Ferrara’s Cafe – Twin Cities Music Highlights

FERRARA’S

Ferrara’s was opened in August of 1962 at 501 East Hennepin by Louis, James, and Maria Ferrara, who had run the East Hennepin Cafe next door. The county shows the year built as 1960; since the address of the East Hennepin Cafe was 507 E. Hennepin, it is possible that in 1960 the Ferraras bought the corner building and the property was reconfigured at that time.

Don Morrison described the new Ferrara’s in his column on August 31, 1962:

There obviously was no stinting of money in creating the new place. It has a stylish-looking cocktail lounge immediately off the street, through which one reaches the Organ Grinder piano bar at the rear. The latter grabs you immediately with its nicety of detail – an imaginative Neapolitan motif that could have been overly cute, but which, instead, is bright and witty.

Quality touches are everywhere. There is a mural of Italian street types that will be looked at often and studied closely. in the bar and cocktail tables are inset bottom-lighted fruit designs “painted” with chips of colored glass.

The split-level dining room makes you gasp at first glimpse. The entire ceiling simulates a huge arbor with outsized bunches of stylized grapes dangling down. An old wine press has a spigot from which individual glasses of table vino will be served.

It is a place that makes a calculated assault upon your senses, but the effect is a happy one. With so much slick sameness around, it is fun to enter a spot that commands your attention and makes you realize you are some place.

The design is by Allan F. Svensson, who also did such distinctive new places as Freddie’s, the Ambassador, Diamond Jim’s, the Black Angus and the soon-to-open 211 Club at the Hastings Hotel.