Monday, November 6, 2023

 THE CLAM BOX 1939-1985

A Beloved Local Business

In 1939, Anna and George Gross rented a two-car garage on Salem Street and East Putnam Avenue in Cos Cob and opened the original Clam Box restaurant. It had a few stools in front and a take-out counter and was to serve customers in the summers only.  According to their son, Arthur Gross, interviewed by Penny Bott-Haughwout of the Oral History Project in 1986, “My parents started the original Clam Box restaurant with four hundred dollars… They painted the building white. They put an awning in front of it. They bought several truckloads of oyster shells which was put on the ground and then crushed by a crushing machine. And that became the area where people ate in their cars or ate at the stand.”

Original Clam Box
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

Business was good---so good, in fact, that “my father made more money in three months in Cos Cob than he’d made all year in New York (at his NYC spot called Cooper’s Fish and Chips near Grand Central Station). Shortly thereafter, the New York City restaurant was closed and George Gross “devoted one hundred per cent of his time in Cos Cob.” After the first year, Anna and George bought the building and opened the Clam Box year-round. Eventually, they built on both sides of the existing main stand and it became a restaurant of about 250 seats.


The Clam Box menu, front cover
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project


What was the “secret sauce” to this successful small business? According to Arthur, “ . . . nobody had any seafood items cooked the way we did. The frying was completely new to this New England area… Our kitchens were open to the public. People got the aroma of the cooking. And the fact that we fried at such high temperatures . . . at 375 degrees, they were seared very quickly. An order of fried clams would take thirty or forty-five seconds in these special cooking machines that we had.” Fish and chips were also cooked at a high temperature and “ . . . in a matter of three or four minutes, we’d have a magnificent piece of fish cooked, very crispy on the outside and very moist on the inside.” Everything was cooked to order.

The Clam Box menu, back cover
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

Of course, the high quality of the food was fundamental. “We sent a man from Greenwich to New York City five mornings a week . . . to the Fulton Fish Market. He used to leave here about quarter of three o’clock in the morning… The fish was delivered to Cos Cob like ten o’clock in the morning, and it was served that evening.”

The Clam Box menu, inside left
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

How about the prices? The original Clam Box menu in 1939 lists “Silex coffee with cream” for five cents. “People remembered the fact that they got a good cup of coffee.” In addition, “Bottle Grade A Milk” was ten cents; clam chowder, fifteen cents; fish and chips, thirty-five cents; oyster stew, forty cents. The “Clam Box Special” with half cold lobster, crabmeat, shrimps, and clams was ninety-five cents.

The Clam Box menu, inside right
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

Customers, mostly locals at the time, had a different cycle to their daily lives in those early days. In the summer, before television and air-conditioning, “a man would get in the car and take a ride with his wife and they’d stop off for fried clams or fish and chips at our type of a restaurant. We also found that we were busier late in the evening---this would run until two in the morning.” Post-WWII, with the advent of television, people tended to stay home in the evenings. “Our business changed rapidly… After the war we never stayed open as late as we did prior to the war.”

George and Anna believed in their business. “Every dollar they made they reinvested back into the property, and they managed to survive, and it was quite successful after the second year.” In 1947, the Grosses purchased another building, with four hundred feet frontage on East Putnam Avenue in Cos Cob, in which the Clam Box remained until 1985. Fortunately, the property also allowed for enlargement of the restaurant facilities.

“By enlarging the kitchen, we were able to purchase additional equipment to make the same recipes… We were able to handle the many thousands of people that we did serve in the summertime… We had a wonderful reputation. We had the nicest people in the area coming out to dinner.” Arthur was proud that a family could be well-fed for under ten dollars.

The Clam Box, expanded capacity, outside
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

In 1963, with additional storage space made available for produce and seafood, the restaurant could serve five hundred and fifty patrons “plus the take-out business.” A bakery was also now contained on the premises in which fresh rolls, pies, cakes, puddings, éclair shells, and more were prepared. Over one hundred and thirty staff were employed. Arthur boasted that “ . . . we must have had seventy-five working here more than five years . . . and another ten or fifteen who worked here for twenty years or more.”   

The Clam Box, expanded capacity, inside
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

Arthur’s parents retired in 1957. His father George passed away in 1960. Arthur and his wife, Priscilla, managed the business from that time on. Arthur himself had worked in the restaurant from the age of 14 in 1939 to age 60 in 1985. “If people wanted to find me, they could reach me at 9:30 in the morning, and I was here until sometimes 9:30 at night, and I was here many a time seven days a week.” In 1985, the decision was made to close the restaurant and “sell the property, distribute the proceeds (among the corporation of family members), and go our separate ways… It’s the end of an era.”

The Clam Box postcard
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Library Oral History Project

Arthur did have to admit that occasionally he would see some tempting restaurant locations in town. “I’d come home and say to my wife, ‘You know, we could go back and open up another little stand again and just sell clams and shrimp and fish and chips.’ And she’d say, ‘No way, Buster.’”

The interview of Arthur Gross appears in the Oral History Project book entitled “The Clam Box and the Food Mart.” It may be read in its entirety at Greenwich Library and is available for purchase at the OHP office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subject to factual scrutiny.

Mary Jacobson, OHP blog editor.

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