Flashback Friday: Downtown Woolworth store had one of Wichita’s most-loved lunch counters
Welcome to Flashback Friday, a feature that runs Fridays on Kansas.com and Dining with Denise. It’s designed to take diners back in time to revisit restaurants that they once loved but that now live only in their memories — and in The Eagle’s archives.
This week’s featured restaurant was the longest-lasting lunch counter in downtown Wichita and operated for nearly 80 years.
In 1950s Wichita, one of the most coveted seats over the lunch hour was a metal-backed, swiveling stool in a five-and-dime store.
It was the era of the lunch counter — when people who worked or shopped downtown could grab a quick, no-fuss lunch and not spend too much money — and lots of downtown Wichita buildings had one. There was a lunch counter in the basement of the Kress & Co. building at 224 E. Douglas. There was one in the McLellan Stores Co., a five-and-dime at 121 E. Douglas. And the W.T. Grant Co. department store at 201 E. Douglas also had a lunch counter in the basement.
And there was, of course, Wichita’s most famous lunch counter in the Dockum Drug Store at 111 E. Douglas, where in 1958, a group of students conducted a historic civil rights sit-in.
But one Wichita lunch counter outlasted them all: the Woolworth’s Luncheonette, which featured a 90-foot lunch counter lined with 48 stools that was situated in the southeast section of the five-and-dime store. And Woolworth sold a little bit of everything, from bathmats to brassieres, from gardenia plants to tea kettles.
The lunch counter existed from the time that F.W. Woolworth opened in 1912 at 205 E. Douglas until it closed on Dec. 22, 1990, a month ahead of the 12,000 square-foot store. The building, which was on the south side of Douglas between Market and Broadway, was demolished in the 1990s, and the one-time Woolworth’s site is now home to Chester I. Lewis Reflection Square Park.
But by the 1980s, the Woolworth lunch counter — the last one still operating in downtown Wichita — was frequented mostly by a core group of regulars, some of whom would visit every day.
They loved chatting with the longtime waitresses, who knew many of their customers on a first-name basis. They loved the burgers, the hot apple pie, the fish sandwiches and the chocolate malts. Many still remember the Woolworth cheesecake, the ham salad sandwiches, the hot dogs served on toasted buns, and the Salisbury steak.
One of those regulars, who was addicted to the grilled cheese sandwich made with dripping American cheese, told The Wichita Eagle in 1986 that he’d nicknamed the counter “poor man’s Petroleum Club” — a dig at the fancy members-only supper club that operated across the street.
The counter — advertised by a recognizable sign posted on the front of the building that read “Try Woolworth’s Luncheonette” — was at its zenith in the 1950s, when those 48 metal-backed stools would turn over three or four times an hour. People who wanted to dine at the counter would stand behind the stools and wait for the previous patron to stand up and leave. In addition to downtown workers, the counter was also frequented by families and young people who would ride the bus downtown then hop off near the Woolworth store for some shopping and a delicious treat.
But over the decades, Wichita’s tastes changed. Fast-food competition drew people away from downtown, and big box retailers like Wal-Mart drew people away from downtown discount stores like Woolworth. The year before the closure of the downtown Woolworth was announced, other Kansas towns like Newton, Ottawa and Garden City lost their stores.
Another Wichita Woolworth store, which also had a lunch counter, lasted at the Ken-Mar Shopping Center at 13th and Oliver until 1993. Other Woolworth stores also had operated in Eastgate Plaza at Kellogg and Rock and at Westway Plaza at Pawnee and Seneca.
In 1997, the Woolworth Corporation closed its remaining 400 stores and laid off 9,200 workers. The downtown Woolworth building sat vacant until 1993, when the city of Wichita bought it.
But the following year, the city announced plans to tear the building down, saying it hadn’t been able to find a buyer. The city decided to build a “vest-pocket park” on the site, and in 1996, city leaders commissioned artist Georgia Gerber to create a bronze sculpture of a lunch counter that would be installed at the park.
Though the statue was intended as a tribute to those who participated in the Dockum sit-in, it’s said that at least one civil rights sit-in also happened at the Woolworth lunch counter.
The soda fountain statue stayed in the park until 2022, when Chester I. Lewis Park got a major makeover. It’s now in storage, awaiting re-installation in Finlay Ross Park, which sits east of Century II and is scheduled to get a makeover of its own.
On the eve of the lunch counter’s closing in 1990, a Wichita Eagle reporter sat at the lunch counter and talked to the waitresses as they waited on their final customers.
One of the longtime regulars, Tom, presciently predicted that after the lunch counter closed, downtown would become a ghost town. Tom worked nearby at Dutch’s Steak House and had stopped by to get one last burger.
In response, one of the waitresses — named Bonnie Knabe — said she might have to go looking for work at the competition.
“I don’t think McDonald’s would be much like this,” the Eagle quoted Bonnie as saying. “They’ve got those machines that do the work for you.
“But they say they’re hiring senior citizens because they can’t trust those kids. Maybe I’ll try it in the spring and see what it’s like.”
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