Knoxville is one of few cities that saved and restored their S&W Cafeterias

Courtesy Knox Heritage

The S&W Cafeteria in Knoxville.

The new S&W Grand at 516 South Gay Street provides a glimpse of an earlier era.

The original glazed terra cotta art deco facade of the building, the only one of its kind in Knoxville, beckons alluringly, undeniably authentic and redolent of another time. Pushing through the restaurant's wood and glass revolving doors, built from scratch of the same tree species cut in the same neck of the woods as their original predecessors, adds tactile confirmation of the building's authenticity.

Inside, the terrazzo flooring on the street level is the same as was there when the S&W opened more than 70 years ago. Ornate ceiling panels, crown molding and seashell mezzanine wall treatments provide graceful touches of sheer opulence.

The original steps of a curving wooden staircase take you to a mezzanine level with additional seating and a second bar. Up another stairway and you're on the top floor, with 4,200 square feet of marbled banquet space.

One can almost feel the ghostly presence of diners past.

It's been 28 years since Knoxville's S&W Cafeteria closed, going on 73 years since it first opened at the 500-block location in 1937. We are lucky to have it. It was saved only because of the initiative and concerted efforts of Knox Heritage Ð principally John Craig, Kim Trent, Finbarr Saunders and Faris Eid Ð and the cooperation of Mayor Bill Haslam and Regal Cinemas executives.

Correspondence with historic preservation professionals in most of the other cities where classic early S&Ws once stood turned up only a few of these oldest art deco S&W buildings. Even the very first one, once standing in downtown Charlotte where Sherrill and Webber started their namesake dining enterprise, is gone and nearly forgotten. The only S&Ws retaining their glory-day grandeur are ours and Asheville's; however, Roanoke, Va., has retained a few vestiges of its original 1930s era S&W and also has a development firm intent on restoring the Star City's 1950s era S&W.

The building that housed Roanoke's oldest S&W, located at 412 South Jefferson Street, has for many years served as Davidsons Clothing for Men. It has been altered significantly by Davidsons and by previous tenants. The exterior has lost its mid 30s S&W style, but recent renovation efforts restored a few key elements of the interior that were still intact.

"The Davidsons valued what they found there," says Marshall McMillan-Zapf, a designer and project manager for Hill Studio, the Roanoke architectural firm that renovated the space for the Roanoke haberdashery a few years ago. "The core things that we retained were the steps of the grand staircase, some railing pieces which we used and then replicated as necessary, some ornaments on the cornice of the interior, the terrazzo floor and the color scheme that all that suggested."

The building that Roanoke's S&W operation moved to in 1951 is in good shape and renovation is being planned for it, albeit not as a restaurant. Roanoke-based development group 16 W. Church LLC, named for the address of the building, has purchased the 37,000-square-foot structure which features terrazzo flooring and limited art deco appointments. It currently houses the Downtown Sports Club. John Garland, lead development partner and president of architectural firm Design Spectrum, says the group intends to reproduce as much of the original architecture as possible in creating a "healthy living" center in the space. The developers' preferred tenants would include such businesses as a grocery store, a pharmacy, light food service facilities and healthcare professionals. Capitalizing on the S&W name, it will be called The StayWell Marketplace.

Garland indicated that he has fond memories of eating at the S&W in this building as a youngster when "the art deco architecture was intact and very nice." The developer made a public request to Roanokers for photos from the cafeteria's early days to facilitate historically accurate renovation.

"We offered $500 for a picture, but never received any," says Garland.Ê"We subsequently did our own research and found an old photograph that gave us the exterior information that we were looking for.ÊThe original architectural elements are for the most part still in place and will all be restored.Ê On the front facade the original lighting will be restored, as well as the original finishes brought back to life. The original cafeteria sign, that is no longer there, will be mimicked with our new building sign. Interior elements will be restored, including uncovered terrazzo floors, the plaster dome ceiling over the spiral staircase, replacing removed historic light fixtures, restoring aluminum railing on the spiral staircase and other finishes."

Asheville's old Patton Avenue S&W building has been open for nearly two years. Developer Steve Moberg restored the 1929 site to something very close in appearance and spirit to the original designed by noted architect Douglas Ellington. Moberg co-opted the S&W initials to name his new version of the restaurant Ð the S&W Steak & Wine. Upstairs in the renovated building is Satchel's Martini Bar, and adjacent to the main restaurant is Sadie's, a casual seafood cafŽ. The Asheville Comedy Club, a new tenant in the building, opened last month in the basement.

