SALAMANCA — Looking for a place to dine out for lunch or dinner in downtown Salamanca? Or perhaps you’re seeking the location of a cozy coffee shop or breakfast café?

Had you been around in the early 1900s, when Salamanca was becoming a booming railroad hub, you would have known that most of the town’s many hotels served as the primary locations for patrons to get a meal.

As the city grew, however, and the number of businesses and shops along the city’s main thoroughfare increased, several restaurants were also established nearby.

The restaurants flourished as they catered to the many laborers, businessmen, travelers, theater-goers and shoppers that now bustled about along Main Street every day.

Among the earliest restaurants were the Palace Restaurant, Hart’s Café Royal, Bifano’s and Nelson’s Coffee Shop.

Nelson’s Coffee Shop enjoyed notoriety when Rex Stout, a well-known mystery novelist of the 1940s, mentioned Nelson’s Restaurant and Mrs. Ellen Nelson’s homemade cherry pie in national magazine “The American” and then again later in a novel, “Death Wears an Orchid.”

Over time, new restaurants would open, sometimes replacing those that had closed. Perhaps many long-time residents of the city can remember the Puritan Restaurant, the Brown Derby, the Edlee or the Wildwood Diner.

An array of photos of and menus from many of the above-mentioned establishments are now on display in the foyer of the Salamanca Municipal Building.

And although the Salamanca Area Historical Society Museum is now closed to the public through March, except by appointment, one of the museum’s front windows now displays memorabilia from three of Salamanca’s former bakeries — Taylor’s Bakery, Icky’s Cookie Co., and Weston’s Biscuit Co.

For more information or the schedule a tour, call 945-2946.