Interviewing Michael Burns on the Sara Lou Cafe
A popular local gathering site and former cultural anchor in what was once a bustling economic center for the Ville neighborhood, the Sara Lou Cafe tragically closed in 2002. After 96 years of continuous operation between several business owners, the death of the most recent owner, James Owen Jr., in 2011 led to the Land Reutilization Authority’s (LRA) acquisition of the building. The building, in its current abandoned and dilapidated state, once faced demolition until the Northside Community Housing Incorporation (NCHI) released an option in 2022 with the City of St. Louis to stabilize the structure in order to rehabilitate the historic establishment.
Since the NCHI’s option acquisition of the Sara Lou Cafe property, NCHI President Michael Burns has been initiating community engagement efforts to gather feedback from the residents of the Ville on how best to rehabilitate the space to meet the current needs and desires of the neighborhood. Wash U has been involved in the process through the Sumner Studio Lab, a collaboration between the Sumner Advisory Board, 4TheVille, Washington University in St. Louis’s Center for the Humanities, and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. The Sumner Studio Lab brings together Sumner High School students, Wash U students, and Ville residents to discuss and generate design ideas for a promising future for the neighborhood. This semester, through the “Unruly City” course taught by Senior Lecturer Michael Allen, Ceci Gutierrez-Torres (a fellow student in the College of Architecture) and I have been working together with Michael Burns to lend design and community engagement support for the Sara Lou Cafe rehabilitation project.
EK: What community engagement efforts has the NCHI been involved with so far concerning the restoration of the Sara Lou Cafe?
MB: We’ve been hosting events every month, and we pick churches. Every month we’ve been doing something somewhere. We want to say everyone [in the Ville] is able to say they are aware of what we are doing. Hundreds of attendees are there. We’ve also met with members of the media, on location, so there is public awareness of our plans and wishes to redevelop the property and other properties around the area. We’ve most recently met with KSDK and did a story about the Sara Lou Cafe.
EK: Yes, I’ve actually seen some of those news snippets and the KDSK articles online during some of my research and was surprised to see you featured and talking in the videos at the cafe.
MB: And I grew up on that block!
EK: I remember hearing you mention that! Which brings me to my next question, about why restoring the Sara Lou matters to the Ville, and why does that matter to you?
MB: When [the Sara Lou] was active, it was a time of segregation and integration. So the fact that there was a restaurant — a saloon, so to speak — in this particular community where you could purchase food, it was important to have. And back then, you didn’t really go outside of your area to take care of basic services because your pharmacy, your grocery store, your beauty salons, your barber shops, your record stores, your corner stores, all of these things were in your neighborhood within walking distance. And all those things are gone! This intersection is the only four-corner commercial space in the Ville, and only the [Sara Lou] is in a deteriorated state, so we want to restore that for the generations of individuals that lived in that area, African-Americans, that used to live in that area.
It would be like a shot in the arm to bring back that historic location to its previous grandeur. I think it would be a source of pride. It’d really be a way to let folks know that the Ville is truly coming back, for real.
And it’s something that is right there, easy to access. Whatever’s in there will be what the community decides. But our role in this is to rehab that building, to stabilize it first. I’m sure there will be apartments on the second floor like there were previously, but that first level, we’ll just have to see what the community’s desires are.
“It would be like a shot in the arm to bring back that historic location to its previous grandeur. I think it would be a source of pride. It’d really be a way to let folks know that the Ville is truly coming back, for real.”
“Like I said, those other three corners look great. We just [need to] add this one to it. As an organization, Northside, we’re concentrated on what we call the “Sara Corridor”… we’re trying to make it up here as a connector.”
EK: Do you have a good idea of what people want from this space — have you been able to ask people about that?
MB: Well, everyone I’ve spoken to would love for it to be that restaurant again. But we have to determine whether or not that’s possible. Where’s that recipe? Is the family still interested? Time has went by, so we don’t know.
EK: I was wondering — I’ve just heard so much about the shrimp and the frog legs and was hoping I could try it one day.
MB: Hahaha. There are some places; there’s a restaurant not too far from there that’s close to what it was like. There’s a lot of spinoffs that are similar.
EK: But the Sara Lou is the original.
MB: Yes, absolutely. I never tried the frog legs, but for me it was chicken, shrimp, country-fried steak, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries.
EK: Oh now I’m hungry, hahaha. I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about your personal experiences there, having lived there for so long.
MB: So there was a stainless steel counter that was at the point where you purchased the carry-out. This stainless steel counter was like, five feet tall, so coming in there as a little kid with my mother or grandmother, there was a time where, as a kid, I couldn’t see over it — I’d just look up. As time went on and I grew, it got to the point where I could see over the top. I was standing tall, so I could order. Seeing that change as I grew up was something that was memorable to me.
The other thing was, it had a lounge on the side of it where you had the choice of going in for a drink or you could order food while you were on that side of the building. This was a restaurant
that was open late at night. It was still open at 11 o’clock or 12 o’clock. So at 10:30, if you decide you’re hungry, you could walk to Sara Lou. Now, there might be a line and it might take a while, but you could get your food. A lot of times when you’d call, they got so much business they wouldn’t answer, so you’d have to come in.
EK: Man…
MB: The crowd’s outside, you know, waiting with a number in hand, and they’re calling out your number and you go and pick up your food. There was also a very active bus stop across the corners, there was a confectionary across the street, so it was a real active area, you know, the record store down the street. There was a lot of activity, a lot of hustle-bustle taking place.
EK: And for you, when were you seeing this kind of activity?
MB: I moved to The Ville when I was a kid, so for me, it was between ‘63 and ‘73.
EK: That must have been a lot of fun. I’m just trying to picture everything you said. It would be so powerful to bring some of that back, 50 years later.
MB: Like I said, those other three corners look great. We just [need to] add this one to it. As an organization, Northside, we’re concentrated on what we call the “Sara Corridor”. We’re actually trying to connect our developments to the developments that are a little south of our location that are in the hands of McCormick Baron [Salazar]. So we’re doing development between Labadie [Avenue] down [to] Delmar, you get into the area where McCormick Baron has already done a lot of housing development, so we’re trying to make it up here as a connector.
EK: And what other developments are in place along this Sara Corridor?
MB: Northside is working on a couple of projects. We have about 20 million dollars in construction-related projects that are about to take place starting near the end of this year. It’s comprised of about 60 or so rehabilitation units, and then we’re building about 20 houses throughout the Central West End, Jeff Vanderlou, the Ville, and the Greater Ville.
EK: I’m wondering if you see the Sara Lou as a significant driving force in that kind of overarching development plan.
MB: That’s all a part of that plan. To redevelop Sara. There are lots [nearby] that you see vacant, soon to have homes on them.
EK: I’m really happy to hear about the work you guys are doing. You know, this class wasn’t my first introduction to the Ville. There was some research I was doing for a professor two summers ago that had me visiting some neighborhoods with vacant lots, and I spent some time biking around the Ville — looking around the streets, talking to some of the people that live there. But I haven’t been able to follow up or talk to those people again, or get involved with anything going on in the Ville since. So I’m happy that I got a chance to talk to you and get involved with this project.
The interview above took place on April 11th, 2023 and has been edited for clarity. For more information about the Northside Community Housing Incorporation and how to get involved with their efforts, please visit the website https://www.northsidecommunityhousing. org/. President Michael Burns can be reached at michael@nchistl.org.
Eric Kim ‘23 studies in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. He can be reached at eric.kim@wustl.edu.