Nostalgia tinged with a little hope as Bewley's faithful savour the last drop

As befits a business founded by Quakers, Bewley's Cafés departed this world with a Quaker-style funeral. The mourners who queued outside the Grafton Street branch all day to pay their respects were determinedly sober.

Once inside, they drank nothing stronger than tea and coffee while celebrating the life of the dearly beloved in prose, poetry and song. And even as they said their goodbyes, many hoped the parting would be temporary.

With the café doors closing behind him, the Lord Mayor updated supporters on the campaign to save "the front room of the city" from permanent closure. It would require changes in both planning and rental law, Cllr Michael Conaghan said. But he added: "We cannot allow a non-regulated rental market to drive every vestige of heritage off the streets of Dublin."

Earlier, Michael James Ford of the Bewley's Theatre Group drew loud applause from customers in the Harry Clarke Room when he spoke of a "glimmer of hope" that this was not the end. Dubliners still had a chance to decide whether the café remained as "a monument to mahogany, stained glass and 1920s workmanship" or became "a monument to mammon in a soulless age".

But the prevailing emotion in Grafton Street and Westmoreland Street yesterday was one of nostalgia for an era passing. Cameras flashed at the interiors all day as customers hedged their bets on whether they would be seen in this form again. A high number of buggies spoke of parents planning to tell children in times to come of the day they went to Bewley's.

The former Irish Times columnist, Sam McAughtry, who queued in Grafton Street with the artist Esmé Lewis, remembered arriving from Belfast in the 1970s and being welcomed in the café by three separate writers, Michael Hartnett, Benedict Kiely, and John B. Keane.

Inside, nostalgia dominated the musical offerings. Managing director Cól Campbell danced with branch manager Deirdre Clarke as the theatre group performed the Carpenters' Yesterday Once More. Hot counter assistant Eugene O'Brien took a break from serving customers to deliver a magnificent version of Molly Malone (an unfortunate precedent, in that she was a Dublin institution no one could save). Rathfarnham singer Ray McDonnell raised the rafters with Raglan Road.

Campbell insisted that yesterday was not a sad day, but he admitted today would be as staff began new lives. Regretting that so much of the focus was on the cafés' physical structures, he compared the closures to the evacuation of the Blasket Islands.

You could preserve the islands and the buildings on them, but today the community who lived and worked there would be gone, to be absorbed "into the mainland".

The daily specials blackboard in Grafton Street's balcony café became a multinational noticeboard yesterday as employees recorded the same message in umpteen languages: Au revoir, Adios, Ate mais, Zegnaj, Hejda, Auf Wiedersehen, Ciao, Slán, Goodbye.