{"id":44349,"date":"2019-05-16T09:08:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T16:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/?p=44349"},"modified":"2019-05-16T09:08:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T16:08:00","slug":"what-are-people-doing-may-17-1919-may-17-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/what-are-people-doing-may-17-1919-may-17-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are People Doing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week the Town Crier blog will look back at Seattle\u2019s near forgotten <\/span><\/i>Town Crier<\/span> magazine to see what was happening then and talk about what\u2019s happening now. One of the largest sections of the original Town Crier was \u201cWhat People Are Doing,\u201d highlighting things like, \u201cMrs. Winfield R. Smith was the honored guest at a luncheon and theater party given on Thursday,\u201d and, \u201cDr. Henry Suzzallo, president of the University of Washington, went to Vancouver, B.C., where he delivered the graduating address at the University of British Columbia on Thursday.\u201d In this series we\u2019re revisiting the old column and tying it to our community\u2019s current happenings, asking: \u201cwhat <\/span><\/i>are <\/span>people doing?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s entry\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A frequent advertiser in the Town Crier<\/em> was Rippe\u2019s Cafe\u2014and the May 17, 1919 edition of the paper was no exception. Rippe\u2019s touted itself on being \u201ca small house with a big reputation.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Frank Rippe, having worked at the Saltair Restaurant in Salt Lake City, wanted to start his own restaurant in Seattle. And in 1910, he did. There were a few stools lining a counter and a stairway that lead to a balcony where tables for ladies were available. The restaurant was, a critic wrote, \u201cjust that chummy sort of cafe where foods are carefully prepared.\u201d The place prospered. He doubled his seating capacity at 314 Pike Street.<\/span><\/p>\n

He moved his restaurant to 1423 Fourth Avenue. He decided to make the eatery more elegant. There was mahogany woodwork throughout, a long lunch counter, booths on the lower floor and balcony and a separate room for ladies. The restaurant had white tablecloths, heavy silver, and fancy menus (including oysters Rockefeller). Seattle\u2019s elite had many a meal there, as did luminaries from far afield. President Calvin Coolidge ate at Rippe\u2019s. So did Hollywood starlet Jean Harlow. <\/span><\/p>\n

Rippe passed away in 1934. His widow Pearl continued to run the cafe until 1940 when she closed its doors. \u201cThe competition,\u201d she said, \u201cof corner drugstores, quick-lunch places and one-arm tables forced us to close while still in good financial condition.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The restaurant was sold to theater magnate John Von Herberg who changed the name from Rippe\u2019s to Von\u2019s. Von\u2019s Cafe was open 24 hours, had over 700 items on their menu (there were ten preparations for crab alone on the menu), and was popular amongst Seattle\u2019s <\/span>hoi polloi<\/span><\/i> until 2013 when it, too, closed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under different ownership, it moved and reopened as <\/span>Von\u2019s 1000 Spirits<\/span><\/a> on 1st Avenue. There now, it touts itself as a Seattle sourdough scratch kitchen with small batch house crafted spirits. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A frequent advertiser in the Town Crier was Rippe\u2019s Cafe\u2014and the May 17, 1919 edition of the paper was no exception. Rippe\u2019s touted itself on being \u201ca small house with a big reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-town-crier","category-what-are-people-doing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}