Images and featured quotes for this project were selected from COMMEMORATE ETTA'S, published on May 8th, 2020 by Grace Inmo Kang, a 2020 BA Architecture graduate from Washington University in St. Louis. COMMEMORATE ETTA'S can be viewed on issue.com.
Before the kiosk check-out, shelves of chips, and coffee machine at the “micro-market,” Etta’s was a cafe. The smell of fresh coffee and pastries filled the Steinberg lobby, a communal hub that students retreated to between classes to socialize and reset from studios. It was a space that brought together teachers, staff, and students across art, design, architecture, and fashion disciplines. The cafe employees, Sandy, Marvin, Chandress, Tamara, and Sharon, were the heart and soul of Etta’s and always went out of their way to connect with cafe-goers, swapping stories and life updates or just checking in when they noticed a disheartened expression. Etta’s felt like home within Sam Fox, a reprise from exhaustive work and academic stress, a center of comfort and support.
In 2017, the associate dean of finance at Sam Fox announced that Etta’s Cafe would be closing at the end of the year due to a decline in patronage. Immediate backlash from students prompted Carmon Colangelo to respond to pushback and seek student input before making final decisions around the future of Etta’s. Meanwhile, the “Save Etta’s" movement kicked off when alumni Brandon Pogrob and Erin Woo organized a petition, titled “The Starving Artist’s Plan,” to keep the cafe open or “provide a replacement that offers the same level of service.” The petition, which received over 600 signatures, emphasized the value of Etta’s as "a defining aspect of something Sam Fox and WashU claim to cherish: community.” In StudLife articles that shared student reactions to the announced closing, most people voiced concerns about losing this space of social connection. St. Louis designer, illustrator, and Sam Fox alum Shannon Levin shared, “the number one thing that is most important at the art school is morale and community. That’s what keeps people going because other than that, you just have sheer stress, and food is a big part of morale. Etta’s [Cafe] provides food and community. So without Etta’s, I feel like the art school would kind of fall apart.”
Etta’s Cafe remained open until the completion of Parkside in 2019. Once Parkside Cafe began operation, Etta’s Cafe employees were reassigned to other dinning service positions across campus, and the Steinberg cafe was replaced by the micro-market students now call “Robo Ettas.” Students who took classes in Sam Fox before 2019 feel the distant shift in relationships between customers and baristas at Parkside Cafe compared to Etta’s Cafe. Senior Celia Gerber identifies this disconnect, describing, “ordering on screens has become really impersonal. You don’t get to talk to any of the workers who all of the students have had a relationship with.” Not only does Parkside Cafe lack the personal interaction that made Etta’s Cafe so special, but the micro-market replacement in Sam Fox has, as students have described, an unwelcoming presence dominated by the security camera surveillance and unreliably stocked non-nutritious food and drink.
As the class of 2022 prepares to graduate, Etta’s Cafe will live on in Sam Fox through the memories of faculty and staff, as the robotic Etta’s Market assumes the expectations of current and incoming students. Commemoration projects, such as COMMEMORATE ETTA’S, a publication and collaborative project created by Grace Immo Kong ’20, memorialize the impact Etta’s Cafe had on the Sam Fox community. The goal of this installation is to propel the memory of Etta’s Cafe a bit further and remind the Sam Fox community the power and potential of this space has for connection.