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By Joan Johns, Class of 2008
Tour Director, Union Station: Icon of a Great Age

Have you been to Union Station recently? Since the black curtain in the Great Hall was taken down? Were you hoping to find a Fred Harvey restaurant there?

A $22 million restoration was completed by Goettsch Partners in 2021. It didn’t bring back a Fred Harvey, but it did replicate the original look of the 200-foot-long Great Hall. And, there’s no black curtain.

Union Station, completed in 1925 during the “golden age” of rail travel in America, is a prized example of Beaux Arts design by Graham Anderson Probst & White. In his 1909 Plan, Daniel Burnham conceived of an important rail station west of the Chicago River. And we have it.

Amenities like restaurants completed the station plan. In the 1900s, restaurants like Fred Harvey were a significant competitive feature. At Union Station, the black curtain concealed the Fred Harvey lunch counter area after a 1980 fire. Recently renovated, it won’t become a Fred Harvey, but you can look forward to food service there.

So…why was a Fred Harvey restaurant so important? Fred Harvey was an innovator in the food industry. By the 1880s, Fred Harvey restaurants were positioned along the Santa Fe railroad route between Chicago and Los Angeles. 

Harvey’s promise was a large menu of good food for fair prices served in a fine-dining atmosphere with white table cloths, polished silver, fresh coffee, and courteous service. On this quality promise he named his eating houses Fred Harvey. 

Using his own name as the name of the restaurant, Fred Harvey was an early example of branding. His “Harvey Way” operating methods became legendary. Harvey hired well-bred women as waitresses. You might have heard of the “Harvey Girls”? They were a model for well-trained, dependable, courteous service in formal sit-down dining rooms (the Gold Lion at Union Station) as well as adjacent casual, curved-counter dining spaces (Red Lion)…an early “diner”. 

Harvey wouldn’t let his servers be called “waitresses”…they were “Harvey Girls”. They were intelligent, personable, well trained and well treated in the “Harvey Way”.  Codes for uniforms, hairdos, makeup, and behaviors were strict. No gum; no jewelry; no makeup. The fictionalized story of these very real ladies became a 1940s film “The Harvey Girls”, starring Judy Garland.

After Fred Harvey’s death in 1901, his sons and grandsons ran the business. They cut a deal with the Chicago Union Station that when it opened, in 1925, the Fred Harvey entity would operate all of the restaurants and retail spaces. There would be a drugstore with a soda fountain, a barbershop, and a beauty salon and they would sell books, perfumes, and toys.  

Oh, by the way, have you ever met a “Harvey Girl”?? You might have on a recent Chicago Architecture Center “Union Station: Icon of a Great Age” tour.  A woman who had been teary eyed as she listened during the tour identified herself as a former “Harvey Girl”. She spoke with pride about her experience and explained how the “Harvey Way” had taught her people skills, time management, money management, self-discipline, and pride in her accomplishments. 

Print Sources:  

“Appetite for America, How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West” by Stephen Fried, Bantom Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York 2010; 

 “The Harvey Girls, Women Who Opened the West” by Lesley Poling-Kempes, Paragon House, New York 1989; 

“The Harvey Girls, the Women Who Civilized the West” by Juddi Morris, Walker Publishing Company, Inc. 1994

“On Track with the Past” by Jeffrey Steele, Chicago Tribune, September 20, 1992 at 12:00 am.

Online Resources:

Curbed Chicago: https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/8/7/20757795/union-station-development-food-hall-fred-harvey

ArchitectureChicago PLUS http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/2013/07/behind-black-curtain-union-stations.html

Chicago History Museum: https://www.chicagohistory.org/meals-by-fred-harvey/

Cowgirl: https://cowgirlmagazine.com/wild-women-of-the-west-the-harvey-girls-2/

Xanterra Travel: https://www.xanterra.com/stories/who-were-the-harvey-girls-and-why-do-they-matter/

Chicagology: https://chicagology.com/?s=fred++harvey+union+station for more more more with great photos

Preservation Chicago: https://preservationchicago.org/chicago-union-station-power-house/

National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-harvey-girls-increasing-opportunity.htm

Google: Union Station; Fred Harvey; Harvey Girls for photos and fun

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