A Moraine landmark as you enter Moraine from West Carrollton, Frisch’s restaurant has been at the corner of State Route 741 and Dixie Highway for 67 years. But did you know that the current Frisch’s was not the original restaurant built there?
Prior to Frisch’s was the popular Lou’s Dude Ranch, since 1945, a popular fifteen booth restaurant and bar which offered music played on a Steinway Spinet piano with Solovox. The Country Kitchen chain of restaurants purchased Lou’s in 1956 from Louella Fair for $77,500, invested $70,000 in remodeling and turned it into a Frisch’s drive-in restaurant. Sadly, three years later a devastating fire burned down the restaurant and a second Frisch’s had to be rebuilt. Fortunately, no one was killed in the fire, but it made front page headlines in the Journal Herald on July 3, 1959.
The blaze started when grease caught fire in the kitchen and quickly went up the grease flue and ignited a nearby gas line. The fire began during dinner rush hour with 70 to 100 patrons being served either inside or outside in their cars with a long line of customers waiting by the front doors. Nan Pritchard, a waitress on duty who lived nearby on Lauderdale Drive, said she knew there was a fire and thought it was not serious, but then the dining room filled up with smoke quickly and the waitresses yelled for everyone to get out quickly.
The Miami Township Fire Lt. Emil Emoning who lived nearby, came out of his house and said that Frisch’s kitchen “looked like a big bomb exploded”. When he got around to the front everything was blazing and the roof caved in 15 minutes later. Although Miami Township firefighters received the call at 6:45pm and had the fire totally out by 8:30pm, Somewhat hampering the fire department’s effort and tying up intersection traffic for several hours were about 2,000 people who watched the blaze from a very close vantage point. Loss was estimated at $250,000.
Moraine resident Jim Kuhns remembers that day. He was eleven years old back then. Jim and about eight other newspaper delivery boys were seated at the table with their newspaper Branch Manager and had just ordered drinks. The boys were being treated with a free dinner with awards to follow. A waitress came out and said, “Don’t worry about paying, there is a fire in the kitchen so please leave now.”
During the mopping up, children romped outside the building and one youth snatched bubble gum from a broken gum machine at the charred restaurant entrance.
Of note, you can see firefighters with water hoses (on the left of the photo) standing on one of the walls of the one-story brick and cement structure. The firefighters were not wearing protective coats, masks and other equipment.
