As an artist with a passion for painting Pittsburgh landmarks, Linda Barnicott had the idea for a 2024 project depicting an iconic restaurant chain.
She remembers discussing the possibility with a young man who visited her vendor booth at a holiday market. It turned out that his grandfather had owned the Isaly’s in Irwin, and he had plenty of family photos she could use to help re-create the establishment.
Then he suggested an alternative chain, one that happened to get its start near Barnicott’s Brentwood home.
She balked at first, figuring she’d have to introduce herself to the powers that be to seek permission.
“He looked at me and he says, ‘You have it,’” Barnicott recalled.
Her visitor happened to be Rich Lewis, who’s the branding and creative director for Eat’n Park Hospitality Group. And although Barnicott didn’t know it at the time, the company was getting ready to celebrate the 75th anniversary of its 1949 founding.
“And so Isaly’s went out the door for another year,” she said.
Starting in the winter, she worked on a pastel portrait titled “The Place for Smiles,” showing the Eat’n Park at the Waterfront in Homestead.
“Every painting I do has a backstory,” she explained, and behind her latest creation is a narrative involving quite a bit of planning and execution to go along with plenty of personal memories.
For example, she and Tom Barnicott, a Bethel Park High School graduate, went on dates to Eat’n Park prior to their 1980 marriage, and they continue to be frequent customers.
Various locations served as social hubs for them when Tom, now retired, was pastor at places of worship including First Bethel United Methodist Church on Library Road.
“We’d go to Eat’n Park after church service with everybody, with the different congregation members, and have meetings there and all kinds of things,” Linda said.
Their daughters, Alyssa and Brittany, enjoyed the chain’s then-recently introduced Smiley Cookies when they were young.
“By the time it gets to my grandchildren,” Linda recalled, “my eldest granddaughter, when she could hardly talk, could point to the restaurant and say, ‘cookie.’”
So it should come as no surprise that the costumed mascot Smiley is part of “The Place for Smiles,” pictured just inside one of the doors being hugged by a younger granddaughter, Autumn.
Her twin, Abigail, is visible through another door looking at a menu with mom Alyssa, while older sister Aria and dad Jon Stadelman are at far left walking toward the restaurant.
And that’s just the beginning as far as folks who appear in the painting.
Lewis and his family are there, his sons pictured both inside having dinner and outside approaching from the right, to balance the image. Next to them is a woman who happened to be headed for the door when Barnicott was taking photos to help guide her work.
“She ended up walking in and waiting for takeout,” Barnicott said. “I asked her, ‘How would you feel if I put you in the painting?’ She was a little self-conscious, but she was really good about it, and we had a lovely conversation.”
A family of four, whom daughter Brittany spotted and suggested for the painting, is pictured leaving the restaurant, with a grinning girl and her mother leading the way.
“It was really cute,” Linda said. “The young girl — her name was Avery — evidently had it in her mind that one day she wanted to be famous. She didn’t want to tell me what she wanted to be famous for, but she wanted to be famous.”
Barnicott’s keen attention to detail extends to other elements of “The Place for Smiles,” such as returning for seasonal changes in the restaurant’s trees, shrubs and decorative vegetation.
“Every once in a while, we’d go and get some lemon meringue pie, and see what was blooming then or if they planted more flowers,” she said. “And I was finally able to get everything I needed.”
Although older folks’ memories of Eat’n Park may include being waited on by carhops, that practice ended more than half a century ago, and Barnicott sought a contemporary appearance for her portrait.
“They have another 75 years ahead of them, or more,” she explained. “So it was like, this is this slice in time. Seventy-five years ago, that was that slice in time.”
She took a similar approach in the mid-1990s with a series of Kennywood Park portraits, despite the nostalgia surrounding an amusement park that opened nearly a century before.
“I painted it the way it looked just then,” she said. “And you go back now, and it’s so different in so many places that I’m really glad I captured it.”
The same applies to applying her talents on behalf of Eat’n Park.
“I feel like I’m a part of their story, and that makes me very excited,” Barnicott said. “It was quite an honor.”
For more information, visit lindabarnicott.com.
Harry Funk is a TribLive news editor, specifically serving as editor of the Hampton, North Allegheny, North Hills, Pine Creek and Bethel Park journals. A professional journalist since 1985, he joined TribLive in 2022. You can contact Harry at hfunk@triblive.com.
