The First Harvey House

Florence, Kansas is home to one of the earliest Fred Harvey houses. In eighteen seventy-eight, Harvey took over a failing railroad lunchroom here along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line and transformed it into the first Harvey House to offer overnight lodging. It was the template for everything that followed.

Harvey's insight was simple and radical: railroad passengers did not have to eat terrible food. He hired professional staff, set white linen tables, and served hot meals that arrived on time. Within a few years he operated seventeen restaurants along the Santa Fe main line. By the time he died in nineteen oh one, the Fred Harvey Company ran forty-seven restaurants, fifteen hotels, and thirty dining cars on the Santa Fe.

The Florence Harvey House served its last meal in nineteen hundred. Today the building is a museum run by the Florence Historical Society, the quiet origin point of American railroad hospitality.