Hi-Way Tavern

https://www.theintelligencer.com/news/article/Hi-Way-Cafe-and-Tavern-a-Route-66-haven-10431598.php

Hi-Way Café and Tavern

461-463 East Vandalia

The buildings of the Hi-Way Café and Tavern in Edwardsville were first used for commercial purposes in 1924. In October of that year, Ed McLaughlin built a lunch room onto the front of his house at 461 E. Vandalia Street. A few months later, a grocery business opened in a new building at 463 E. Vandalia that was attached to McLaughlin’s house and luncheonette. The front of the frame grocery building sat at the sidewalk, but the front of the lunchroom was set back some distance from the road. The café was short-lived, and the grocery changed owners every few years until Frank and Dora Catalano bought the place in 1934.

Frank Catalano came to the United States from Palermo, Sicily in 1902. His wife, Dora Sansone Catalano, the daughter of Italian immigrant parents, was born in St. Louis. Frank and Dora were married in Beardstown, Illinois, in 1910 and from that time forward always worked as a team in life and in business.

Frank’s business career began in 1904 with a fruit store in Litchfield, IL. Around 1917, seeing a broader opportunity, Frank and Dora moved to Edwardsville where they established a fruit store at 226 N. Main Street. In 1922 they bought the building which would be the first of many Edwardsville real estate investments for the couple. The family lived above the store in those days.

They left the fruit business in 1928, selling the business to a family member. Frank then ran an ice cream shop, the bar at Czech Hall on Vandalia and a number of other businesses that all prepared him for life’s next adventure on Route 66.

In April, 1934 the Catalanos set up their new business on E. Vandalia Street as a combination tavern, café and packaged liquor store. They called it the Hi-Way Tavern and it was an immediate success. The country was starting to find its way out of the Great Depression, so traffic on Route 66 was on the rise and passing right by their front door. Their business plan was simple, nothing fancy, just good home-cooked food and reasonable prices. Their opening advertising slogan was “Good Cheer with Good Beer.”

Dora ran the kitchen and Frank worked at the bar. As their children grew older, they also worked in the business. In 1950 they decided to expand by buying Ed McLaughlin’s house and bringing the front of his lunch room forward, in line with the tavern. Then the entire building was bricked to blend the multiple additions and buildings. If you look closely at the west side of the building, you can still see the roofline of the old house. The house portion of the new building was not used as part of the business, but rented out as an apartment.

The first advertising for the expanded building is found on December 8, 1950 when an ad for the Hi-Way Café appears for the first time. The café was run as a separate business but there was a connecting door so the tavern could take food orders and the café could provide alcohol. The proprietors of the café were George and Mary Lautner who were relatives of the Catalanos. Mary was a sister-in-law of the Catalano’s daughter, Catherine.

An advertisement in 1951 read: HI-WAY CAFÉ - 461 E. Vandalia Street, parking in rear. We are open 24 hours a day. We have been told by most of our customers that we have the best food in town. Tourists who have been on the road for weeks have paid us the same compliment. WHY DON’T YOU give us a try. Our menu consists of tender large steaks, pan fried chicken, plate lunches, homemade ravioli and sauce, Italian spaghetti and meat balls, breakfasts - fresh rolls every morning, homemade pies, cakes, soups. Respectfully yours…GEORGE AND MARY LAUTNER - Proprietors.

The following year they began to also advertise “Pizza Pie.” It was the first known restaurant in Edwardsville to advertise the dish, followed closely by Rusty’s Café which was owned by another member of the family. (At that time many of the Italian immigrant families in Edwardsville were connected by marriage.) Family lore says that Sam Marfia went to Chicago for a few years and when he returned in the mid-1940s, he brought with him “pizza pie,” never called simply “pizza.” The usual toppings at that time were cheese and anchovies.

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Frank and Dora retained ownership of the building after their retirement in 1959. Dora died the next year, six months short of their 50th wedding anniversary. Frank died in 1964.

The Lautner family continued to run the café until the early 1960s when it was purchased by Vi and Dean Watson who called it Vi and Dean’s Hi-Way Café. The Watsons would operate the cafe and Clem Graham the tavern through the end of Edwardsville’s Route 66 years.

The Hi-Way Café and Tavern were never upscale places, but they were known for friendly service and good food, especially their spaghetti and middle-of-the-night biscuits and gravy. After Route 66 was moved out of Edwardsville, it became a neighborhood roadhouse where ball teams met after a game on a hot summer night, or folks stopped in for something to eat after the bars closed. It was not unlike the fictional “Cheers” in Boston as it became a place where “everybody knows your name.”

In recent decades, the café was closed and the tavern expanded into the former restaurant space. Today the business is closed and the building for sale. Wouldn’t it be great to see it restored as a 1950s era café and tavern on Historic Route 66?