
DATE: Tuesday, May 6, 1997                  TAG: 9705060249

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:  117 lines

THE TEAROOM IS REBORN . . . IF ONLY FOR A LUNCH

When Dick Welton was in high school working Saturdays for a dollar at Smith & Welton Department Store, he'd cross Granby Street to the Oriental Restaurant for lunch.

His Daddy, Richard F. Welton Jr., asked him why he didn't eat in the Smith & Welton Tearoom.

``It's too expensive,'' the future president of the store replied. ``I can go across the street and get a bowl of egg drop soup, chicken chow mein, an almond cookie and iced tea for 25 cents.''

It's the only time on record anybody ever willingly left the Tearoom for any reason.

Smith & Welton and its Tearoom closed in 1988, victims with scores of stores nationwide of the rush to suburban malls. But there will be rejoicing of a sort this week.

Welton, who is retired in Maryland, will return at noon Thursday to Norfolk as guest of honor at a luncheon with 240 Tearoom devotees devouring chicken salad, piquant cheese sandwiches and lemon chess pie.

The luncheon will mark the transformation of the building into a splendid library that will serve, along with two other buildings on Granby Street, as the downtown Norfolk campus of Tidewater Community College.

Guests have paid $25 a ticket (it's sold out), which of yore would have bought more than a half-dozen lunches.

``I'm happy that the building is being put to good use,'' Welton said by phone in an interview Monday.

Founded in 1890 in Portsmouth, the store moved to Norfolk in 1898.

To attract customers during the Depression, his father and an uncle opened the Tearoom in 1933.

``The Tearoom took off,'' he said.

Women found it first - they're quick to detect good food - and they brought along their daughters, wearing big hair ribbons, for etiquette lessons; boys came, too, when they could be pulled away from Saturday play, sometimes wearing their first long pants.

The women's chatter was that of a flock of birds settling in. Older couples with young eyes joined the medley, and employees of downtown offices began dropping in for lunch.

Young professional men joined the throng. A lawyer described the Tearoom as a ``bachelor's paradise'' because it often supplied the only balanced meal of his day before he was married.

The Tearoom held forth on a broad mezzanine rimming above two-thirds of the first floor.

You could, while eating, look down from your table by the balcony railing into the rectangular depth of the first floor as if peering into an aquarium and watch the shoppers - bright tropical fish, fins waving - swimming slowly around the main floor below.

As you watched, you could ruminate, with grape nut pudding at hand, on the mutability of human affairs, not dreaming that the Tearoom itself wasn't impervious to time. Oh, it was a lordly way to dine.

The secret of the Tearoom's success was a concern for quality that pervaded the ranks, Welton said.

Its first manager, Eleanor Schomberg, a graduate of a New York cooking institute, came to Smith & Welton from Woodard & Lothrop in Washington and brought along the recipes, She hired the first chef, Molden Johnson.

``She was eager to teach anyone who wanted to learn,'' said Mary Lucy Nichols, who took the job 11 years later when Schomberg married and moved to Pennsylvania.

``Mary Lucy had the good sense to learn all the recipes,'' Welton noted. She managed the Tearoom 44 years until she retired in 1978.

Staff members stayed at least 20 years, sometimes off and on. Edna Tisdale took leaves four times to raise children. During one of those, her mother, Vera Ward, came to fill in and stayed 18. Often mothers and daughters worked side by side.

Angelic, pink-clad waitresses flew about in soft, white shoes. You could almost hear the swift rustlings of their wings.

They even catered to customers' health problems. After recommending pineapple supreme cake to a customer's delight, Madge Moscopulos refused to serve him a second slice. ``I'd rather lose a sale than lose a customer,'' she said.

Sometimes when a customer ordered one thing the waitress brought him another, set it down, and said, ``This is good for you.''

``Some days the Tearoom broke even, some days it didn't. Now and then it made money,'' Welton said. ``But it always brought in customers.''

One by one, four Norfolk department stores fell by the way as customers fled to malls, but Smith & Welton hung on as Granby's anchor.

``I stayed downtown maybe a few years longer than I should have, but I wanted to give it a try,'' Welton said.

Smith & Welton was showing progress in a five-year plan of recovery, Welton said - but Desert Storm, the Persian Gulf War, arose in the fifth year. The Navy left for the Middle East, wives and offspring took refuge with kin away from Norfolk. Losses mounted, and the store had to close.

On a recent day, Richard F. Welton III walked both sides of a reviving Granby Street. ``It's just 35 years too late,'' he said.

He worked in a host of civic causes: the United Way, once as chairman; Norfolk Academy as its president during its merger with Country Day School; Norfolk General Hospital for 30 years; the Virginia Beach General Hospital during its founding - and many, many more.

In the new TCC library a bronze tablet will commemorate four generations of Richard Weltons who served the public so long so well.

With vivid memories of the Weltons among so many friends, it's hardly necessary. ILLUSTRATION: Staff/file photo

Dick Welton, shown in 1983 in front of the Smith & Welton Department

Store on Granby Street, will return to Norfolk at noon Thursday as

guest of honor at a luncheon with 240 Smith & Welton Tearoom

devotees.

Graphic

DEDICATION

Wednesday: Tidewater Community College dedicates its downtown

Norfolk campus on the College Green, at noon, at Granby Street and

College Place - one of three events celebrating the campus' formal

opening.