What makes a business iconic?

Businesses come and go, but some leave an imprint on the community that lasts long after the doors close.

Recently, several Springfield originals have written their last chapter.

The owners of Barnes Town and Country furniture store locked up for good last week after eight decades in operation, and the building is now on the market. Six months after closing, the Aunt Martha’s Pancake House property is for sale, and Marilyn’s Fine Jewelry shut down in April after nearly 30 years on Park Central Square.

John Sellars, executive director of the History Museum on the Square, considers Aunt Martha’s among the local iconic class. Others atop his list are Shady Inn, trucking hub Campbell 66 Express, manufacturers Zenith and Lily Tulip/Solo Cup, steakhouses The Grove and Hamby’s, Leong’s Tea House, Heer’s Garden Room and Red’s Giant Hamburg, credited as the first U.S. drive-thru restaurant.

Common threads, he said, are uniqueness, longevity and community connections.

“They all have branches. Bill Grove hired Leong as his chef,” Sellars said, referring to The Grove’s owner and David Leong, the inventor of Springfield-style cashew chicken.

“If you were a mover and shaker, if you were a businessman or a person in government, you would gravitate toward that back roundtable at the Garden Room,” Sellars added of the former Heer’s fourth-floor hot spot. “That’s where a lot of deals were made.”

In some cases, businesses are iconic because of the people behind them.

Sellars points to Johnny Morris and John Q. Hammons – both high profile – and a lesser known, Nick Russo. Russo, an English teacher at Catholic High School, has opened a few notable restaurants with significant followings, including Pop’s Malt Shop, Ebbets Field and St. Michael’s bar and grill. Coffee Ethic LLC co-owner Tom Billionis, who died on April 16 following a health emergency on a local trail, is another Sellars said could be considered iconic based on his community connections.

Aunt Martha was Martha Haworth, a popular Springfield entertainer and Slim Wilson’s sister, who opened the diner in 1959 before selling five years later. Early on, the restaurant was known to serve “Ozark Jubilee” entertainers such as Wilson, Chet Atkins and Red Foley.

Current owner Brenda Freeman, whose mother Ruth bought Aunt Martha’s from Haworth in the mid-1960s, shut down the Glenstone Avenue restaurant in October.

“I grew up in the business, but my mom was the one who knew it backwards, forwards and side-wards,” Freeman said. “She died about three years ago.”

In recent years, Freeman said it’s been a stop for people including NBC weatherman Willard Scott and country music singer Willie Nelson, who dropped by in 2003.

“I was always sorry that mom didn’t get a chance to see him,” she said of Nelson.

Over the years, Aunt Martha’s became known as a uniquely local family restaurant.

“We’ve got families that started out as kids, became adults, brought their kids in and then became grandparents,” she said, noting her own aging and the difficulties keeping good cooks factored into last year’s closure.

John Taylor, director of Drury University’s Edward Jones Center for Entrepreneurship, said the word “icon” refers to a representation – such as a painting or picture. Iconic businesses, then, represent something to their patrons that is more than the sum of their parts.   

“When you read the post-closing articles and get a sense for what people thought about Aunt Martha’s, it seems to have signified something about the Ozarks during a very specific period of time,” Taylor said. “Since there really weren’t that many other restaurants or public places that are such clear representations of that time – like the ‘Jubilee’ and the kinds of performers that came through and the kinds of patrons you could almost imagine going through there – it kind of takes on this representational status.”  

The architecture makes a difference, too. Aunt Martha’s was no cookie-cutter commercial building. It originally was used as kitchen barracks during World War II on what is now the campus of Evangel University. Taylor said the fact the building didn’t change is significant.

“Over 55 years, an owner has plenty of opportunities to ask whether they want to expand the menu or relocate or tear the building down and build a new one,” he said. “At a certain point, the fact that you’re not doing any of those things is not the absence of a decision. That’s an ongoing decision to say, ‘This is the value we bring to the community. We are still going to be a 1960s-style diner that serves pancakes.’”

Taylor said that speaks to the vision or personality of the owner and a distinct and consistent way of serving customers.

“With a lot of these business owners, they have a sense of who they are and they have a good sense of how that gets presented through their businesses,” he said.

A downtown example is Billionis’ Coffee Ethic on Park Central Square. The coffeehouse doesn’t get iconic points for longevity – it opened in 2007 – rather for Billionis establishing a mission for the business and building it as a neighborhood coffee shop of the 21st century.

“You expect a vibrant downtown these days to have the kind of shop that Coffee Ethic is. It became iconic for completely different reasons than Aunt Martha’s,” Taylor said, adding South Avenue coffee shop Mudhouse could fit the bill, too.

A business can quickly become iconic, and Taylor said Mother’s Brewing Co. has done just that.

“The second that Mother’s opened, it immediately became an icon,” he said. “It was like, Springfield’s got it’s own cool, hip microbrewery now.”

In Sellars’ current iconic class are Paul Mueller Co., Bass Pro Shops, O’Reilly Automotive and Casper’s chili. He said a true mark is making a positive and lasting impression. Their fans remain their fans even after the doors close.

“We are not diminished … by them moving on,” he said. “We are left better for them being there.”