The teardown of the long-closed Club Cafe in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, began a few weeks ago.
Acting on a tip, we found this striking scene on what was the interior of the restaurant, its roof removed and open to the sky and weather:
Here’s a brief video of what we found:
Via 66Postcards.com, here’s an image of Club Cafe during its Route 66 peak.
The Guadalupe County Communicator newspaper, based in Santa Rosa, reported last summer the restaurant that graced Route 66 since 1935 would likely be torn down within months. Owner Joseph Campos said the building would have required $750,000 in upgrades to reopen, and he reluctantly decided to tear it down.
Campos told the newspaper the Club Cafe closed for good in 1992, although we found meal orders at the scene dated 1994. Regardless, the restaurant known for its sourdough biscuits, New Mexican cuisine and its trademark “smiling Fat Man” logo on signs and billboards had been shuttered for two decades.
Previous owner Ron Chavez operated the restaurant for nearly 20 years. He later resurfaced as a writer and poet in Taos, New Mexico, and died in October at age 78.
The beginning of the razing took longer than anticipated, but it is truly here.
The two Club Cafe signs will remain standing indefinitely, although their fates may meet the same inglorious end if the land they’re on later is sold.
And on the back wall of the parking lot are these remnants of Club Cafe’s heyday:
(Hat tip: ME Sprengelmeyer)
Ugh! I would have loved to save one of those booths!
Ate their the summer of 1992. Planning on recreating a family road trip with my kids now along rt 66. Sad to see it’s closed. I wanted to redo a family picture out front
There was one of those silver dinners in New Castle, Delaware at one time. It made me feel disgusted when they tore it down and replaced it with a McDonald’s.