Then & Now: Airport Square without the airport

In 1961, Silvio LaChance and his brother, Joseph Edgar LaChance, bought the old Airport Restaurant beside Wiley Apte’s White Mountain Airport. Joseph, known in his Berlin family as Eddie, managed the business and named it Eddie’s Steak House. He moved his family into a ranch house at the rear of the restaurant parking lot and opened for business with little more than a coat of paint and new furniture. Still, he quickly developed a moderate but steady clientele among both residents and the tourist traffic that then flourished mainly in the summer and fall.

Diners often had an opportunity to watch small planes taking off and landing in the fields behind the restaurant, and sometimes they wandered over for a ride of their own. Given the barrel rolls and loops to to which those pilots treated passengers in their Waco biplanes, it was advisable to treat oneself to such “entertainment” before sitting down to eat, rather than after.