Michael Paul Smith with a diorama set up of Elgin Park
courtesy of Michael Paul Smith archives

I was saddened to hear the news that Michael Paul Smith had passed away on November 19, 2018. I will go into a little more detail below, but as an intro; Smith , who described himself as a recluse, became well known world-wide for his unbelievably detailed forced perspective digital photos of diorama scenes utilizing his rather large collection of 1/24 scale die-cast car & truck models along with scratch-built model buildings combined with actual outdoor scenes.

There was no formal obituary at the time of his death, but within a week or so I was “tagged” by my long-time Society for Commercial Archeology friend, Brian Butko in a Facebook post he wrote that alerted his followers and Facebook friends about this. I believe there was a link to a piece from Hemmings Motor News which effectively became a default obituary for Michael. Here is that link… https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2018/11/27/modeler-michael-paul-smith-permanently-moves-to-elgin-park-at-age-67/ .

For those who do not know of Michael Paul Smith, he lived for many years on the edge of downtown Winchester, Massachusetts in the third floor of a large Victorian house. He had a pleasant soft-spoken personality and described himself as a recluse, although he did not actually avoid making contact with other people, he just kept to himself for the most part. He grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the small town of Sewickley.

According to his Bio, his family moved to Massachusetts where he graduated from high school and eventually ended up studying at the Worcester Art Museum as well as UMass Amherst. Michael had bounced around “employment-wise” in the early years after college, trying out various professions including working for a cabinet maker, a short-lived (one day) stint as a mail carrier, a bartender, and an art director for an advertising agency. He also started a wallpaper and painting business and in another career move, made models for an architectural firm.

Smith was an avid modeller from an early age and the skills he developed over his life helped him to become one of the most widely known artists using a small point and shoot digital camera to create forced perspective photographs that truly fooled his many fans world-wide. The seeds of this began in the 1990s when he started collecting super detailed die-cast car and truck models produced by companies like Danbury Mint and Franklin Mint, as well as others.

Smith’s fondness for classic automobile design from the 1920s thru the 50s inspired him to eventually start an over two decade-long endeavor of utilizing his skills (learned from building architectural models) to create 1/24th scale buildings to be used as a set-up for photographing his die cast models of cars and trucks. His first dioramas were mostly shot inside. He eventually moved his dioramas outside and used actual street backdrops to line-up his model buildings and cars in naturally lighted situations where the viewer was hard pressed to see where the diorama ended and the real background started…

The photos were eventually posted on a Flickr page he developed that he dubbed “Elgin Park” https://www.flickr.com/photos/24796741@N05/ . Elgin Park was a fictionalized (and certainly idealized) place based on his boyhood hometown of Sewickley, PA. After some publicity from a British website, Smith’s viewership of his Flickr page mushroomed and went viral with millions of hits almost over night. I myself saw some of these a number of years ago through postings on Facebook and other places. I was totally amazed at the photographs and skill it took to create these images. Here are some of my favorites….

The Flickr page eventually led to 2 books Smith co-authored with his friend Gail K. Ellison. The first was Elgin Park, An Ideal American town published in 2011…

This first book was in a way an extension of his Flickr page with loads of photos of the dioramas. He did not go into too much detail as to his process that created the images.

This book was followed by Elgin Park, The 1/24th-scale creation of a fictitious mid 20th century American town published in 2015…

The second book was physically quite large and possibly the most expensive book I ever purchased. After hearing of Michael’s passing, I dug out both this and the first book from my personal library to prepare to write this blog post. This second book went into extreme detail to describe the process involved in creating his scenes. All the little tricks of the trade (so to speak) to create scratch-built model buildings, back drops and miscellaneous detailed equipment/pieces to enhance the individual scenes were spelled out. There were also select comments from his legion of world-wide on-line fans as well as his responses to them.

It was not until I read a Boston Globe article about Michael Paul Smith and his Elgin Park project close after the time that the second book was published that I realized we had met back in 1995. I have been associated with the Society for Commercial Archeology (SCA), becoming a member in 1981, I had attended many of the organizations events held in the northeast since that time. In late 1988, I had started contributing by authoring the first-ever regular column in the SCA’s News Journal (later to be known as the Journal magazine). I named it Diner Hotline (surprise) and wrote for the Journal for over 18 years before retiring the column and starting this blog.

The last event the SCA held in the Boston area (and in fact, New England) occurred on June 23-24, 1995, dubbed the “New England Diner Weekend”, this event was organized locally by myself and Richard J. S. Gutman on the Massachusetts part and Daniel Zilka on the Rhode Island part, along with national assistance by SCA’ers Tania Werbizky, Pete Phillips and Mike Bennett. The event centered on visiting two major exhibits celebrating the American Diner, the first exhibit was at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts curated by Richard Gutman and named after his landmark book, “American Diner Then & Now”.

