Est. 1935 · Clifford Clinton's Depression-era pay-what-you-can cafeteria · Citizens' Independent Vice Investigation Committee (CIVIC) hub — contributed to Mayor Frank Shaw recall (1938) · Mistress's ashes scattered on-site · 2015 restoration as Clifton's Republic · Broadway Historic District, downtown Los Angeles
Clifford Clinton opened Clifton's Cafeteria on South Broadway in 1935, during the depths of the Depression, with a founding principle of social obligation: customers who could not pay for their meal were told to pay what they could, including nothing. The cafeteria served thousands of Angelenos during the worst years of the decade and established Clinton as a significant civic figure.
Clinton's activism extended beyond feeding the poor. He became the central figure in the Citizens' Independent Vice Investigation Committee (CIVIC), which during the late 1930s and early 1940s documented and publicized the web of connections between Los Angeles's political establishment and its gambling, prostitution, and vice operations. The committee's work contributed to the recall of Mayor Frank Shaw in 1938 — the first mayoral recall in a major American city — and reshaped Los Angeles civic politics.
Clinton operated the cafeteria for decades. According to accounts in LA Magazine and Discover Los Angeles, he maintained a lifelong relationship with a mistress, and upon her death her ashes were scattered in the cafeteria — a final act that gave the building a more literal connection to the dead than most haunted-restaurant locations.
The original Clifton's Cafeteria closed and the building fell into significant disrepair before a years-long restoration project led to its reopening in 2015 as Clifton's Republic. Wikipedia's documentation of the cafeteria's history and the Clinton family's civic legacy provides a foundation for understanding the building's cultural weight in downtown Los Angeles.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifton%27s_Cafeteria
- https://lamag.com/dining/hungry-for-terror-l-a-s-haunted-restaurants-and-bars/
- https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/eat-drink/drink-spirits-with-spirits-at-haunted-los-angeles-bars
Apparition of a Jazz Age woman (photographed during 2015 restoration)Presence attributed to former mistress whose ashes were scattered on-site
The haunted account at Clifton's Republic is unusually concrete in its origin story: Clifford Clinton's lifelong mistress died and had her ashes scattered inside the cafeteria. Whatever else that act represents, it established a literal physical connection between the woman and the building.
During the 2015 restoration — a years-long project involving significant construction work on the building's interior — workers reported photographing what appeared to be the apparition of a woman from the Jazz Age period. The description of her as a Jazz Age figure is consistent with the era when Clifton's first opened and when Clinton's relationship with his mistress would have been in its early decades. Accounts of the photograph are documented in a Discover Los Angeles feature on haunted LA bars.
LA Magazine's haunted restaurant feature also covers Clifton's, placing it in the context of a broader category of Los Angeles dining establishments with documented dark histories. The building's two primary historical claims — Clinton's Depression-era civic heroism and his decades-long extramarital relationship ending with ashes scattered on the premises — make it one of the more layered entries in downtown LA's haunted-dining category.
Notable Entities
Clifford Clinton's mistress (unnamed in sources)