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W e d n e s d ay, J u ly 30, 2025
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Danny Heitman AT RANDOM
A Louisiana evensong service ends the day with grace When my wife and I visited England for a week in 2019, we tried hard to fit everything in. Each day, we wanted to see as much of the country as we could. But on a couple of evenings, we were reminded that true joy doesn’t come from a race with the clock. The end of a day can be an occasion itself, something to be embraced rather than evaded. That idea is behind evensong, an end-of-day religious service with deep roots in Anglican tradition. The service typically includes choral songs and brief prayers that invite reflection on the richness of the day that’s passing, the coming calm of night. During our stay in England, my wife and I attended evensong services at Bath Abbey and Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. We were heartened when someone handed us a printed program at Bath Abbey that announced, “All are welcome.” That affirming message pointed to the wisdom of stillness at the end of a day as an ideal shared among many of us regardless of our faith. Bath Abbey has had a place of worship at its site for more than 1,000 years. Christ Church in Oxford was founded in 1546. Sitting in the shadow of centuries as we attended evensong in these grand old places, my wife and I were humbled by our smallness in the vast reach of time. At its best, evensong is about turning inward, an idea underscored in the booklet we were given at Christ Church Cathedral. As we learned, there’s not as much active participation from the congregation at evensong as at other services. “As the congregation, our participation is by prayerful, attentive listening,” the booklet noted. Attentive listening is no small thing, as I thought about recently when my wife and I were invited to attend an evensong service in Louisiana. Our friend Catherine Harrell knew how much evensong had meant to us when we first learned about it in England. She let us know that St. James Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge was having a service one Sunday in May. The 5 p.m. service began with a procession of the choir into the sanctuary. It was moving to see all the singers filing in, a shared witness to the beauty of a day dimming toward twilight. While the service unfolded, the light behind the church’s stained glass windows slowly mellowed as the sun sank lower outside. The program notes for the
FILE PHOTO
The exterior of the former Mayer Hotel Building got an extensive renovation by Tandy H. Hamilton in 1950-51. Architect A. Hays Town designed a modernist renovation which included a new façade and a complete renovation of the first two floors of the original building.
HAPPIER DAYS Beloved cafeteria started in WWII in Baton Rouge. How has Piccadilly weathered the decades?
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BY SERENA PUANG Staff writer
hat do you think of when you think of Piccadilly? Baby Boomers might think of trays bursting full of shrimp cocktail, crawfish étouffée or chocolate cake. Maybe even remember the age of live organ music or rushing to Piccadilly on Third Street after church? Louisiana GenXers may remember going with parents and grandparents. Those younger than that might not go at all. Piccadilly was founded in downtown Baton Rouge by T. H. Hamilton in 1944. Over the last 80-plus years, the restaurants have been the site of many cherished memories for people in the city — and beyond. However, since its founding, the times have changed. Dining habits across the country and locally have shifted. Locally, the restaurant scene has grown significantly. And, Piccadilly has changed.
Piccadilly in its heyday For many in Baton Rouge, the cafeteria-style restaurant is a part of their core childhood memories — with so many memories of the restaurant on Third Street and in sinceshuttered malls. Going to “the Piccadilly” was an elevated cafeteria experience: there were cloth napkins, live music, commissioned murals
FILE PHOTO BY JAMES CHANCE
Five-year-old George Hendrich admires the desserts on display at Piccadilly restaurant on Essen Lane in 2006. After coming out of bankruptcy, the restaurant featured new schemes to improve business, such as Piccadilly Pete, a parrot mascot, to appeal to children. and home-cooked food. The Westmoreland mall location had chandeliers in its dining room. Many went there regularly enough for staff members to know their names. Jeannine Gerald Schutte, 70, grew up going to the Piccadilly at Bon Marche Mall in Baton Rouge. Her family didn’t go out to eat super often in the 60s, but if they were shopping or running errands, they’d swing by as a treat. During her high school years (1968-1972), she was hired to play organ at the restaurant. As part of her payment, she got to eat a meal
there during each shift for free. Her favorite meal was mac and cheese and chocolate pie for dessert. The restaurants were busy. Schutte recalls soldiers stopping in by the bus-full, and readers wrote into the newspaper about their baseball or basketball teams stopping there for meals traveling to or from away games. According to Brian Von Gruben, former executive vice president of Piccadilly who worked in the
ä See PICCADILLY, page 2G
Piccadilly is all about family. It’s about places that you went with your parents, with your children, maybe your extended family.” CHAN WILLIS, Piccadilly regular
ä See AT RANDOM, page 2G
Was La.’s favorite cure-all antiseptic inventor a doctor? A package line of mouthwash at the Dr. Tichenor plant in New Orleans FILE PHOTO BY ELIOT KAMENITZ
BY ROBIN MILLER Staff writer
Call George Humphrey Tichenor a renaissance man, because that’s exactly the kind of life he lived. Businessman, policymaker, photographer, a potential Louisiana candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives — he was all of these things, not to mention the inventor of prob-
Tichenor
ably the best known antiseptic still used in the South. He created the cure-all in 1863, patented it in 1882, and it still fills discount store and pharmacy shelves today. Come on, say it. You know the name: Dr. Tichenor’s.
Was he a doctor? But wait. Was Tichenor really a doctor? The salutation on the
label sparked the curiosity of lifelong Dr. Tichenor’s consumer Nelda Risher. “Was he really a doctor?” the Olive Branch, Mississippi, reader asked. “And what is his connection to Louisiana?” Answering the first part of the question is easy. “He wasn’t a snake oil
ä See CURIOUS, page 2G