Picture East Windsor - Then And Now

EAST WINDSOR, CT — For our latest installment of this periodic informal series, highlighting businesses from East Windsor's past and what those locations look like today, we return to the 1980 edition of the East Windsor High School yearbook, The Archive. Our featured photo this week is an eatery in Broad Brook we know absolutely nothing about: Tommy's Restaurant at 139 Main Street.

Finding out anything by going through official channels, i.e. town property records, turned out to be a pipedream; I had a better chance at becoming queen of England than I did uncovering any information about the place. We will rely on our readers to provide us any memories of this place, such as who was Tommy?

UPDATE: you have done just that! Prior to Tommy's, the site was home to Eisenhower's Restaurant. Tommy was Tommy Sorensen, a local resident whose dad Tom served as manager of the Warehouse Point Fire Department Tigers of the East Windsor Little League. Thanks to Steve Repetto for that information. The elder Sorensen died in 2002 at age 84; his obituary says he worked at Pratt & Whitney for 39 years, retiring in 1976, and also owned several establishments.

Several dining and drinking spots have resided at 139 Main over the past three decades. David Adams bought the property in 1989 and established Adams Den, which he operated with his brother Robert. Unfortunately, Robert Adams died in 1999 at the young age of 58.

Adams stayed in business until the mid-2000s, then sold the property to Marianne Koumlelis, who with her brother Peter moved Elaine's Pizza a few yards down from its former spot at 147 Main.

In 2014, the site was sold again, this time to Shkelqim Karaj and his wife Evelyn. The operated Brookside Pizza for a few years, but closed in early 2017. The building has been vacant since.

Here is a more contemporary look at 139 Main, taken by me in 2017.

Do you have a photo of an old East Windsor business which no longer exists, to which you own the copyright and which we could feature in this column? Email tim.jensen@patch.com.

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