Readers share memories of long-gone Philadelphia sports bar Lew Tendler's

Frank Fitzpatrick's column this past Sunday about the former Lew Tendler's Restaurant at Broad and Locust Streets in Center City stirred a lot of memories for readers. Here's a sampling of some of the emails Frank received.

Perhaps the most poignant one came from Paul Tendler, Lew's grandson:

Dear Frank,

Lew Tendler was my grandfather. I am composing this e-mail while I "Dad Sit" Lew's middle son, my father, Roy Tendler.

My dad is 93 years old and lives with my brother Hal and his wife in Egg Harbor Twp, N.J. In recent years my dad's health has significantly deteriorated (he is currently on Hospice) and he spends the majority of his days sleeping on a recliner occasionally interrupted by brief semi-lucid intervals. His short term memory is not very good and he often doesn't recognize family members but his distant memory is amazingly intact.

I read him your article this afternoon and his eyes opened wide and his entire demeaner changed from flat and inattentive to engaged and alert. He remembered almost all of the individuals mentioned in your article and even had some stories of his own regarding many of them. All of a sudden he was years younger and, for a little while, I had my father back.

I can honestly tell you that your article did more for my dad than any prescription medication ever did and for that I thank you.

Another of Tendler's relatives, Mark Stutman, noted that Tendler also had a restaurant under his name in Atlantic City:

I remember his AC restaurant more than the Philly one. I had many a meal in Lew Tendler's Steak House in AC. I do remember him coming to Philly in the `60s ( he lived in Ventnor) and coming to our house on a Friday night to watch the Gillette-sponsored fights. I learned more about boxing from his analysis in front of a television than from any other source. His insights were fantastic

Thanks again for bringing up some very fond memories.

Bob Harley wrote to Frank to note that his grandfather, Richard Harley, was a bartender at Tendler's:

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your article on Lew Tendler's restaurant at Broad and Locust Streets, Phila. I also have an added interest in that my grandfather, Richard (Dick) Harley was a bartender at Lew Tendler's restaurant at least during the year of 1934 and most likely afterwards...

Dick Harley was born in Center Square, Montgomery County, Pa. in 1872. His father and his grandfather and great-grandfather had businesses in Phila. and West Chester, Pa. They were in the "bottling" business (beer/soda/spirits) and grocery and wholesale grocery business which Dick Harley followed in the family business after his retirement from a professional baseball and college coaching career.

I've been researching my grandfather's baseball career/life for over 40 years. He attended parochial school at St. Patrick's parish in Norristown and then on to St. Joseph's Prep and eventually received a full athletic scholarship to Georgetown commencing with the GU 1891 baseball team and starting his matriculation in the fall of 1892.

He graduated vice president of his class in 1896 and immediately signed a professional contract to play baseball for the minor league Springfield "Ponies" during the summer of 1896. The Phillies "drafted" him in December of 1896 and he accompanied the Phillies to Augusta, Ga. for the 1897 spring training camp. When the Phillies came north to begin the 1897 campaign, they "loaned" him to the Philadelphia Athletics of the minor Atlantic League over in Camden, N.J.

Then in early June the Phillies traded him to Chris Von der Ahe's St. Louis Browns where he made his major league debut. He went on to play seven years in the majors and then another five years in the minor leagues before beginning a coaching career that included Blair Academy (1910, 1911 and 1912), Georgetown University (1913), Penn State (1915, 1916 and 1917) and Pitt (1920-1924).

I haven't found anything on him for 1914, 1918, and 1919, so I just assume he was managing the family businesses with his brother Joe for those years.

Sounds like some prime research material for a future Frank's Place column.

Food writer Alan Richman - who used to cover the 76ers for the Bulletin, by the way - shared this memory:

[Lew and I] went to the track. He picked out an exacta, gave me the race number, I bet it and when I came back, he said, "That's the wrong race!" In fact, the mistake was his not mine. It won, paid about $600 and he said to me as we were leaving, "Please don't tell anybody it was a mistake." I've kept that sacred vow until now.

Lew was wonderful, no?

Ben Shapiro wrote:

"Just wanted to express my appreciation and enjoyment for the article on Lew Tendler's restaurant. I try to read as much as I can about the fighters and other characters who made up the "Jewish Era" of boxing.

"My mother grew up in Atlantic City and as young teenagers, before and during the war, she and my aunt were waitresses in Tendler's Atlantic City restaurant, "Mammy's", a name that would never work today for the obvious reasons. My mother was attractive and would make waffles and pancakes in Mammy's front window facing the boardwalk.

"Mammy's was near Steel Pier and the stars who played the pier would come in. My mother liked to tell the story about how Smiley Burnett (a fairly famous cowboy actor from the 30's and on "Petticoat Junction" for our generation) came in to Tendler's restaurant and left her a dollar tip for a cup of coffee.

"Different times."

Labron Shuman wrote:

The atmosphere and the conversation was great. Plus which, you could out of there fast. If the walls could talk, what stories could be told.

There were several other great places that existed. They were places with all sorts of character. The decor was great i.e. spitoons around the floor. The old Broadwood Hotel opposite the old Philadelphia Record building was a place where the elite met to greet. And, inside was the Broadwood Health Club where ever so many exercised their great athletic skills at pulling cards out of a pinochle deck while wrapped in a huge towel.

There were the bars on the South Side of Penn Square in the buildings that existed before the area went modern. Every politician in town seemed to be in there along with the usual denizens of center city such as the lawyers, bail bondsmen, etc.

Tendler's was just one of many. Go take a look. The areas where these character places were located are just ever so antiseptic and boring in comparison to what was.

There was also this comment on Frank's story from "1uncleduff":

As older looking high school seniors and under age college boys, a few of us would sneak into the smoky bar for a couple of Schmidt's. We'd see not only well known ball players, and South Philadelphians of notoriety but also City Hall royalty and fixers. While we never had a steak, we did have a handful of great experiences. Drinking underage in center city was edgy but not scary for us kids.

Perhaps we should stop there, so that no one else gets in any more trouble. Then again, the statute of limitations has probably long since passed.