Sunday, March 21, 2010

And before it was the Airport Tavern...


The very first topic on this blog (almost a year ago) concerned Mutt & Jeff's (one of my favorite restaurants) and how it used to be the Sherwood Inn. I followed that up a few days later with a second entry noting that before it was the Sherwood Inn, it was the Airport Tavern beginning around 1942.

Well, it took almost a year, but I can now add another nugget of information to the history of Mutt & Jeff's building. I discovered that the 3700 Oberlin Avenue address first showed up in the city directory in 1940 as a place where tourists could rent a room for the night. (See city directory entry at left.) It kind of makes sense, since at time there wasn't much on Oberlin Avenue in that neck of the woods, and besides, it was outside Lorain city limits. (The 3650 Oberlin Avenue address disappeared from the directory by the time that the Airport Tavern was in business, leaving just the tavern and the farmhouse on Oberlin Avenue near the city limits.