#ARISTON CAFE LITCHFIELD IL FULL#
A full service menu from 1938 offered diners porterhouse steak at 85 cents, bacon and eggs or a BLT for a quarter, and a glass of Budweiser for 15 cents. Adam installed two gas pumps in front in hopes of attracting more customers, a practice typical of Route 66 restaurants during this period. The café opened its doors along Route 66 on July 5, 1935. Vasel built the current Ariston Café at a construction cost of $3,625.36. In 1936, the State of Illinois reported that Route 66 was the heaviest traveled long-distance highway in the State. Even during the Depression, traffic on this well paved road remained steady. Louis, at that time America’s seventh largest city. The Illinois segment of the Mother Road at this time was a major transportation corridor between Chicago, then the nation’s second largest city, and St. After 1930, the highway realigned to the east, bypassing Carlinville and going straight through Litchfield, which prompted the move of the café to Litchfield. The original Ariston Café opened in 1924 in nearby Carlinville, a town along the original Route 66. He also seemed keenly aware of the business possibilities of Route 66 in Illinois. As a veteran restaurateur, he knew the viability of a good restaurant even in hard times. A service sector start-up such as a café remained a relatively inexpensive venture, and founder Pete Adam was no novice. Upon closer examination, however, their venture was far from rash.ĭuring the Depression, even though millions of people were out of work, some pockets of the economy remained afloat. Starting up a business in the depths of the Great Depression during the 1930s might strike most people as foolhardy at best, but this is exactly what Pete Adam and his partner Tom Cokinos did in 1935, when they opened the Ariston Café along Route 66 in Litchfield, Illinois.
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