 Downtown Columbus Lazarus' Restaurants by Philip Vaughn Jolting a web surfer the most about this article is realizing a Lazarus story is in the "History," section of this website. Downtown Lazarus is no more. During the final days of the Lazarus downtown store the Columbus Dispatch ran a feature about the store. The story mentioned that at one time the store had 12 operating restaurants. I was amazed. How could one local store be so large as to have a dozen restaurants all at one time? Allow this writer to take you back to the late forties. When Easter rolled around my mother, along with my sister and I, boarded the Baltimore & Ohio train in Newark and came all the way to Columbus, on the rails, to buy Easter outfits at Lazarus. From Union Station we took the streetcar, riding more rails, to the downtown Lazarus store. This should give you an idea of the pulling power of such a great store. There were no malls, no strip centers, no Kohl's department stores and, thank God, no Wal-Marts. With this pulling power and the advent of fast food still a decade away, it is easy to understand how twelve restaurants could have been in one store as large as downtown Lazarus. Another thing to keep in mind is this figure included an employee's only cafeteria, an executive dining room and a soda fountain with just a few stools.
Response to a Dispatch column that Columbus Chefs was searching for the names of the restaurants was tremendous. Twenty-six restaurant names poured in from historians and former Lazarus employees, including some working there to the last day. Also, names came from many Lazarus shoppers who, invariably, had a favorite Lazarus restaurant. The following list of Lazarus restaurant names, derived from many sources, is open for discussion. Names are listed in the order received. Complete list of Lazarus Restaurants sent to columbuschefs.com in 2004:
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