Los Angeles Union Station Menu

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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Completed in 1939, Los Angeles Union Station is known as the “last of the great railway stations.” It is also the last station to be built with a Fred Harvey restaurant. This menu’s cover photo is credited to Leo L. Roberg, the same Chicago photographer who took the Alvarado Hotel menu cover photo.

Click image to download a 551-KB PDF of this menu.

Curiously, the Fred Harvey restaurant isn’t visible in the cover photo, though it is visible on the right side of the photo of the station on a Union Pacific menu cover. You would think Fred Harvey would select a photo taken from an angle that emphasized its business. Continue reading →

La Fonda Hotel Menu

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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Designed by Colorado architect Isaac Rapp in what became known as the Pueblo Revival style and opened in 1922, the La Fonda (which means “the inn” in Spanish) helped inspire the city of Santa Fe to pass a 1957 ordinance requiring buildings at the city center to use a similar style. Unfortunately, the hotel almost immediately went bankrupt, so the Santa Fe Railway bought it in 1925 and leased it to Fred Harvey.

Click image to download a 577-KB PDF of this menu.

With the introduction of Indian Detours, which set off from the La Fonda, the hotel boomed and the railway almost immediately expanded it to 190 rooms, hiring local architect John Gaw Meem to design the addition. The interior designs were done by Mary Colter, and traces of her work can still be seen today. (Contrary to some claims, Colter did not design the exterior.) Continue reading →

The Harlequin Room Menu

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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Fred Harvey had restaurants in Chicago’s Dearborn Station (which served Santa Fe, Wabash, and several other railroads), Union Station (which served Burlington, Milwaukee Road, Pennsylvania, and several other railroads), and the Bowl & Bottle Restaurant on the top floor of the 31-story Straus Building. But for its Chicago entry into this menu series, it chose the Harlequin Room in the Palmolive building, a 1929 skyscraper that housed offices for the Colgate-Palmolive Company (which had merged in 1928).

Click image to download a 628-KB PDF of this menu.

Fred Harvey had taken over food services in the Palmolive Building in 1951, including a cafe and cafeteria for building employees. The company’s first-class restaurant was known as the Harlequin Room and Harvey House Grill, with the adjacent Columbine Lounge. While this menu is a cover only, images of the food side of a 1957 menu used at Harvey’s Union Station restaurant are here and here and a menu from the Harlequin Room itself is here. Continue reading →

Alvarado Hotel Menu Cover

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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In the mid-1950s, Fred Harvey introduced a series of nine menus cross-advertising its restaurant chain. We’ve already seen a 1958 dinner menu used at Albuquerque’s Alvarado Hotel that featured Grand Canyon National Park on the cover. This menu in turn features the Alvarado Hotel on its cover.

Click image to download a 711-KB PDF of this menu.

With 120 rooms, the Alvarado was one of Fred Harvey’s largest hotels. Named after an early Spanish explorer, the hotel and adjacent Santa Fe train station (shown on the left side of the postcard below) sprawled over a three-block area of downtown Albuquerque. Unfortunately, it was demolished in 1970; if it had lasted a little longer, it might have been restored like several other Southwestern Fred Harvey hotels since then. Continue reading →

Fred Harvey Navy Insignia Menu

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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Fred Harvey issued several menus with patriotic themes during World War II, including menus helping people identify Army, Navy, and Marine Corps insignia. This one shows officer stripes from ensign to admiral and sailor insignia from boatswain to radio-electrician.

Click image to download a 807-KB PDF of this menu.

The menu was used in the Semaphore Luncheonette in Chicago’s Union Station. Although it calls itself a “fountain service” menu it includes salads and sandwiches. It is undated, but the list of Santa Fe restaurants on the back does not include the Harvey House in Brownwood, Texas, where the Dallas and Houston sections of the California Special met/divided. Those trains went through Brownwood in the middle of the night, which clearly wasn’t enough to keep a Harvey House open, so it closed in 1944. I would therefore date this menu to 1945. Continue reading →

Santa Fe October 1957 Timetable

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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As the number of trains operated by Santa Fe and other railroads shrank, the number of hotels and restaurants operated by Fred Harvey also shrank. An ad in yesterday’s 1956 timetable lists ten hotels and restaurants along the Santa Fe route. Today’s only lists nine.

