Then and now: Top Hat Drive-In
1940s: The Top Hat Drive-In, at 2101 E. Sprague Avenue, was built by businessman James E. Foote from a lunch counter and beer parlor at the site in the early 1930s. The Top Hat was a popular hangout spot for teens during the 1940s through the 1960s, when it closed. Girls in uniforms served as car hops and delivered food to a mostly teen crowd. (Courtesy of Jim Eslick)
In a 2005 Spokesman-Review story, Ross Taylor, of Spokane, talked about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, when working class boys often relished the prospect of a fistfight. He said the Top Hat Drive-In, 2101 E. Sprague Ave., was where many fights started or concluded. The East Central hangout was one of Spokane’s first drive-in restaurants, where uniformed car hops served food on trays that hung on the passenger windows.
Before the restaurant, the corner of Sprague and Crestline Street was a private home, then used as a church called the Evangelical Association German Mission. The Methodists announced their services with the phrase “All Germans are cordially invited.”
Church listings stopped around 1906 and the site was used to sell firewood, coal, draft horses, wagons and farm equipment for many years.
In the early 1920s, the location became a service station under various names, then became a lunch counter. Coming out of the Prohibition era in 1933, the lunch spot got a beer license.
Businessman James E. Foote took over a beer parlor in 1933, making many improvements to the building, adding the name Top Hat Drive-In around 1936. In 1939, Foote bought the adjacent lots to add parking. The Spokesman-Review said that in the prewar era, the restaurant was open 24 hours a day, though food shortages sometimes shortened the hours. Car service stopped during World War II, but started again after 1945.
Foote built a Top Hat 2 at Third Avenue and Walnut Street in 1941.
Foote sold the Top Hat 2 in 1946.
Brothers Orland J. and Donald R. Swett bought the Top Hat in 1956. Foote said that he and his wife were in ill health.
Foote died in 1966.
The Swett brothers owned the restaurant for about 10 years before selling it in 1966. The restaurant closed in the late 1960s.
In 1970, the site was purchased by Dick Leong to build the New Noodle Grill restaurant, which operated for about 20 years. The original Noodle Grill, 512 W. Main Ave., had been operated by his father Joe Leong since 1936.
In the early 1990s, the Kebab Grill occupied the space, serving Turkish food. Since then, the corner has been sporadically occupied over the past 30 years, most recently as a used car lot.