Bickford's Restaurants and Cafeterias were mainstays in the New York City area from the 1920s through the 1960s. Samuel Longley Bickford (1885–1959) began his restaurant career in 1902, and he established his quick-lunch Bickford's restaurant chain in 1921. The Bickford's "lunchrooms," as they were known, offered modestly priced fare and extended hours.
Bickford's architect was F. Russell Stuckert, who had been associated with Samuel Bickford since 1917. Stuckert's father, J. Franklin Stuckert, had designed buildings for Horn & Hardart in the 1890s.[1]
During the 1920s, the Bickford's chain expanded rapidly with 24 lunchrooms in the New York area and others around Boston. A letter with a company stock offering stated, "The lunchrooms operated are of the self-service type and serve a limited bill of fare, which makes possible the maximum use of equipment and a rapid turnover. Emphasis is placed on serving meals of high quality at moderate cost."[1] A 1964 New York City guidebook noted:
- Breakfast at Bickford's is an old New York custom. In these centrally located, speedy-service, modestly-priced restaurants a torrent of traffic is sustained for a generous span of hours with patrons who live so many different lives on so many different shifts.[2]
Bickford's had trouble staying in business because of rising labor costs and rising crime, which kept people home after dark. In 1960, there were 48 Bickford's in New York, down to 42 in 1970 and only two in 1980. By 1982, the last two were closed as well.[2]
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National expansion
With Bickford's restaurants opening in New Jersey and Massachusetts, Sam Bickford and his son, Harold, worked over four decades to expand their cafeteria chain throughout the Northeast. As their expansion continued with drive-in restaurants and associated locations in Florida, Pennsylvania and California, they ultimately opened 85 branches. Cheesecake, apple pie and rice pudding were some of the menu favorites.
In the 1930s, union conflicts resulted in vandalism, as noted by Christopher Gray in The New York Times:
- In 1932 the police blamed members of the glaziers union for vandalism against 24 Horn & Hardart and Bickford's restaurants in Manhattan, including the one at 488 Eighth Avenue. Witnesses said that a passenger in a car driving by used a slingshot to damage and even break the plate glass show windows. Glaziers union representatives had complained about nonunion employees installing glass at the restaurants.[1]
Literati
Jack Kerouac sometimes wrote while sitting in Bickford's, and he mentioned the restaurant in Lonesome Traveler. Other famed members of the Beat Generation could be found at night in the New York Bickford's as noted by The New York Times:
- The best minds of Allen Ginsberg's generation "sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's," he wrote in Howl. The Beat Generation muse, Herbert Huncke, practically inhabited the Bickford's on West 42nd Street. Walker Evans photographed Bickford's customers, and Andy Warhol rhapsodized about Bickford's waitresses. Bickford's made its way into the work of writers as diverse as Woody Allen and William Styron.[2]
Andy Warhol's assistant was out getting a coffee-to-go at Bickford's when Warhol was shot. The Mad cartoonist Wally Wood was 21 years old when he worked as a Bickford's busboy shortly after his 1948 arrival in Manhattan.
Eateries evolution
In October 1959, in Peabody, Massachusetts, Harold Bickford introduced a new concept, the Bickford's Pancake House, a specialty family restaurant with an emphasis on the breakfast menu. Over the next three decades, the Bickford's Pancake House chain grew to 30 restaurants throughout New England. By the mid-1990s, there were almost 70 Bickford's restaurants in New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts.[3]
The Bickford's upgrade of 2003 included a focus on take-out, restaurant decor makeovers, the creation of new signs, beer and wine licenses, flat-screen TVs and a change in uniforms. The eateries in Woburn, Sharon, Brockton, Burlington, Framingham, Auburn, and Seekonk, Massachusetts, along with the Salem and Portsmouth, New Hampshire restaurants, were renamed Bickfords Grille, eliminating the apostrophe. Many locations are open 24 hours and offer "Breakfast Anytime," their longtime slogan. The Dutch baby pancake is a specialty of some diners and chains that specialize in breakfast dishes, such as the Oregon-founded The Original Pancake House or Bickfords Grille, which serves a similar pancake, the Baby Apple (with embedded apple slices), and a plain Dutch Pancake. The lunch/dinner menus expanded to include fresh turkey, roasted daily in the restaurants, for turkey dinners, plus turkey club and hot turkey sandwiches.[3]
Bickford's corporate headquarters are now located in Brighton, Boston, Massachusetts. Financial forecaster Jeffrey S. Bickford, the grandson of the founder, maintains a nostalgic and comprehensive website displaying articles, photographs, postcards and a directory of branches past and present.[4]
References
External links
- Bickford's official site
- History and photos of Bickford's, Inc.
- Bickford's Apple Pancake recipe
- Bickfords Grille take-out menu
- Official History of Bickford's Restaurants
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