Harvey House Returns to Kansas City
When trains made a station stop, hungry travelers were given just enough time to de-board, order food, and pay in advance for a meal. As the food was served, the train whistle was blown, forcing passengers to choose between missing a meal or missing the train. Both restaurant owner and train crew received a cut of the resulting revenue.
Contemporary “Harvey Girls” Khanesia Clark, Marticia Burgin, and Piera Ross may not wear the starched white uniforms of old, but still maintain the Harvey House tradition of efficient, cheerful service.
Kansas City’s Harvey House Diner augments its neoclassical railroad terminal ambience with a retro diner sensibility.
Postal agent Fred Harvey spent a lot of time riding the rails in Kansas and Missouri, and he was appalled. Even where blatant scams like this were not in practice, depot facilities, service, and food were substandard or worse. Harvey's efforts to right these wrongs resulted in what became the first chain restaurant in North America: Harvey House, with his first venue opening in 1876. By the early 1880s, primly attired "Harvey Girls" served reliably good meals to weary travelers in pleasant, well-kept surroundings, as Harvey Houses continued to blossom throughout the West and Midwest. But by the mid-20th century, it was a different story. Automobiles and fast food changed the nature of American travel and eating, and as the days of passenger rail service faded, so too did Harvey's restaurants and hotels. The last were quietly sold off during the late 1960s, and Harvey Houses and their Girls became a thing of the past.
Until 2006, that is. Today, the Harvey House legend lives on in Kansas City's Union Station — which was also the home of one of Harvey's original restaurants. Located in the east end of the circa-1914 station, today's Harvey House "Diner" has not only made a successful revival, it has done something unthinkable. This most traditional of eateries, with table service, china and silverware, has replaced Union Station's version of that abomination of American popular food culture known as: the food court.
Marticia Burgin is a 21st-century Harvey Girl, one who wears a neatly ironed colored T-shirt instead of a white smock, one whose irrepressible cheerfulness is accented by an ornamental silver tooth out of hip hop, rather than a white hair ribbon out of the 19th century. When my daughter and I visited the Harvey House Diner in October this year, Marticia told us that she has worked there since it opened in late August. She had never worked in the restaurant business prior to this. I asked her how she likes it.
"I love it," she says.
"We've had visits from former Harvey Girls that bring in their grandkids. Or someone might come in and say, ‘my mother used to be a Harvey Girl'. One even brought in an old menu."
The new Harvey House Diner's entrance.
The Harvey House Diner adjoins the station's Grand Hall and its cavernous 95-foot ceiling. Inside the restaurant, square columns of sculpted terra cotta heft skyward, hemmed by wood-paneled skylights that illuminate the room. Assistant Manager Ron Fields, who runs Harvey House Diner as part of the station's restaurant group, has been in the restaurant business for 27 years, formerly with the likes of Radisson and Ritz-Carlton. Running the Harvey House Diner is not quite like any other gig he's had.
"This is a lot of fun," says Fields. "The environment is not quite so serious. There's a friendly atmosphere."
Harvey House Diner is only one of several restaurants at Kansas City's Union Station, filling a niche somewhere between the hot dog concession on level B and the expensive steak house on the main floor. Manager Fields thinks of it as a place where regular travelers and working folks can get good, reliable food served promptly.
"Workers in the offices here tend to have a narrow window for lunch," he says.
Punctuality has always been a hallmark of the Harvey tradition, starting with Fred Harvey's novel system to make up for the inequities suffered by early rail passengers. Conductors on the trains approaching Harvey's Houses took orders before arrival, dropping them off at depots along the way which would telegraph them up the line. By the time passengers were disembarked and seated, their food was well on the way.
There may no longer be need for such codes, but Fields says that today's staff are similarly kept on their toes by patron's tight office schedules and restricted lunch times. Over the two months they've been open, a growing legion of Harvey House Diner "regulars" is comprised mostly of people who work near the building, plus a few regular travelers. Regular Harvey customers also include workers from the terminal's museums, galleries, and shops. "It's become a meeting place for workers in the businesses in the building," says Fields.
Kansas City's Union Station as it appeared during its renovations in 1998.
A view of the station's Grand Hall taken in 2004 by Roadside correspondent Joe Manning. For a full sized view, click on the photo. For more about Joe, visit his special section on Roadside Online here.
Like other vintage train stations in the country, Kansas City's elegant Beaux-Arts Union Station has seen harder times. In the 1970s, with commuter and passenger rail service at an all-time low, the station finally closed. Disuse and neglect led to continued deterioration throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, but in the 1996, help arrived in the form of a tax-based renovation funded by the nearby metropolitan citizenry of Kansas and Missouri. Today, the station contains attractions such as "Science City," an interactive hands-on kid's museum. There's also a planetarium, the "Extreme Screen" theater, as well as gift shops and traveling exhibits, like the current one on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The menu is mostly contemporary, featuring items like grilled chicken sandwiches, chef salads, and burgers with names like "Union Pacific" and "Burlington Northern." Manager Fields says that one traditional item carried over from the original Harvey's menu is the egg salad sandwich. And, oh yeah... there's the Blue Plate Special. Reportedly, the term "Blue Plate Special" originated with Harvey's use of blue china plates. At today's Harvey House Diner, Blue Plate Specials feature items like southern fried catfish and meatloaf with pan gravy; Fields says that the next menu revision will add more items from the original menus.
The Harvey House Diner reminded me of the bygone world of brass and marble department store restaurants in which I was lucky to dine with my grandparents in the early 1960s. The restaurant, like the station, is replete with traditional architecture – marble floors, sculpted terra cotta cornices, wood trim, sandstone moldings, iron railings and brass doors. In the Harvey House Diner, stainless steel has been added to the mix, with an Art Deco backboard and clock anchoring the end of a counter of stainless swiveling stools.
Goodbye, food court... you’ve just been replaced by a Blue Plate Special.
For more information on Kansas City's Union Station and Harvey House Diner see:
http://www.unionstation.org/intro.cfm or call (816) 460-2020. Hours: M-F 6:30-2:30; Sat-Sun 8:00-4:00.
Dirk Burhans formerly published the Burger Boy and Greasy Spoon news-zines and lives in Columbia, Missouri.
