This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016.
Go to this site today at 105 N. Main St., near the 4th Street corner, and you can have an incomparable cup of coffee in a lively environment, full of life and the warm atmosphere of baked things straight out of the oven.
Had you gone to this same site in 1921 you could have had a peerless cup of coffee in a lively restaurant full of bakery atmosphere, with folks chatting amid a cheerful bumping of plates.
Perhaps things don’t really change that much. Today you’re stepping into Relax, It’s Just Coffee; 90-some years ago it was Kirschbaum’s Restaurant.
Kirschbaum’s credited itself with the first plate lunch in Ohio, after importing the idea from Boston. It had a 15¢ plate lunch plus 5¢ for pie.
When the owners closed the restaurant in 1923 to focus exclusively on candy making, Lillian Kirschbaum was quoted as saying, “We were feeding between 800 and 900 people a day. The greatest number of people we ever fed was 1,729 in two hours when Ringling’s Circus was in the city.”
1979
Dial back your time machine to a little less than 40 years ago and walk through this same door. You’ll be facing a dark room flashing with strobe lights, and walls that are bumping to the Disco beat in a dive bar called Where It’s At.
