After 107 years, get yer schnitzel somewhere else, the 17 West Adams Berghoff is closing February 28, AP reports. What's next, Marshall Field's? Oh... right.
"The restaurant's history is intermingled with Chicago's," writes Mike Colias for Associated Press. "It was such a downtown staple that after Prohibition ended in December 1933, the city issued The Berghoff Liquor License No. 1. Herman Joseph Berghoff, a German immigrant, and his three brothers began brewing Berghoff Beer in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1887.... Six years later, he sold it to fairgoers at The Chicago World's Fair, and in 1898 he opened a cafe to showcase the beer, which sold for a nickel. During Prohibition, the business served near beer and soda and expanded into a full-service restaurant."
From Berghoff's website: "Herman Berghoff, 70, and his wife Jan Berghoff, 68 are the third generation of Berghoffs to run the restaurant. Herman began working for his grandfather's restaurant in 1952. In 1986, he and Jan purchased the restaurant outright. "We share the sadness that many feel about the closing of the restaurant... It's been an honor to be part of the fabric of Chicago." ... The Berghoff Restaurant, Berghoff Cafe, and Berghoff Bar, located at 17 West Adams Street in Chicago, will close February 28, 2006. Until then, the three facilities will continue their normal operations. Herman Joseph Berghoff opened the Berghoff Cafe in 1898 to showcase his celebrated Dortmunder-style beer. Originally located at the corner of State and Adams streets, one door down from its present location, the bar sold beer for a nickel and offered sandwiches for free." The yeesh part of the handout: The Berghoff Cafe at O'Hare stays open: "Travelers will still be able to enjoy hand-carved sandwiches, salads and other Berghoff traditions at the O'Hare location," said Herman. The 17 West Adams building will be leased to Artistic Events by Carlyn Berghoff Catering, a 20-year old catering company run by the daughter of Herman and Jan. Artistic Events also has purchased the assets of the restaurant. Artistic Events... provides special events planning and catering services throughout the Chicago area."
As stated on the news last night, the reason he is closing is because he doesn't want to sell the restaurant and his name to someone else.
This is an honorable way to close, in my opinion, and Marshall Field's would have closed generations ago if they had done the same. I don't see what the big hubub is about Field's closing. I don't think a Field has worked for them in years, except perhaps on the board or as a stockholder.
The O'Hare bar and the bottled beer are owned by a separate corporation. I suppose Herman and Jan just feel too close to the original restuarant to sell it. Too bad Ronald McDonald didn't feel the same about his restaurant. Oh wait, he wasn't a real person.....
This echoes what happened twenty odd years ago here in New York when the original Luchows (also a German beer house turned full-service eatery) closed. It closed in 1983, a few months before I arrived in NYC from the midwest.
I first came across it while exploring my new neighborhood. The building occupied a mid-block parcel with entrances on 14th Street and 13th Street. The 14th Street facade was painted dark green but had gold leaf painted metal fixtures above the doorway.
The interior was empty, but the paneled walls and cut- glass windows spoke of grandeur from another era. It had been a place where generations of New York families gathered to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
After the restaurant on 14th Street closed, another operation (which had purchased the rights to use the name Luchow's) continued to operate on the plaza level of a 1960's internationalist skyscraper at 1515 Broadway, just north of Times Square.
A sad imitation of the lost eatery, the only quality it shared with the original item was the name. It, too, closed its doors and has become a theme restaurant for the new family friendly Times Square. As for the original structure, it remained vacant but intact for over twenty years, in large part, I suspect, because the 13th Street entrance was just across the street from a local firehouse and the firemen, who know a thing or two about traditions, made sure that no one bothered the place. It was as though the ghosts of the place had some sort of posthumous rent control.
Every time I walked past it I was happy to see it, a vestige of long-ago New York. All of that ended when New York University announced that they were planning to build a new dormitory next door. Within two months arson had destroyed what twenty years of abandonment could not. The building was pulled down and NYU purchased the site and added it to their dorm. It now serves as the driveway for the complex.