually closing in 1983. Though the only remnant of Scatter's Barbecue is the intact building, Scatter's legacy is still cherished in the Glenville community to this day.

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For decades, Irv's Deli, on the corner of Coventry and Hampshire Roads, was the place to wallow in Coventry Village’s eclectic edginess. The delicatessen and adjoining bar opened in 1959, when the street was mainly a commercial district serving the area's heavily Jewish population. In the thirty years Irv's was in business, Coventry Village changed drastically: at various and often overlapping times a hangout for hippies, biker gangs, punks, wannabes, gawkers, drug seekers, university students, and even middle-class families. For many years, restaurant owner Irving Gulko’s business model and customers kept pace with Coventry's many transformations. However, as Coventry continued to evolve, Irv’s came more and more into conflict with the neighborhood.

When Gulko opened his deli and bar, he served everything from Chinese food and pizza to shots and beers. Although Gulko came from a family of restaurant owners (his father and grandfather both operated delicatessens in Cleveland), his establishment was often associated with unappetizing food and poor sanitation. Rumors accusing the enigmatic Gulko of running prostitution, drug, and bookmaking businesses were common. What is known for sure is that Irv's Deli was indeed a hangout for down-and-outers, counter culturists, and motorcycle gangs such as the Outlaws and Hell's Angels. But it also was popular with other types. At 2:00 AM, one might find Irv’s still crawling with bikers, late-night munchies sufferers, and Case Western Reserve University students cramming for exams.

Irv’s problems escalated in the early 1980s. The neighborhood was becoming more family-friendly, but Irv’s was the epicenter of more and more crimes and police reports. In 1982 Coventry Neighbors, Inc. (CNI), a civic betterment organization formed in 1969, took action. It introduced a (winning) referendum on the 1982 election ballot that stripped Gulko's right to serve wine and liquor by the glass. Gulko fought the election results with little success. Starting in 1983, he could only sell beer by the glass and take-out alcoholic beverages. The facility limped along for another six years and closed in 1989.

Ironically, for a business associated with alcohol, crime and drugs, Irv's was for a short time a popular venue for Cleveland's straight edge hardcore community. Musical performances were organized by local teens, featuring bands like Confront, Project X, Gorilla Biscuits, and other acts known for their steadfast sobriety and lyrics promoting the virtues of "clean living." A decade after its closing, Irv’s also received a fictive cinematic treatment: the epicenter of a movie called The NightOwls of Coventry starring “Marv” as the restaurant’s somewhat too sympathetic owner.

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Walk down Coventry in the mid-1970s and you’d probably see a large yellow sign — Tommy’s — on a wood-paneled storefront where Coventry Road intersects with Euclid Heights Boulevard. Inside this unique restaurant, all 27 seats would likely be filled. However, that would be a mere fraction of the myriad fans of Tommy Fello's milkshakes and Americanized Lebanese food. Three Coventry-area locations and forty years later, Tommy's has flourished. Its seats (now 125) are still filled and the same wonderful smells still waft out to greet passersby.

Tommy began working at his restaurant's predecessor: a drug store and soda fountain called The Fine Arts Confectionery (formerly Ace Drug and, before that, Merit Drug), located on the current site of the Inn on Coventry. As a soda jerk and stock boy, Tommy worked under three different owners. But it was the last, Fawze Saide, who inspired Tommy to become the owner of the most famous restaurant on Coventry. Tommy noticed that when Fawze brought his lunches to work, the customers who came to drink their milk shakes and eat their unappetizing heat-and-eat sandwiches at the drug store curiously sniffed the Lebanese owner's Middle Eastern cuisine. Tommy suggested they start selling the same food Fawze's wife brought him for lunch. The soon-to-be business owner took those pita bread sandwiches to sell during his short time at a computer school. After Fawze retired and moved back to Lebanon, Tommy purchased the facility. Part of the agreement was that Fawze would teach him how to make hummus, baba ghannouj and falafel. Nineteen-year-old Tommy was then in business, selling drug store merchandise, the same great milkshakes, and Lebanese sandwiches.

It wasn't until CoventrYard developer Lewis Zipkin pushed Tommy out of his store by threatening a 500 percent rent increase that Tommy fully realized the potential in the restaurant side of the business. "For me as a business move it was great because . . . it forced me to take a look at what I was doing . . . There wasn't a future in that drug store and that soda fountain; there was a future in the food part of it." He closed in March 1977 but reopened the next year in a new location where Mac's Backs-Books now is.

Tommy stayed for a decade until a fire that started in High Tide Rock Bottom's basement caused half the block, including Tommy's dining room, to go up in flames. He then moved to a third location — the former site of Coventry Café (a dingy “old man’s bar”) — combining the kitchen of his old store with a new dining room. Tommy's officially opened at its current location at 1824 Coventry Road in May 1993. He still makes milkshakes the same way he did when he was a soda jerk at The Fine Arts Confectionery. And most food offerings continue to be named after friends, longtime customers, and even celebrities who suggested the recipes.

