People who passed the Seminary restaurant a couple of Wednesdays ago on their way to work may have noticed the hastily lettered sign on the door, or the absence of people pushing in and out carrying plain coffee and toasted rye or an English muffin to go. But I hadn’t, so I stopped by late Wednesday night after a community meeting. I drove up Lincoln and parked across the street, just north of Fullerton, between the newsstand and the Fiesta Mexicana, so sure of getting the $7.95 butt steak medium rare with homemade soup, salad, and cottage cheese instead of the potato that at first I didn’t notice the place was dark. When I did, I trotted across Lincoln to read the Closed sign on the bar entrance.
He motioned me inside. I said I had come by for the butt steak dinner.
Back then, I said, I’d also been there once when members of the Lincoln Park Builders Club, a group of realtors and developers, had come in after a fishing trip and given the Seminary chefs their catch.
“We just weren’t getting the breakfast and lunch business. People’s eating habits have changed. As this neighborhood has changed from families to a lot more single people, you get more people eating on the run or ordering a pizza to be delivered.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Everybody always stepped aside for the busboys, really men in their 40s or 50s, clearing and setting up tables, usually well in advance of the waitresses. The waitresses, typically older women dressed in black and white, could anticipate a person’s order after only two or three visits.
The night-side business had held up, Louie said. “At night, at the bar, we would get mostly businesspeople from the bars around here, when they closed–Kelly’s Pub on Webster, the Golden Ox, Zum Deutschen Eck, the waiters and waitresses from the Brauhaus; sure, Sterch’s and other places up and down Lincoln Avenue. They’d come in, eat something, have a drink, and go.”
The next morning, before eight, a neighbor rang my doorbell to tell me the Seminary had closed. “It was their landlord,” he said with certainty. “Raised their rent so much this time, they had to close. Just like Woolworth’s.”
