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May 17, 2026 · 11:30 am

Dance and dine at the Cow Shed

I was looking through my collection of restaurant menus, when I spotted the Cow Shed and remembered that I had always wondered about that name. Was there really once a genuine cow shed in the middle of Detroit that it was commemorating? [Above, 1935 menu cover]

I discovered that it was a night club that had opened in 1933 in an unoccupied building that had long housed a fire station. No cows. So I wondered why the proprietors didn’t choose a name associated with that rather than calling it the Cow Shed, a name I find odd and not that appealing. [Above: 1930s postcard]

But I never found the answer to that question.

Along with dinners, the club offered entertainment with music by the Cow Shed Rascals and other bands, floor shows, and singing waiters. Patrons could spend the entire night dancing if they so desired. [Above: 1938 advertisement]

It also served dinners. Its menu was lengthy, filled with many dinner choices such as Broiled Spring Chicken with fries, salad, rolls and butter for 75c, or Sirloin Steak with the same accompaniments for 60c. Most full dinners cost from a dollar to $1.50, and also included Whitefish, Leg of Veal, Frog Legs, Scallops, and Pork Chops. Guests who weren’t very hungry could choose from a long list of sandwiches.

It had a few bumps in its history.

About a year after the club opened, two men and a woman threw a stench bomb from the Shed’s balcony, sending 100 patrons fleeing. The manager was at a loss to explain it, claiming the club had no labor troubles. This was at the same time that Chicago, for instance, experienced many such incidents, with restaurant and club owners always saying they had no idea what it could be about. In reality, as they knew, it was a threat to make them force their employees to join (fake) labor unions run by mobsters who pocketed the dues.

The Cow Shed was sometimes in trouble for serving people who had already swallowed way too much booze. It also had other problems with the law. Despite stating on the back of one of their menus that “We Positively Do Not Permit Cross Table Dancing at Any Time,” in 1938 the club was fined for exactly that.

Cross-table dancing is an infraction that I had not heard of before, and I have not been able to find it in force anywhere but Detroit. It referred to single women asking men to dance, with the assumption that they were sex workers looking for customers.

Police also spotted the club’s manager directing the cigarette “girl” to sit next to a man at the bar. And they noted that about 80% of the women at the club were without escorts. The club was fined for cross-table dancing several times. It chose to pay a fine rather than have its license suspended for 10 days.

“Known from Coast to Coast”? Not so sure about that. The Cow Shed closed in 1941 and the building was torn down.

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Filed under food, menus, night clubs, patrons, restaurant names, women

Tagged as 1930s restaurants, Detroit nightclub

December 20, 2020 · 7:16 pm

Holiday greetings from 11th Heaven

A while back I found two small Christmas cards from the 11th Heaven Tea Room, run by Ella Roberts.

The name was evidently inspired by the tea room’s location on the 11th floor of the Browning Building, an oddly narrow building for its height, located in the Chicago Loop. The building, designed in “Moorish Gothic” style by architect Harry S. Wheelock, was constructed in 1899 and razed in 1990.

I have been able to find out almost nothing about the tea room or its owner, who had an unfortunately (for me) common name. In April of 1931 she ran three brief newspaper advertisements in the classified section saying, “Home cooked dinner, 50c; hours 10 to 4. Phone Dearborn 2673.”.

How long did she stay in business? Was her tea room a victim of the Depression? Was the 11th floor a curse, despite the building’s four elevators?

Regardless, I echo Ella’s messages: may the world treat you right, have a gorgeous appetite, and call again.

Addendum:

Thanks to Gary Allen, author, food blogger, and researcher extraordinaire, I now know more about the proprietor of Chicago’s 11th Heaven Tea Room.

Ella M. Roberts was a hard-working, seasoned businesswoman who had owned her own grocery store as far back as 1910. Her first husband had been a confectioner and it’s possible she had worked with him. By 1910 she was divorced; she remarried and in later censuses she was described as widowed. In 1920 she was still running the delicatessen, i.e., grocery. By 1930, at age 71, her occupation was listed as tea room proprietor, but no longer in the 1940 census. She lived to be 96.

Following on Gary’s research I learned that Ella’s three children were stage actors in the early century. In 1912 her daughter Maude Le Page created quite a stir and became a minor celebrity when she stood up in the balcony of a Chicago theater and loudly proclaimed that she would sell herself to a man for $1,000 so that she could escape working in a deli (!) and publish her poetry. She then enjoyed a whirl as a newspaper columnist writing on the hard life of working girls, explaining why they liked cheap thrills and frills, why they should be paid better, and why they were tempted to trade sex for money. In 1930 she lived with her mother and worked as a hand letterer for a card company. I have to wonder if she designed her mother’s Christmas cards.