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Operated by brothers Maxwell and Roman Gruber from 1947 to 1961, Gruber’s Restaurant was one of the east side’s most popular dining establishments, as well as an ad-hoc social center for the affluent community of Shaker Heights. The pricey jacket-and-tie eatery encapsulated the conservatism and refinement of 1950s high society and was renowned as a gathering place for celebrities and Cleveland’s elite.

Yet Shaker Heights was hardly the restaurant’s first location. German immigrant Max Gruber Sr. (Maxwell and Roman’s father, 1878-1947) opened Gruber’s in 1907 at Columbus Rd. and Willey Ave. and moved shortly thereafter to West 25th St. and Clark Ave. In 1912 Gruber’s relocated again, this time to the Columbia Building at 102 Prospect Ave. The restaurant closed during Prohibition but reopened in 1932 in the Arcade. That stint lasted 15 years until Gruber’s final move: On April 14, 1947, Max, Jr., and Roman reopened on Van Aken (then Moreland) Blvd. in what would become the Van Aken Shopping Center in 1953.

Although Gruber’s had long been popular, it flourished in Shaker Heights. For 12 years, the brothers catered to what became known as the Jolly Set: a “cafe society” group of highbrows, sports figures and journalists committed to comradery, revelry and the periodic organization of philanthropic events. Gruber’s also was celebrated for culinary offerings ranging from sparkler-laden birthday cakes to frogs' legs, sauerkraut balls and meat served on flaming swords.

By the time the brothers' sold out to the Fred Harvey Company in 1961, the Gruber’s reservation list totaled some 25,000 names and the establishment was generating more than one million dollars annually. But following the sale the social hot-spot quickly declined in popularity and closed in 1964.

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Opened in 2008, Stone Mad Pub is the latest in a long tradition of saloons and bars located at 1306 West 65th Street. The history of the building speaks to the importance of these establishments within a community, and reflects the changes that the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood has experienced over the last century.

The building was constructed as a tavern and store house by Cleveland's Leisy Brewing Company in 1912. The construction of the bar coincided with a period of great success for the brewery. As Cleveland's largest brewery at the turn of the century, Leisy owned multiple taverns throughout the city. This was a common practice for breweries of the era. Saloon keepers generally paid rent at the first of the month and were billed weekly for beer and whiskey. Breweries established the prices, which were generally the same throughout all of their saloons.

The choice to build on West 65th was likely due to the rapidly growing working-class immigrant population in the neighborhood. The neighborhood surrounding the tavern was densely populated with Irish, Italian, and Romanian immigrants. At a time when boardinghouses were common -- and living quarters were cramped -- the saloon offered a space to socialize and relax. The saloon keepers, who could generally speak English, were important members of the ethnic community. They regularly acted as intermediaries between the immigrant population and government officials. Some establishments even acted as banks for their patrons.

While production for Leisy Brewing Company peaked in 1918, the Prohibition enacted between 1920-1933 quickly resulted in the brewery's downfall. The bar on 1306 West 65th Street, however, continued operation as a popular speakeasy of the time. What is now known as the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood was notorious for Romanian, Irish, and Italian bootleggers during the Prohibition. Oral histories from the neighborhood suggested that the speakeasy at 1306 was raided by the police one night, and that barrels of whiskey were cracked open and poured onto West 65th Street. Despite such displays, Prohibition had little effect on the alcohol consumption of Cleveland residents. It is estimated that whereas Cleveland had about 1,200 bars in 1919, by 1923 these had all been replaced by over 3,000 speakeasies. Even more common was the sale of liquor in neighborhoods by those with an entrepreneurial spirit, and the brewing and distilling of homemade beverages for personal use.

Following Prohibition, the bar on 1306 West 65th Street continued to reflect its place within an ethnic community. The establishment was operated through the 1950s by an Italian social club known as the Societa Operia Italiana di Mutuo Soccorso del West Side. Italian social clubs, which were generally made up of people from the same family or hometown, peaked in popularity during the 1930s and 1940s. With the effects of post World War II suburbanization and assimilation, these societies slowly lost their importance as social and recreational outlets. By the 1960s the establishment was known as the I & R Bar, or the Italian and Romanian Bar. Due to the continued decline in the presence of these ethnic communities in the surrounding neighborhood, the establishment became the R & A Lounge by the 1980s.

With the disappearance of commerce and industry from the area, the neighborhood began to show signs of physical deterioration. Through the efforts of community organizers and citizen action groups, the commercial district on West 65th Street and Detroit Avenue has been revitalized over the last three decades. Efforts to develop the area as a center for the arts are also well on their way. These changes in the neighborhood were both instigated by and helped foster a resurgence in the creation of locally operated businesses. As with much of the redevelopment that has occurred in Detroit Shoreway, Stone Mad Pub acknowledged and preserved the history of the area while creating an establishment that would also serve the needs of a rapidly changing neighborhood. The front bar was designed as a traditional Irish pub, while the dining room took on an Italian motif.

