anyone remember Woolworths Dept Store in the 50's (i guess) when they had small eateries?

The lunch counters here were full service from soup to nuts in most 5/10's, sometimes occupying whole or two sides of the building in larger stores like in the Downtown stores.

Regarding the sewing machines. Perhaps you might want to google sewing machines. Think in terms of TFT displays, USB, and programmable functions. My second up from the bottom Huskavarna has an array of features and programmed functions that make my late 60's vintage Elna look like a relic from the stone age. The top of the line models look closer to something that you'd find in a test and instrumentation catalog from HP/Agilent. Nothing of the sort of your great grandmother's pedaled Singer.  

I remember the one in Festus, Mo very well. Main St was only 5 blocks from our house and I used to walk down to Woolworth's several times a week just to check out the toys as kid. Bought a cheap ring there for my first girlfriend when I got a little older. Mom even worked there for a few years. It had a full service lunch counter with a few booths at the front of the store. I recall they still served lunch there in 1973 when I left. No idea when it eventually closed.

I loved Woolworth's. It represents a great time in America.

Heard in Newark, N.J., sometime in the late 1950s and early '60's:

"Bing...Bing...Bing. Attention shoppers, there is no waiting in our downstairs cafeteria. Fresh, one-quarter pound hamburgers..."

   The Bear

Were their restaurants called "Harvest House" ? or was that somewhere else

The Woolworth's in the Nora Plaza Shopping Center (northside suburban Indianapolis) offered hot dogs, on a buttered, toasted, split-top roll.  Delicious with a fountain Coke.
 
When I was a child, first day of school at our grade school was only a half day.  We always got our list of school supplies on that first day. So, it was our ritual for my mother to take me to Woolworth's, armed with my list, to buy the supplies.  We always had lunch at the Woolworth's counter.
 
And then we'd walk a few doors down to the drug store (Hook's - a now defunct chain) to get an empty cigar box in which to place the school supplies.  

ces1948


Were their restaurants called "Harvest House" ? or was that somewhere else

Acording to WikiAnswers, you are correct:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_name_off_woolworths_restaurant

6star

ces1948


Were their restaurants called "Harvest House" ? or was that somewhere else

Acording to WikiAnswers, you are correct:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_name_off_woolworths_restaurant

Another Source:

Mall Eatery Was Inside Woolworth’s

Q: Back in the early to mid-’70s, I remember a restaurant in the Palm Beach Mall. It was a nice place that served brunch on Sundays and had a clown do magic for us kids. What was the name of that place?
- Rich W., Jupiter
A: This question brought some nostalgic smiles from some of our Baby Boomer staffers, not to mention Rachelle Crain, marketing director for the Palm Beach Mall. She remembers Harvest House, as the restaurant was called, and the clowns who did magic and made balloon animals for the kids. Crain grew up in
West Palm Beach and recalls going to the place as a teen in the 1970s with her
four siblings.
The restaurant chain had a contract to operate inside Woolworth’s. The Woolworth’s at the Palm Beach Mall stood where the Designer Shoe Warehouse, Musician’s Superstore and Borders are now, and the Harvest House inside had a separate entrance into the mall, Crain said. She said the restaurant moved out
around 1994. The Woolworth’s shut down in 1997 when the chain closed all its 400 remaining five-and-dime stores.
Woolworth’s later morphed into Foot Locker. We tried to get more historical information about Harvest House, but its press people didn’t return several calls.
 

Posted in Eliot Kleinberg March 29, 2006 at 10:35 am.  
1 comment

  Sorry Char-lee that I didn't realize that this was your first post on Roadfood.

   Welcome! 

  This particular thread brings up so many great memories of my grandparents and immediate family. Growing up in the west/ central part of the U.S.A.

  Woolworth's and Wallgreen's were an integral part of growing up in that era. The counter service was usually brash and efficient. The cooks outfitted in stained T-shirts and paper hats splotched with grease and God knows what else. But the food was always hot and the ice cream always cold.  What was there to complain about??

  JMHO

  David O.

Maybe the Harvest House brand came later. I seem to remember the one mentioned above in the Palm Beach Mall and also one in perhaps the Johnson City, Tn mall in the early mid 90's. But as I mentioned earlier the one from my youth during the 50's had a few basic sandwiches, ice cream and fountain drinks. There may have been several different versions of the Woolworth's lunch counter/restaurant depending on store size and time period.

My husband recalls the 60s Woolworth's lunch counter with fondness. He's told me about monthly shopping trips downtown with his mother, always having a burger and a malt for lunch at the Woolworth's on Public Square.
We didn't have a Woolworth's in our suburb, but we had a Kresge's, and we did the same ritual as rumaki - getting everything on the list either the first day of school or on the first following Saturday (except I got a new zippered pencil pouch every other year).
Kresge's had the balloons to pop for for drink prices, too, and I remember ordering a "diet plate" of tuna salad in a tomato, a hard boiled egg, and a scoop of cottage cheese and being chided by the waitress because "little girls don't need to diet."

And on the sewing machine topic, my mother worked in the fabric department of JC Penney's during the early 70s. She made most of our clothes, and I didn't appreciate custom tailoring as a child - I just saw it as homemade clothes - but as an adult, I use a lot of the knowledge she passed on. My daughter recently picked up a second-hand Singer, and proudly showed me her first set of curtains last night!

Ahhh Palm Beach Mall................
That WAS the place to be but now its closed........

I remember the tail end of those little diners in stores. The concept for some reason died out completely by about 1980. Sears would have one. I remember as a kid in the mid 1970's going in the local Sears that sold peanuts, cashews and other kinds of nuts and confections that they made on site. (This was the Southbrook Mall on Shelby Dr. in Memphis Tn.) The Sears is still there, but I think the peanut place is long gone.

Probably the conscept died out due to the fact that it was difficult to do retail and food, and food did not turn that great of a profit. I doubt the food there was very good in the first place. There are McDonalds and possibly other fast food in a lot of Wal Marts and other chains like that today.

until the mid-80's the seattle woolworths still had it's lunch counter that also served killer breakfasts, as well as a food court that sold take out stuff like pizza by the slice, nuts and fried chicken, and a very elaborate air-popped popcorn system that popped the corn and "buttered" each kernel individually and seperated out all of the old maids. i loved that popcorn.... they sold it in various sized bags, i always bought the 3-foot bag :) in 1975, they were still mixing cokes by hand, no postmix dispenser.

In the early to mid 50's ours had a hard wood floor and when I had some change in my pocket, a egg salad sandwich and a cherry coke did the trick.

tusti


In the early to mid 50's ours had a hard wood floor and when I had some change in my pocket, a egg salad sandwich and a cherry coke did the trick.

 
They used to sweep those wooden floors with a dust mop that had some oil on them. Talk about a tinder box! It's a wonder that more of them didn't burn down!

I remember the WW in Chicago on Clark Street that my mom would take me on special days. We walked usually to the post office and then ended up at WW for shopping and lunch. This was in the mid 60's. I loved to sit at the counter. I don't remember the food, just the experience of a young son out with his mom.

Foodbme

tusti


In the early to mid 50's ours had a hard wood floor and when I had some change in my pocket, a egg salad sandwich and a cherry coke did the trick.

 
They used to sweep those wooden floors with a dust mop that had some oil on them. Talk about a tinder box! It's a wonder that more of them didn't burn down!

Most likely that oil was O-Cedar.  I remember my mother used the red O-Cedar oil for waxing and polishing everything made of wood.  http://www.ocedar.com/main.taf?p=5