SAVORING PLACE: PROTECTING CHICAGO’S SENSE OF PLACE BY PRESERVING ITS LEGACY RESTAURANTS. LEIGH A. HADDIX 2018 ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: SAVORING PLACE: PROTECTING CHICAGO’S SENSE OF PLACE BY PRESERVING ITS LEGACY RESTAURANTS Degree Candidate: Leigh Haddix Degree and Year: Master of Arts in Historic Preservation, 2018 Thesis Directed By: Betsy Bradley Welch Center for Graduate and Professional Studies Goucher College Humanist geographer Edward G. Relph in Place and Placelessness conceptualized a vision of place using a phenomenological approach based upon how humans experience place. Relph’s three main place components include Setting, Activity and Meaning, and considering resources in this manner can reframe preservation thought. Viewing place through Relph’s lens makes for a more holistic vision, that can shape what and how we preserve. A Relphian framework also provides a useful practice theory for preservationists to expand our notion of who performs preservation and how we evaluate sense of place. Small businesses are neighborhood anchors, and historic restaurants play a particularly social and experiential role. Tangible and intangible cultural heritage must be evaluated holistically when focusing preservation actions upon businesses such as historic restaurants. Legacy restaurants are place makers and visible markers of the layers of history within a place. They convey social history and foodways and act as expressions of the intangible cultural heritage that lends character to place. Change is a part of place; cuisine, the history of a place, and historic businesses do not remain static. Just as legacy business owners have had to be agile and adaptable to remain relevant and successful, historic preservation may work most effectively when it too is agile and adaptable in response to change. Using a Relphian view of place prompts a refocusing on the big picture an expansion of preservation, and a certain allowance for change. This view suggests that the human experience of place should be more at the forefront of preservation thought. By expanding how and what we preserve we will in turn preserve more sense of place. Subject Headings: legacy businesses, Chicago restaurants, ethnic history, Edward Relph, sense of place. SAVORING PLACE: PROTECTING CHICAGO’S SENSE OF PLACE BY PRESERVING ITS LEGACY RESTAURANTS Leigh Haddix This Thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Historic Preservation 2018 Advisory Committee Betsy H. Bradley, Ph. D, Director ___________________ Timothy Frye, M.S. ___________________ Stefan Osdene, Ph. D. ___________________ Copyright © by: Leigh A. Haddix 2018 For my parents, and for Terry, my partner in life. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to both of my thesis committees without whom this thesis would not have been possible. Many thanks to Betsy Bradley, Timothy Frye, Stefan Osdene, Sarah Dreller, Robert Melnick, and Andrew F. Smith. Their guidance and patience throughout the thesis process has been indispensable. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ` ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES vi CHAPTER I 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Historic Preservation and the Concept of Place 3 Chicago’s Culinary and Preservation Advocacy 13 Current Challenges 22 Foodways as Intangible Culture 23 Historic Restaurants and Place 26 Summary 31 CHAPTER II: 34 CHICAGO’S SENSE OF PLACE 34 Introduction 34 Architectural Setting 36 Chicago History and Foodways 39 Restaurant Closures 54 Summary 55 CHAPTER III: 57 CHICAGO’S AMERICA’S CLASSICS 57 Introduction 57 Cultural Hybridity 59 Tufano’s Vernon Park Tap: Family Style 61 Relphian Analysis 66 Potential Change The Berghoff: A Functioning Memory Factory 73 Relphian Analysis 81 Calumet Fisheries: A Disappearing Art 88 Relphian Analysis 95 Potential Changes: Calumet Fisheries Glunz Tavern 100 Relphian Analysis 106 Potential Changes: Glunz Tavern Devon Avenue Neighborhood 114 iii Relphian Analysis Potential Changes: Devon Avenue 128 Summary 129 CHAPTER IV 134 EVALUATION AND PRESERVATION ACTIONS 134 Introduction 134 Evaluation 135 Preservation Actions 140 Opportunities for Collaboration in Chicago 142 Learning From Domestic Preservation Programs. 148 Learning From International Preservation Programs 153 Creative Documentation 161 Summary 164 CHAPTER V 166 CONCLUSION 166 For Further Study 172 Conclusion 174 BIBLIOGRAPHY 178 APPENDIX 50 over 50: Chicago’s Legacy Restaurant Inventory 182 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Tufano’s Charater Defining Features. 72 Table 2: The Berghoff’s Character Defining Features. 88 Table 3: Calumet Fisheries Character Defining Features. 99 Table 4: Glunz Tavern’s Character Defining Features. 109 Table 5: Devon Avenue's Character Defining Features 130 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Lou Mitchell's interior circa 1950s. 2 Figure 2 Present Day Lou Mitchell's Exterior. 3 Figure 3: Children identify their ethnic origin in school. 49 Figure 4: Tufano's Exterior with addition on right. 