Times change, and George Liako-poulos is a college man, with a degree in business administration from Loyola University. But he’s still in the diner business. From 1983 to 1999 he operated the Golden Apple at Lincoln and Wellington, across the street from Saint Alphonsus Church (he still owns the building, though he’s given up the diner). He and his father owned the building at North and Ashland where Arthur Bookman ran a Huddle House Grill, and after Bookman’s lease expired in 1995 he turned the place over to Liakopoulos. Later that year Liakopoulos reopened it as the Hollywood Grill, now one of the most popular 24-hour diners on the north side.
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Tim Samuelson, recently appointed cultural historian for the city of Chicago, has often brought out-of-town visitors to the White Palace. “It is the classic urban diner,” he says. “The buildings were designed relatively inexpensively but were meant to attract attention. They did it with brightly lit large-scale signage, big plate-glass windows so you could look inside….In some cases, when you compare New York or Boston, Chicago had a lot more real estate. You could build a bigger restaurant so you could have the luxury of having a counter along with tables.” Samuelson hasn’t seen the new White Palace, but he gave the old one high marks. “When you’re sitting there, you can see the quilted metal behind the grill, the wear patterns on the floor or on the counter from all the people that sat there before. It’s part of the character.”
The diner’s waitresses aren’t the least bit upset about the renovation. “People have been worried that everybody was gonna change along with the place,” says Dorothy Williams, a ten-year veteran of the morning shift. “But we’re gonna stay the same. I like the change. The counter was literally rotting. We had to bend over and do all our dishes by hand. Now we’ll have a dishwashing machine.”
But no matter who gets the parcel, the White Palace may lose its view of the city skyline. Though he rejected the idea of a second story, Liakopoulos did incorporate the view into his expansion, installing a window at the north end. “On weekends, 30 to 40 people a day come here just to take pictures, or they stand on the Roosevelt Road bridge,” he says, gazing out the west windows at the encroaching Dominick’s, Walgreens, and Payless. He’s a business-man, but he’s already turned down attractive offers from developers who wanted to replace the Hollywood Diner with a Walgreens and the Golden Apple with condominiums.
