Do you remember the Broadway Café?

Postcard Memories is a weekly series of historic postcard views and photos submitted by Marcel Rousseau. Some were previously published by the Orillia Museum of Art and History and in the book Postcard Memories Orillia. You can take a trip down memory lane with us each Saturday morning!

The Broadway Café was located at 77 Colborne St. W. in the 1950s.

In the late 1930s, this restaurant was called Murray’s Restaurant and was run by Murray Woodrow. Murray was likely a member of the Woodrow family that owned Woodrow Auto Electric just east of the restaurant.   

In the 1950s, the Broadway Café was operated by the Blackstone family. The building was then used by the Oddfellows from 1958 until the late 1960s, when they moved into a larger hall at 57 Colborne St. E. That hall had recently been vacated by the Bethel Baptist Church, which had moved to a new building.

During the 1970s, this café was converted to the Variety Mart, and then once again became a restaurant, until the mid-1980s, when the Colborne Street Pet Hospital located here.