From the Editor’s Desk: Sincerely, a Jazz Night Junkie

At 9 a.m. Feb. 18, 1234 W. Loyola Ave. — the former home of Archie’s Cafe — will be knocked to the ground.

A building that’s served the Loyola community by housing residents and local businesses for exactly 100 years has — at the time this article is being written — only 24 hours left to live. 

Beginning in September, leases of businesses and residents began to expire without renewal after the university purchased the building in December 2023 with plans to demolish it. 

What was once a hub for creativity, featuring Archie’s Cafe, Edge Art Gallery and Roman Susan Art Gallery, now sits vacant, cold and dark. 

Now, all that remains is the faint memory of fairy lights on the front sidewalk, the chatter of a community experiencing itself and welcoming local artwork sitting in windows.

Each time I walk past the building on my way to the train station, I feel my heart contract a little. Pangs of nostalgia mix with resentment toward Loyola for its continual ignorance of Rogers Park residents. 

For me, Archie’s Cafe felt like home. By day, the baristas made a mean latte. By night, the atmosphere transformed into something I fear may never be successfully replicated. 

Every Friday, the languid, soulful tones of the cello and piano would fill the warm storefront, calling out to me and a rotating collection of my favorite people, whomever I was able to rally for a visit. I was what my friends and I called a Jazz Night Junkie. 

Current first-year and incoming first-year students won’t know the feeling of passing through the front door to a whole new world — one where everything feels organic and intricately connected to nothing other than itself. 

They won’t know that if you asked the bartender at the right time of night, they’d set up a firepit on the sidewalk outside and open the door so you could take in the smell of campfire smoke — a novelty in urban Chicago — and the sounds of the melodies wafting from indoors at the same time. 

They won’t know how much love the owner, Roberta Schmatz — who named the establishment after her mother — gave to that place. I saw how deeply she cared for her visitors, and how much she hurt when it closed. 

But most of all, I feel full of regret that they’ll never feel the same sense of home I did. 

Before it was forced to close, I believed Archie’s Cafe would be a place I returned to for years to come with my college friends, where we could feel safe to reminisce and catch up on our ever-changing lives. But in 24 hours, this dream of mine will be dashed once and for all. Instead of being somewhere I return to, it’s become a symbol of my time at Loyola coming to a close. 

This week check out a review of “Wuthering Heights” in Arts, the story of men’s volleyball’s international players in Sports, the plight of textbook costs in News and a deep dive into Richard Wright in Opinion.