Knoxville's S&W Grand is a welcome addition to the very small family of restored early era S&Ws. It is well named. Grand is a word you feel almost compelled to use in describing the place. Grand is how you feel inside this gorgeous, lovingly restored space. Grand is how all Knoxvillians should feel for having managed to keep such a treasure standing.

The Rise and Fall of the American Cafeteria

There were a few self-service restaurants in the U.S. as early as the 1880s, but the idea caught on during the popular and well-publicized 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. One enterprising fair entrepreneur, John Kruger, offered fairgoers an American version of the smorgasbords he had experienced in Sweden. Though Kruger's eatery was a buffet-style restaurant, the term "cafeteria" came to be used to refer to such self-service eating establishments. The word, Spanish for "coffee shop," was an odd choice for restaurants offering full menus, but, nevertheless, it became inextricably attached to this form of restaurant. Five years after the Exposition, New York City-based restaurateurs Samuel and William Childs began furnishing their customers trays and had them progress through a "tray line" in their popular, low-priced chain of self-service restaurants in the Big Apple. This innovation became one of the definitive characteristics of the modern cafeteria.

In addition to capturing the fascination with mechanization and efficiency that marked the assembly-line zeitgeist of the late-19th/early 20th century (S&W's Frank Sherrill would later say the S&W operation was "Évery similar to an automobile assembly line"), cafeterias brought together people of disparate backgrounds and offered them diverse and numerous menu options. It was in the South that "cafeterias found full flourish" notes John Mariani, food correspondent and author of America Eats Out, an illustrated history of American eateries.

"It was more democratic eating than anything else available in restaurants at the time," says Mariani. "There was a real range of people Ð businessmen and ladies, children, families. Not only did you have Southern classics like fried chicken, but chances are you would also have London broil, Salisbury steak, Swedish meatballs, Italian spaghetti with meatballs, even some Chinese food. It was amazing the range that was offered even early on in the cafeterias. You had to have 20 or 30 items to choose from and to most Americans, even the wealthiest, that was akin to being a child in a candy shop.

"Prior to the cafeterias, what you typically had at the lower end of gastronomy were sleazy diners and lunch counters for blue-collar men. The cafeterias provided something that was far more sanitary and far more welcoming. Because there was a corporation behind it, there were high hygiene standards. Also there were personal conduct standards for cafeteria employees."

The S&W story began when North Carolinians Frank O. Sherrill and Fred R. Webber opened their first S&W Cafeteria in Charlotte, N.C. in the summer of 1920. That first S&W in Charlotte was successful from the very beginning, and soon Sherrill and Webber were building more in other major southern cities. Webber sold his interest in the growing chain after a few years, but Sherrill continued opening cafeterias.

By 1934 S&Ws were located in the downtowns of Charlotte, Raleigh, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Roanoke, Atlanta and the nation's capital. The Washington, D.C. S&W was housed within the historic Washington Building, taking up an entire floor of the huge structure. Most of the other early restaurants were free-standing buildings featuring the elegant, highly decorative art deco style that graced much new architecture in the 1920s and '30s. Charlotte architect Martin Evans Boyer designed many of them, including the one in Knoxville. More than just a place to eat, the S&W Cafeterias held special events, civic club meetings, and family nights when children could watch cartoons while their parents shopped.

The S&W chain continued to grow for the next couple of decades. Greensboro, N.C., and Lynchburg, Va., came in the 1940s and '50s. By the mid-1960s, there were 16 S&W Cafeterias.

The "malling" of America in the 1960s and '70s caused business in the downtown S&Ws to drop. The operation began closing its least successful downtown restaurants and opening others in suburban malls and other shopping centers. Most of the later suburban locations of the 1960s and 1970s were less architecturally significant structures than their predecessors. Eventually, fast food restaurants coupled with new suburban full-service chain restaurants brought about the decline of cafeterias in general and the demise of the S&W chain.

S&W Cafeterias played a significant role in 20th century Southern cultural history. The recently restored S&Ws continue that influence into the 21st.

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