Axel Anderson opened up Axel’s Lunch Room at 2217 East Lake Street in 1912. The restaurant served railway workers from the nearby Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad yard and Twin City Rapid Transit employees from the Lake Street Station across street. Axel came to America from Sweden in 1888. He got his start in the restaurant business waiting tables in downtown Minneapolis. At the turn of the century he got a job at the infamous Schiek’s Café. Located on 3rd street near the Metropolitan Theater.
Schiek’s was the place to see and be seen. Thirty years later Axel told WCCO radio he had waited on Ethel Barrymore, Caruso and Donaldson’s department-store owner L.S. Donaldson. Axel worked at Schiek’s for at least 10 years before he opened Axel’s Lunch Room. The restaurant was open all day and all night. Axel moved his wife and daughter into an upper floor apartment and eventually built at a little bungalow on 47th Avenue South. Unfortunately, the business didn’t survive the great depression and Axel went back to work at Schiek’s. In 1949, when Axel retired at the age of 75. The Minneapolis Star said he was the oldest waiter in the city.