Click image to download a 34.2-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

The missing hotel is the El Navajo in Gallup, New Mexico. Santa Fe began planning this hotel in 1914, but by the time it opened in 1918, the world was at war and it mainly served wartime traffic for its first few years. After the war, the hotel served tourists until 1957 when it was demolished to make room for a wider Route 66. Continue reading →

Santa Fe May 1956 Timetable

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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With the disappearance of the Scout in 1953 and the California Limited in 1954, most of the trains on Santa Fe’s timetable were streamlined. A major exception was the Grand Canyon, which had heavyweight sleeping cars and other heavyweight equipment between Chicago and Los Angeles.

Click image to download a 37.0-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

Another, lesser-known exception was the California Special, which was a name applied to Houston-California service but which actually consisted of several different trains. First, a heavyweight sleeping car went between Houston and Temple on trains 65 & 66. At Temple, the car was attached to or detached from trains 75 & 76. These met 77 & 78 in Brownswood. Between Brownswood and Clovis, New Mexico the train continued as 75 & 76.

Meanwhile, trains 111 & 112 went between Dallas and Fort Worth carrying a Los Angeles-bound lightweight sleeper. In Fort Worth, this sleeper was attached to or detached from trains 77 & 78, which went to Brownswood, Texas. (These trains were also known as the Angelo.) Continue reading →

Santa Fe April 1955 Timetable

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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Here’s a full, “ticket agent edition” timetable issued a few months after yesterday’s, so the schedules are pretty much the same. The ad on the back cover indicates that Santa Fe was finally offering dining car service for the full length of all of its long-distance trains. The last Santa Fe train that required passengers to eat at dining stations — and perhaps the last train in the country to do so — was the California Limited, which (as noted yesterday) made its last run in June 1954.

Click image to download a 34.0-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

As the back cover of the 1951 timetable indicated, the California Limited had a dining car as far west as La Junta. West of La Junta, the timetable notes, “meals are served at dining stations.” West of La Junta, these stations included Albuquerque, Winslow, Williams, and Los Angeles. Continue reading →

Santa Fe January 1955 Traveler’s Timetable

Posted on by April 1, 2024
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There is no mention of the Scout in this timetable. It isn’t mentioned in the January 1, 1954 timetable either, but is listed in the January 1953 timetable, when it was the same Newton-Albuquerque fragment of its former self described here yesterday. So the name Scout must have been finally discontinued in late 1953. Starting June 6, 1954, the Scout‘s numbers, 1 & 2, were assigned to the San Francisco Chief.

Click image to download a 12.0-MB PDF of this 36-page timetable.

The California Limited was in the January 1954 timetable, but that name is gone from this one (in fact, it made its last run in June 1954 and was gone from the June 1954 timetable). Today’s timetable still shows trains 3 & 4, which were once the numbers of the California Limited, but as coach-only trains between Kansas City and Carlsbad via the Amarillo route. With the California Limited gone, trains 5 & 6 to Fort Worth were now combined with trains 9 & 10, the Kansas City Chief.

Santa Fe September 1951 Timetable

Posted on by April 20, 2024
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In this “ticket agent edition,” the role of the Scout becomes even muddier than in yesterday’s 1949 timetable. In 1951, trains 5 & 6, which went between Chicago and Fort Worth, were combined with trains 3 & 4, the California Limited as far as Kansas City. At Kansas City, the westbound California Limited departed at 8:00 am while the combined Scout/105 left at 8:50 am. At Newton, the two trains were split as before.

Click image to download a 33.6-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

The Scout continued to Albuquerque via Amarillo and there it merged again with the California Limited, which had taken the Raton Pass route. This means the Scout is listed in the table as 3-5-105-3 westbound and 4-106-6-4 eastbound. Continue reading →