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Looking for a place to grab a stein of beer and show off your new lederhosen? Herman Pirchner’s Alpine Village Theatrical Bar and Restaurant, located at 1614 Euclid Avenue (directly across the street from the Palace Theater) was the place to do it. Inspired by Pirchner’s childhood home in the Austrian Alps, the restaurant featured Tyrolean décor, mountain scenes and murals of Bavarian peasant life. Pirchner’s “lusty yodelers,” om-pa-pa entertainment, ski-lodge-like bar, and waitstaff dressed in traditional leather breeches brought the Alps to downtown Cleveland.

Herman Pirchner immigrated to the United States from Tyrol in western Austria in the mid-1920s. He soon was working two jobs, one in a pretzel factory and one as a bus boy. Then, in defiance of Prohibition, he began to brew beer with his brothers Otto and Karl. “How,” he once noted, “could a beverage as wholesome and innocent as beer be outlawed?” Pirchner’s brewing career came to an abrupt close when the Mafia tried to horn in on his operation. He then opened the Alpine Shore Club (formerly Marigold Gardens) on East 185th Street and Lakeshore Boulevard in 1931. On the establishment’s second floor, Pirchner ran a speakeasy. Once again, the Mafia pushed for a piece of the alcohol pie. They harassed Pirchner and set off stink bombs in the restaurant. He fought back with the help of Cleveland Public Safety Director Eliot Ness. After that Pirchner never again was bothered by organized crime.

On November 28, 1935, Pirchner moved downtown, opening Alpine Village in Playhouse Square. Sporting a Tyrolean cap and leather shorts, he served everything from goose liver to pig’s knuckles. He gave rolling pins to new brides, led German singalongs and yodeled encouragement to folk dancers on a stage that would mechanically rise and fall. Employing skills developed during his earlier career as a carnival strongman, Pirchner dazzled guests by delivering 50 or more steins of beer sliding across the floor on his hindquarters, a feat called "beer hefting" that Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” recognized. Patrons loved it. So did the celebrities who performed there: Cab Calloway, Pearl Bailey, Henny Youngman, Jimmy Durante and many others. Notables such as Fred Astaire, Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra also gathered upstairs at Pirchner’s private Eldorado Club.

In 1961, exactly thirty years after his “grosse eröffnung (grand opening),” Pirchner declared bankruptcy and the Internal Revenue Service padlocked the restaurant. A year later, Alpine Village reopened under a series of new owners, but the magic could not be replicated. Pirchner, however, forged on—opening a travel center in the Hanna Building and co-owning the Plain & Fancy Gourmet Shoppe at Severance Towne Center.

The building on Euclid Avenue was razed in 1996 for a parking lot. Herman Pirchner passed away in February 2009 at the age of 101. A decade later, like a silvery Alpen memorial, the 34-story Lumen apartment complex rose on the site.

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Frank Sterle, an immigrant from Ljubljana, Slovenia, founded his Slovenian Country House in 1954. With a small building on East 55th Street, a few picnic tables, and only one waitress - who had to memorize the small menu since none had been printed - Sterle managed to create a successful and lasting business. As the restaurant became well-known throughout Cleveland for its world-class polka performances, Sterle decided to add onto the building until it looked much like the alpine mountain lodge that Sterle lived in when he was a young child. The building had a pitched tongue and groove ceiling. A deer head hung over the entrance, and its walls were adorned with murals of Slovenia, giving the restaurant an atmosphere that was distinct in Cleveland.

After Frank's death in 1986, the restaurant was taken over by Mike Longo and Margot Glinski; immigrants from Italy and Germany, respectively. Despite the change in ownership, the restaurant continued to serve traditional Slovenian dishes and had weekly polka performances and dancing. Favorite menu items included wiener schnitzel, chicken paprikash, stuffed cabbage, klobase and sauerkraut. Among the notable artists who performed at Sterle's were Joey Miskulin, Johnnie Vadnal, “Waltz King” Lou Trebar, and "King of Polka" Frankie Yankovic.

In 2012, Rick Semersky bought the building and promised that he would use Sterle’s Country House “as a catalyst to revive the neighborhood.” Semersky kept using the building as a restaurant until he could no longer keep up with changing times and was failing to fill the large restaurant nightly. In 2016, Semersky opened Goldhorn Brewery next to Sterle’s Country House. The following year, he stopped serving lunch and dinner and converted the restaurant into a special events center. Although Goldhorn Brewery stayed open and was profitable, Sterle’s Country House closed for good in 2020. On November 22, 2022, a fire broke out in the vacant building, leading to the collapse of large sections of its roof and walls. The remainder of the building was demolished the following spring.

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