Harvey House Gong
Travelers have always had difficulty finding good
food to eat. Those who rode trains in the early 1870s had a harder time
than most.
Restaurant service at depots was unreliable; either the food was poor
quality or there simply wasn’t enough time to
eat it before the train departed the station. Passengers instead often
brought along their own food or bought it from vendors on the train.
 Fred
Harvey changed travelers’ eating habits forever.
In 1876 he leased the lunch counter at Topeka’s Santa Fe depot
and operated a business built on cleanliness, service, and good food.
Impressed with his work, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe
turned over control of food service along the rail line. The Harvey
House restaurants that developed—including ones at Florence, Newton,
Hutchinson, Dodge City and Lakin, as well as many along the Santa Fe
lines—became known for quality ingredients, reasonable prices,
immaculate dining rooms, and efficient waitresses. The Harvey Houses
became the first chain restaurants.
But for the restaurants to work efficiently they had to find ways for
people to eat quickly in the limited time of a station stop. This gong
from the Topeka Harvey House was used to alert waitresses
when a train was arriving, as well as attract passengers to the dining
room. The staff of the restaurant also received advance warning--a member
of the train crew counted how many passengers would be eating and wired
ahead that information. The locomotive whistle just
before a stop was the first warning to the waitresses that the train
was arriving.
The following describes the scene at the Topeka Harvey House:
“There are still men and women in Topeka who remember the scene
at the depot when the train came in. A white-aproned waiter, beating
a brass gong with a wooden mallet, brought the passengers
quickly to the dining room door. The first course was on the table
and as soon as the diner was seated, the waitress went down the table
asking, “Tea, iced tea, coffee, or milk,” and at the same
time positioning the coffee cup at each place accordingly, so that
the girl coming behind to pour the drinks knew just what to pour.
The service in the dining room was table d’hote
with two choices for the main course. The plates already served in
the kitchen with meat and vegetables, were quickly placed on the tables.”
--Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, “Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe,”
Shawnee County Historical Society Bulletin No. 56, The Santa Fe
in Topeka.
Warren Harrington, a busboy at the Harvey House at Canadian, Texas,
recalled:
“I was responsible for spotting the trains and alerting the
chef and the girls. I’d stand out on the platform where I could
see up the tracks about four miles. With the first glimpse
of the train, I would run back and report to the chef, then I would
grab this big brass gong—dish-shaped, about four inches deep
and twenty inches in diameter—and whack the daylights
out of it with a wood stick with a ball on the end of it.
I really gave it a working over. Inside, everything went into gear
but quick!”
--Lesley Poling-Kempes, The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the
West, p.140.
In 1975 this gong from the Topeka Harvey House was given to the Kansas Historical Society by R.E. LaBounty, a Fred Harvey executive who
once worked as a busboy at Topeka. LaBounty had used the gong and saved
it when the restaurant was torn down. It is on display in the main gallery
of the Kansas Museum of History.
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