The Blue and White Restaurant of Warren, Pennsylvania
This stunning Art Moderne postcard records the similarly styled 1937 remodel of Constantine Spiridon’s downtown restaurant. Although the porcelain-enameled storefront was “environmentalized” with cedar shingles and a faux mansard roof, the building still houses a restaurant.
Constantine Spiridon and his two brothers opened the Blue and White Restaurant at 211 Liberty Street in downtown Warren, PA, in 1925. It was one and a half blocks north of US 6, certainly the coast-to-coast reference on this postcard showing its 1937 Art Moderne remodel.
In 1956, the Allegheny River spilled over its banks and swallowed up US Route 6 at Rogertown just east of Warren, but the Blue and White Restaurant billboard was still doing its job.
C. P. Spiridon soon bought out his partner brothers, added private banquet rooms in 1942, and changed the name of the Blue and White to the Blue Manor Restaurant in 1962.
C. P. Spiridon retired from the Blue Manor Restaurant in 1970 when his new Spiridon Building opened nearby. The 1885 McKain Building, which housed the Blue Manor (and the Liberty Tea Room before 1925) continues to be the site of a restaurant, Jack’s Tap House.