The 47-year-old Spaghetti Warehouse in Dallas’ West End — the original — is closing Sunday, Oct. 20.

The restaurant, founded in 1972, has been in business through the highs and the lows in the West End over its nearly 50 years.

Fans can purchase items inside the restaurant right now. Find details here.

Spaghetti Warehouse calls its 15-layer lasagne "our all-time guest favorite" on the menu. It's one of the best-sellers at the restaurant. (Courtesy of Spaghetti Warehouse)

The restaurant, at 1815 N. Market St., is in a nook of the West End with easy access to Victory Park, Uptown Dallas and parts of downtown Dallas. To show its longevity, Spaghetti Warehouse arrived in the neighborhood more than 15 years before the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza opened. The restaurant is also a few blocks from another historic museum in the West End, the brand-new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.

Spaghetti Warehouse Inc. director of operations Brad Morris — who started at the company as a server looking to make some extra money in 1989 — said he’s been inundated with positive comments from longtime fans.

Morris noted that the closure of the original Spaghetti Warehouse can’t be attributed to one thing: not the potential maintenance issues or the aging brand or the location. And while some customers have complained on social media about the cleanliness of the restaurant, the latest inspection scores were 85 at the downstairs kitchen and 94 at the upstairs kitchen, out of a possible score of 100.

“There are so many factors involved in making this decision,” Morris said. “There really isn’t one thing I can point to and say this is the reason why we’re shutting our doors.”

Neighbors and business owners had speculated for more than a year that the longtime Spaghetti Warehouse would close in 2019 as a wave of buildings are being built and renovated in the West End. The two-story Spaghetti Warehouse building has been for sale since summer 2019.

“Truthfully, I am excited to see the Spaghetti Warehouse close,” says Tanya Ragan, president of Wildcat Management and a West End developer. She’s one of several current business owners who seem content for the longtime restaurant to call it quits.

“It was outdated, needed improvements and doesn’t really work with the direction the neighborhood is organically going," she said. "It survived because nothing else was there.”

In early 2020, construction is expected to start on a park near the Spaghetti Warehouse building. The three-quarter-acre park will add more green space to a neighborhood that’s starting to feel more vibrant.

Diners eat inside the trolley at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Dallas' West End. (ED HILLE/Staff Photographer)

“It is a new era in the Dallas West End,” Ragan said. “The closure goes with the new direction of the neighborhood: youth, vibrancy, innovation and density. The Spaghetti Warehouse was stuck in the past.”

But it sure is a treasure trove of memories. The company was started in 1972 by Robert Hawk, who sold a few dozen restaurants to longtime Dallas restaurateur Gene Street in 1999.

Street’s company, Consolidated Restaurant Operations Inc., managed Spaghetti Warehouses across the country until 2007, confirms Bill Watson, vice president of marketing for CRO. Street called the chain “a monster” — one with continual maintenance issues due to the historic buildings many of the restaurants were built inside.

“They had cooking pots that were as big as cars today,” Street said, recalling the giant kitchen at the West End restaurant space. “They made every sauce. They used really good cheeses, and it was, for its time, a quality, quality meal for the price you paid.”

But he also called it “a very hard chain to run.” Three of his kids worked at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Austin while they were in college to learn the family business.

The best times were during Mary Kay’s annual summer convention in downtown Dallas, when Street remembers doubling the wait staff to keep up with demand.

“But when they left, it was back to trying to get the locals,” he says. “And then locals just kind of quit going down to the West End.”

The historic restaurant was once a pillow factory before it was converted into a restaurant. The trolley inside the West End restaurant — one of its signatures — was formerly a functioning trolley used in East Dallas, a spokeswoman said.

A statement from the restaurant thanked guests for more than four decades of loyalty. “We enjoyed serving you, your family and friends. And, it was our pleasure to celebrate your many birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions.”

Spaghetti Warehouse has one remaining restaurant in North Texas, at 1255 W. Interstate 20 in Arlington. Catering is still available across North Texas from that location.

The closure of the West End restaurant “has no effect on any other Spaghetti Warehouse locations,” Morris said.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.