Anthony Athanas

Anthony Athanas (July 28, 1911 – May 20, 2005) was a multi-millionaire Albanian American restaurateur and philanthropist. His restaurants included Anthony's Pier 4, known throughout United States. In 1976 the National Restaurant Association named him Restaurateur of the Year.

Life Born in Korçë, southern Albania, then part of the Manastir Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, on July 28, 1911, Athanas and his mother Evangeline traveled on a donkey to a port and emigrated to Bedford, New York in 1915–16, where his father, who was a mason, and siblings had settled. At the age of thirteen Athanas left school and worked in several restaurants until 1938, when he bought his first restaurant: Anthony's Hawthorne Café in Lynn, Massachusetts. He would go on to open four more highly successful restaurants, including the General Glover House and Anthony's Pier 4 in Boston. Anthony's Pier 4 Cafe and Hawthorne by-the-sea Tavern in Swampscott (2010). It closed in 2025. Athanas had also served as president of Massachusetts's Restaurant Association, a member of the board of the National Restaurant Association, while in 1976 he was named "Restaurateur of the Year". Although Athanas had no formal education he was a popular lecturer at Harvard Business School, the University of New Hampshire and Cornell University, and was awarded the "Horatio Alger Award" by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans in 1978.

Death He died at his Swampscott home on May 20, 2005, of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 93. His other restaurants included the Hawthorne by-the-sea Tavern and The General Glover House in Swampscott, Massachusetts, and Anthony's Cummaquid Inn in Yarmouth Port. Closed, left derelict, demolished in 2019 Hawthorne by the Sea Swampscott, MA 1946-2025 Anthony's Pier 4 Boston, MA 1963 - 2013 Closed, demolished in 2016 Anthony’s Cummaquid Inn Yarmouth Port, MA 1975 - 2016 Closed, left derelict, destroyed by fire in 2024