The Root Beer Stand at Madison

Last week, I posted a 1964 ad for the Lorain A&W Root Beer stand that was located on West Erie Avenue at Madison. The stand first appeared in the Lorain Telephone Company directory in 1959, and in the Lorain City Directory in 1960.

It had several addresses, which only adds to the confusion about this restaurant.

The initial phone book address for the A&W restaurant was 2537 W. Erie, while the city directory just said it was on the corner of Madison and West Erie. Eventually, the city directory address was 2600 West Erie.

Did it really hop from one side of West Erie to another? It doesn’t seem likely, but I can’t say for sure. I suspect that since that area of town was outside regular Lorain city limits for so long, the addresses were probably still evolving or being decided on.

But there’s one thing I do know: there was a root beer stand at the corner of Madison and West Erie long before A&W.

How do I know? My mother remembers it from the 1930s, when she was growing up.

“My father took us there in his Reo," she recalls. "Root beer in a frosted glass was a real treat."

What did the root beer stand look like?

“It was a small building. Cars would park around it in a circle.”

1952 Aerial view of Madison and West Erie

Mom remembers that the stand was run by the Buchanan family. They lived right next door on Madison, to the south, according to the city directory.

It was a seasonal business. “It would get shuttered for the winter,” she noted.

According to the 1939-1940 edition of the National City Directory for Lorain, it was a Stewart's Root Beer stand. Evelyn Buchanan was listed as the manager.

It makes sense that the stand was affiliated with Stewart’s. Stewart’s Root Beer got its start in Mansfield, Ohio.

Anyway, it's difficult to know how long the root beer stand had been in business at that location when Mom was going there, or how long it lasted before A&W Root Beer came to town. The location was outside of town, and just not included in the city directories until the late 50s/early 1960s. (The standalone National city directory was the only book to include it; the regular Polk directories did not.) Plus the stand probably didn’t have a phone in the early days, making a phone book timeline impossible.

Today the southeast corner of Madison and West Erie is a forlorn sight (below).

Nevertheless, pleasant memories of root beer served there in a frosted glass remain.

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Root Beer and drive-in root beer stands have been a favorite topic on this blog. Besides my posts about A&W and Dog ’N Suds, I’ve written about Frostie Root Beer, the Frostop drive-in out in Huron, and the Richardson Root Beer stand on Oberlin Avenue.