Memories of Copeland's Café

By: L. Jarod Pearson

One of the oldest buildings in Cowan today is at 106 S. Tennessee Avenue in the historic downtown.  The years following World War II were Cowan's heyday when the town's population and economic strength reached their highest levels when Cowan.  At the center of it all in this glorious time in history was Copeland's Cafe.

The restaurant was owned and operated by Roy and Mary Copeland.  The building was constructed in 1901 in a distrinctly french-style architecture.  The upstairs of the building connected to the second floor of The Franklin House hotel by way of a shared wall and provided additional guest rooms for the hotel facility.

Roy Copeland, III shared some of his memories, written to us on September 25, 2011:

"I was born in 1943 - I spent many hours in the cafe as it was owned by my grandparents.

"The Copeland Cafe was my home away from home.  It was there that I was allowed to eat hamburgers with catsup only 3 meals a day.

"I also remember the Cafe was a local hangout for Cowan citizens.

"The trains dominated everything.  I learned to count better daily by counting the cars as they went by.

"I would sit behind the cash register and play with the punch out gambling boards.  I was scolded daily because I ruined many of them."

Copeland's closed in the late 1950's.  Some years after that the building served briefly as a retail store and as a coin laundry.  The building returned to its original purpose in the late 1960's when Edna's Place, a casual dining restaurant, opened.  In the mid-1980's through the mid-1990's it was reborn as the Petticoat Junction, a small beer package store, or as the locals would call a "beer joint".  In this time period, Petticoat Junction happened to be located next to Cowan City Hall, which was housed in the original 1907 Bank of Cowan building. 

Local legend held that there was a discreet passage between Cowan City Hall and Petticoat Junction, and that the mayor and police department could "grab a cold one" any time of day without being noticed.  The legend was dismissed as rumor when the building was purchased in 2002 for the Sernicola's Restaurant project.  What appeared to be a bridge connecting the two buildings was actually a special housing for the upstairs plumbing.

To confuse things a bit, there were actually three locations of Copeland's Restaurant.  The first Copeland's was located prior to World War II in an old railroad car parked East Cumberland Street, approximately where today's Cowan Welcome Center is located.  The car was removed in the late 1940's to make way for the Texaco station that operated there.

Another Copeland's Restaurant operated in the Pearson building after Cowan Cafe relocated to a larger restaurant building further up the street.  This particular one was sometime referred to as Copeland's No. 3.

<--Return to History page