1969 Maumee Valley Tourist Ads – Part 3

Summer and August are quickly winding down, so today I’ll wrap up my mini-series on some of the 1969 Plain Dealer ads for various restaurants and inns in the Toledo area.

The 1969 ad for The Old Plantation in Maumee, Ohio noted that it was famous for fine food for more than 125 years.

Here’s a vintage photo of the establishment, circa 1945, courtesy of OhioMemory.org.

The website notes, "The commercial building, built in 1836, has a view of the Maumee River. Originally called the Commercial Building, it housed a hotel, restaurants, and other commercial businesses throughout the years. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.”

The building was hone to many successful businesses, most recently to Dégagé Jazz Cafe (although it appears to have closed).

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The ad for the popular Barnes Restaurant in Defiance noted that it was open 6 days a week, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with a dinning room and a carry-out window. It dated back to at least the mid-1940s (which is the oldest reference to it I could find online.)

Here’s a nice ad with a photo of the restaurant, from the flick river.com page of Tim Tonjes that features great vintage Defiance, Ohio images.

And here's the location (sigh) today.

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The 1969 ad for The Sherbrooke notes that it served STEAKS CHOPS SEA-FOOD. (The word ‘chops' always make me think of the old-time New York eateries that were the settings for so many of Damon Runyon’s great stories). 

The Sherbrooke was located at the intersection of its same name street and Monroe in Toledo, Ohio.

Today the location is home to a popular restaurant called The Beirut. Here’s the link to its website, and here’s what it looks like, courtesy of Google Maps.

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One of the most famous businesses with an ad on that 1969 page of the Action Tab was the Town House Motel and its Aku-Aku Polynesian Room. It was like a little bit of Las Vegas, right in Toledo.

Here’s a vintage matchbook. I love the stylized graphics.

And here’s a vintage postcard, courtesy of critiki.com.

Courtesy critic.com

Rather than poach more of other websites’ images of Aku-Aku or their carefully researched histories, I’ll just provide a link to its page on the Tiki Central website, as well as this one on the critiki.com website.