In an effort to keep its restaurant mix current with the times, Fred Harvey began operating the Old Spinning Wheel, a popular restaurant in Hinsdale, a suburb of Chicago, in 1954. The photo on the cover of this menu doesn’t show it, but the 500-seat restaurant featured a rustic design filled with antiques including, as the name suggests, an old spinning wheel.

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The restaurant had been started in 1935 by Charles and Vacia Duncan, who opened a larger version on 20 acres of gardens in 1942. The years 1935 and 1942 don’t sound like auspicious times to open or expand a restaurant, but their formula was so successful that by 1952 it was considered one of the 50 most popular restaurants in the U.S. When the Duncan’s retired in 1954, they leased it to Fred Harvey, who used menus like this one to make people outside of the western Chicago suburbs aware of the location. Continue reading →

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.

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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 →

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.

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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 →