The Great Rivers and Routes Tourism Bureau of southwest Illinois recently named the Ariston Cafe in Litchfield, the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle in Collinsville and Wildey Theatre in Edwardsville as Local Legends during the bureau’s tourism summit.
The summit was held at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and attended by about 250 people, the Alton Telegraph reported.
The Ariston Café was established in Carlinville in 1924 — also along what turned out to be Route 66 — but moved to Litchfield in 1935. It is considered the oldest still-operating restaurant on Route 66. The Ariston was inducted into the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame in 1992 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. Marty and Kara Steffens, co-owners of the Maverick Steaks & Spirits restaurant in Litchfield, purchased the restaurant in 2018 from longtime owners Nick and Demi Adam.
The Catsup Bottle actually is a 170-foot-tall water tower south of an alignment of Route 66 in Collinsville. W.E. Caldwell Co. built it in 1949 for the now-closed G.S. Suppinger catsup bottling plant, makers of Brooks Catsup. The Catsup Bottle Preservation Group was able to save it in 1995 and restore it. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. Franklin “Al” Bieri, owner of Mississippi River Construction Co. of nearby O’Fallon, Illinois, purchased the landmark in 2015.
The Wildey Theatre opened in 1909 at 250-254 N. Main St. in Edwardsville as an opera house, about a quarter-mile north of what become Route 66. The theater closed in 1984, but the city eventually acquired it and redeveloped it as a mixed-use venue in 2011. The theater hosted the Route 66 Miles of Possibility Conference in 2015.
(Image of the exterior of the Ariston Cafe by Maggie; image of the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle by Mike Gassman; image of the Wildey Theatre by the United Way of Greater St. Louis, all via Flickr)