Employees and patrons of the Wallace Hotel lunchroom stand on the steps outside the lunchroom. Fred Harvey opened an eating house in Wallace, Kansas on the Kansas Pacific Railroad in 1875. This is presumably a picture of that cafe or eating house, which closed within a year. Harvey was inspired from this experience to open a chain of Fred Harvey eating houses along the route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, the first of which opened in 1878 in Florence, Kansas.
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
Wallace Hotel lunchroom employees, Wallace, Wallace County, Kansas