When Stepfanie and Andrew Caranci bought the Picket Fence Café in 2017, they didn’t really have a good sense of the history of the building. All they knew was that they had a nice, family-friendly restaurant in a prime location downtown.
The couple wanted to expand their kitchen area, and they had plenty of space to make it work. But contractors working to knock out a wall recently noticed something strange. It was a Tupperware container that contained items from previous owners of the restaurant: a time capsule from 1991.
Back in 1990, the owners of a place called the Little Gem Café moved their location from 12th Street up to 13th. But months into their stay, a fire broke out in the kitchen, leaving the place uninhabitable for the next few months.
The owners received help from the Columbus Church of Christ to clean up the place to get it back to normal by March of 1991. While this happened, the owners collected items that were to be put into the capsule, such as an old menu, pictures from the evening the restaurant reopened, Husker gear, a Barbra Streisand eight-track tape and some old copies of the Columbus Telegram.
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Stepfanie and Andrew said everything in the container was well-preserved. Looking through the capsule gave them a sense of what the restaurant used to look like before it became the Picket Fence Café.
The two began asking as many people as possible about who was in the pictures. One of those they identified was Church of Christ volunteer Seth Ahrens, who was a young child at the time and is now an insurance agent with Evoke Insurance Solutions in Columbus.
“I notified him and sent him this picture,†Stepfanie said. “He knew all of these people from the church.
“I did not know that all of these pictures were taken inside the restaurant. I just looked at the group of people and moved on. It wasn’t until later when I looked at them a second time that these were actually inside of the building I own.â€
The Ahrens also included some interesting items when the capsule was filled: A library card and a YMCA card — which cost $237.
After looking at everything in the capsule, the business owners had a better appreciation for those who helped rebuild the restaurant nearly 30 years ago.
“There was a lot of thought that was put into this,†Stepfanie said.Ìý
Zach Roth is a reporter for The Columbus Telegram. Reach him via email at zachary.roth@lee.net.