An inauspicious beginning to the site, yes. All gone. Fire? you ask. No; time and urban renewal.

C. A. Swansen Furnishings. Clothes, not wooden things on which people sat or slept. The Dairy Lunch was one of many; it appears to have been a popular term, judging from a survey on restaurant hygiene I could link to, but you wouldn’t bother to click - because, well, really. Are you interested that the Front Street location got a 97% rank but the NP “Dairy Luncheon” got 93%? What matters is the phrase “Dairy Lunch,” which must have had a particular appeal we don’t grasp today.

Much of what you will see in the pages to come is equally familiar, and equally obscure.