The second was a smaller exhibit at the Rhode Island Historical Society  which noted the Ocean State’s place in diner history as the birthplace of the horse-drawn lunch wagon. Starting in Lexington at a Friday night reception and continuing the next day with a bus tour going from Lexington to Worcester, Mass. and then on to Providence, RI. The weather cooperated and it was a huge success. We had a large attendance including many locals from Massachusetts and New England as well as people from around the country. Michael Paul Smith was one of those attending.

During the event, I had brought along a handful of photos to show interested people of a diner-related personal project I had started around January of 1995. This project was a completely new thing for me, a scratch-built model of the Star Lite Diner, Worcester Lunch Car No. 817 which was located in my hometown of Medford, Massachusetts from 1948 to 1968. I had some H.O. scale plastic models of diners in my collection, some built primarily as they came, others I had “kit-bashed” to look different. This new model was the first attempt at doing something on this scale (so to speak). The Star Lite was a diner that I actually patronized as a kid and was hugely disappointed when they closed for their usual vacation in the summer of 1968 and never reopened. The diner was reportedly moved to a salvage yard and never survived.

The model was not built to any particular scale such as 1/24, etc. I just used graph paper to draw a representational plan that was in perspective and looked right to me. The model ended up being approximately 30 inches long. At the time of the SCA event in June of 95, the exterior had been completed. I had accomplished this level of completion in a few short weeks and took the photos which were processed in February of 95.

My large, scratch-built model of the Star Lite Diner from the group of photos I brought along to the SCA New England Diner Weekend to show interested people. By the way it is sitting on an actual Worcester Lunch Car table….

Second view of the scratch-built model of the Star Lite Diner

Third view of the scratch-built model of the Star Lite Diner

Fourth view of the scratch-built model of the Star Lite Diner

As I said, Michael and I met sometime during the New England Diner weekend, in fact it may have been at the stop we made to the Modern Diner in Pawtucket, RI. I showed him the photos of my Star Lite Diner model and he immediately was enthusiastic about what I had accomplished. I do recall he asked about the scale of it and told him I did not use any particular scale. We quickly found out that we lived about 7 minutes or so (by car) from each other. I was living on Osborne Road in Medford, about 2 blocks from the town line with Winchester. He lived about a mile and a half from there near the center of town. We made arrangements for me to visit with him soon after and I brought the model with me. We visited at his home for an hour or so and he was impressed with my diner model and how improvised it was with little or no materials other than balsa and bass wood and other items I used to create it. Now don’t get me wrong, I think I did pretty well for this attempt to build the model but my expertise was nowhere in the same ballpark as Michael’s modelling experience. Be that as it may, little did I know that this chance encounter may have actually led to Michael’s near future project of creating Elgin Park….

During that early  visit, Michael dragged out a paper bag filled with advertising match books when he found out I collected those. In that whole bag, there was one match book from Duffs Diner & Dining Room in Winchester, VA. It was a very odd size, overly large (4.25″ long x 3.35″ wide, closed) but a real beauty. He donated it to my collection…

Front view of Duff’s Diner Matchbook

Back view of Duff’s Diner Matchbook

Inside view of Duff’s Diner Matchbook with only a small amount of matches

After we visited that day in 1995 we did not keep in touch and I certainly had no clue that this whole “Elgin Park” project would evolve within the next few years. Fast Forward 20 plus years later after I discovered that it was he who had been behind all those wonderful diorama photos, I decided to contact him through his Flickr page and he responded. I asked if he remembered me and he said, yes, of course. So we made arrangements for myself and my wife Denise to visit him on Sunday, June 26, 2016. I brought a copy of each of my Diner books which I signed for him as well as my copy of his 2015 Elgin Park book (for him to sign for me).

He also gave me a copy of his first Elgin Park book from 2011, which he signed as well. I noticed when he signed my copy of the 2015 Elgin Park book, he also left an inscription that totally floored me and took me by surprise…

After seeing the inscription, it dawned on me that he considered our 1995 meeting pivotal in his process of going down the road he would travel to end up creating Elgin Park and thus, become internationally known for this endeavor. I was floored by this knowledge as well as humbled. I certainly do not give myself any credit for what Michael accomplished as it was all him and his talent as well as ability to create these lasting images which legions of fans world-wide have enjoyed for years.

Rest In Peace my friend…..