62 Figure 5 Kitchen “window” where grandmother transferred food cooked next door. 63 Figure 6: The Berghoff Bar Interior. 73 Figure 7: The Berghoff exterior, sign. 83 Figure 8: Calumet Fisheries Smokehouse exterior. 89 Figure 9: House of Glunz Wine & Tavern. 101 Figure 10: Devon Avenue, Chicago. 120 Figure 11: Nathan’s Delicatessen 1950’s. Now Khan’s BBQ. 122 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Lou Mitchell’s is a downtown family-run Chicago diner, listed in 2006 in the National Register of Historic Places. It sits at the very start of Route 66, near Union Station. Founded in 1923, it is the only Chicago restaurant to be listed in the Register. Like many before, I would lug my suitcase into the front window, already piled up with luggage from other travelers, and catch the Wolverine or the Twilight Limited Amtrak train to Ann Arbor, Michigan to visit my father. I’d order an omelet and Greek toast as sustenance for my journey before lugging my suitcase out again toward nearby Union Station for the five-hour trip. Customers waited in the usual Saturday morning line that stretched down the block. The elderly gentleman who was always there, monitored the line and handed out warm beignets to everyone and tiny boxes of Milk Duds, which were only for the women. (Milk Duds were manufactured in Chicago originally, and it was said that the old man had an eye for the ladies.)1 Many other meals enjoyed at the diner involved seeing a server bring out a piece of pie with a lit candle, and the entire restaurant would burst into a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for the recipient. A small bar with diner stools sits on the right as you enter, and the interior still retains an ambiance from decades past, (see Fig 1). 1 “Lou Mitchell’s About Us,” accessed March 1, 2017, http://www.loumitchellsrestaurant.com/about_us.html. 1 Figure 1: Lou Mitchell's interior circa 1950s [National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program]. Everyone gets served a tiny ceramic dish of house-made stewed prunes with whatever they are eating, even if they do not want them. Beneficiaries of the diner’s Greek hospitality include many a sports star, as well as Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.2 Approaching the restaurant from the sidewalk, the building appears as a plain, olive-green-painted one story building graced with a large orange neon sign from 1949 saying “Lou Mitchell’s: Serving the World’s Finest COFFEE” (Fig 2). The fact that it has stood so long is a testament to the quality of its food, and the quality of the hospitality. It is clear that this place is important, and that people know it. Each time I return to Chicago, I participate in what has become a traditional ritual of breakfast at this diner, which will always in my mind be associated with Chicago. Like Lou Mitchell’s, the restaurants profiled in this study have a positive effect on residents and visitors, and through longevity, roots in the community, and cuisine, are representative of the city, and 2 Ibid. 2 markers of the city’s immigrant past. They foster a warm, social interchange for the communities they serve and nourish, and express to some degree the past and present identities of the neighborhoods. Historic restaurants have not often been recipients of preservation focus. Historic restaurants are a part of what drives sense of place and we should be champions for their continued survival. Figure 2: Present day Lou Mitchell's Exterior, [Wikimedia Commons, Sheila Scarborough]. Historic Preservation and the Concept of Place Historic Preservation in the United States has evolved and expanded over many decades to become a more complex, multi-faceted, inclusive field. It encompasses concepts such as Cultural Landscapes, areas with both natural and cultural features, 3 defined by the National Park Service (NPS) as being “associated with a historic event, activity or person or exhibiting other cultural or aesthetic values.”3 The NPS also helps to oversee Traditional Cultural Properties, (TCPs) which it defines as “a property that is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) based on its associations with the cultural practices, traditions, beliefs, lifeways, arts, crafts, or social institutions of a living community.”4 Intangible culture such as stories, songs, dances and cultural practices are also recognized.5 Culinary heritage, and therefore historic restaurants, can be included within these parameters. While the buildings themselves play a vital role in sense of a place, the intangible values associated with them play a crucial role as well. Sense of place is certainly impacted by buildings but also by more than buildings. Humanist geographer Edward Relph explored a phenomenological approach to geography in his groundbreaking book, Place and Placelessness, first published in 1976. Relph defined place as consisting of setting, activity, and meaning. These elements are always interrelated. The setting may be a city, a landscape, a neighborhood, and a building (exterior and interior), or often a combination of all of these facets.