I was contacted recently by Chris Tunnah in the last month. Chris is a restaurateur  based in  New York state operating restaurants as a General Manager & Consultant in NYC for the last 15 years, working with celebrity chef’s such as Tom Colicchio, Missy Robbins, Scott Conant and Floyd Cardoz to name just a few. Although living and working in New York, Chris also has a home in the Newport, Rhode Island area and has had a dream of bringing a small classic factory-built diner back to that area.

This is actually not the first time I had heard from Chris. We exchanged some emails back in March of 2013, when he was trying to obtain the long-closed Skee’s Diner of Torrington, Connecticut and move it to Newport or Middletown, RI, Unfortunately this plan ultimately fell thru. Also in that 2013 email Chris went on to say “Before Skee’s, two years ago I discussed purchasing the Red Rose Diner in Towanda, Pennsylvania from Mike Holt, but he was unable to commit to the sale….. and I await a change of heart from Mike. The Red Rose would be fantastic in Newport”.

I get daily “News blurbs” about “Diners” thru Google and was aware that Chris ‘s dreams about bringing a diner back to Rhode Island might be coming closer to reality. It seems the Red Rose Diner project was revived after the more recent closure of that diner. In the news pieces I have seen, it was mentioned that Chris had to jump thru some hoops to get approval for his plans to bring the diner to a new location im Middletown, CT. Unfortunately, this, along with the purchase price of the diner and property have stretched his savings account to the limits.

To complete his objective, Chris has started a GoFundMe page to help defray costs in bringing his Red Rose Diner from Pennsylvania to Rhode Island.  you can check out the GoFundMe page here for further details…  https://www.gofundme.com/save-one-of-last-1920039s-us-diners

As I happen to know a bit about this particular diner, let me fill in some of the details as I know them… The story of the Red Rose Diner goes back much further than its recent time in Towanda, PA. It is a 1927 vintage Tierney diner that has spent its whole life in Pennsylvania since it left the factory in New Rochelle, NY. It was originally built as the Lackawanna Trail Diner and operated under that name for many years in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

Post card from my collection of the Lackawanna Trail Diner

I had first learned about this diner through a “before and after” piece John Baeder included in his 1984 book “Gas, Food and Lodging” (A Post Card Odyssey Through the American Roadside). In the book he showed the above post card image from his vast collection as well as a more recent photo he had shot in May of 1979 when it sported a weathered wooden shingle skirt under the windows and was called Besecker’s Diner.

May, 1979 photo by John Baeder when it was Besecker’s Diner

I first documented the diner in June 29, 1985, not too long after Gas, Food and Lodging first came out. By then the diner lost the wooden shingles and was painted white and operating as Jerry’s Diner. The diner continued to operate at the original location until the mid-to late 1990s.

June 29, 1985 photo by Larry Cultrera when it was Jerry’s Diner

In the late 1990s, the closed Jerry’s Diner became available and there was more than one entity interested in rescuing it. One of these entities was none other than my old friend Gordon Tindall of Decorah, Iowa. Gordon had previously rescued the Clarksville Diner from Clarksville, NJ near where he grew up. He had heard it was threatened because of new development that was happening in that area and he arranged to move it to Iowa in the late 1980s. After a lot of work restoring and equipping that diner, he was able to re-open it and operate it for 5 or 6 years. He eventually sold that diner and it was moved to France where it is today.

Well Gordon was not through after the first restoration and approached the owners of Jerry’s Diner and convinced them to sell it to him. He relocated the diner to a storage location in Lancaster, PA where he worked on the diner and brought it back to near original condition. He had hopes of keeping it in Lancaster but was never able to secure the location he wanted. That is when the diner ended up moving to Towanda. These next few photos are courtesy of Chris Tunnah of the Red Rose Diner in Towanda.

Tindall operated this diner for another 5 years after opening it before moving on to another project. This would be the complete rebuild of an extremely rare diner that was saved by Michael Engle initially. This would be the former Village Diner of Wellington, Ohio. Also known as Cecil’s Trackside Diner before it closed at that location, this diner was built by Goodell Hardware out of the Silver Creek, New York area, a model that resembled ones built by Ward & Dickenson Diners.

Engle moved the diner from Ohio to Gilbertsville, NY but did not have the wherewithal to complete a restoration. In the meantime he had made the acquaintance of Tindall and finally asked him if he wanted to take on the daunting task to complete the job. So while Tindall was operating the Red Rose Diner, he had started to work on the new diner in his spare time. I wrote about that diner here on Diner Hotline back in June of 2009…  https://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/gordon-tindalls-spud-boy-diner-gets-nice-write-up-and-it-is-almost-a-year-away-from-opening/

Anyway, we wish Chris Tunnah well in his endeavor and hope he can realize his goal of getting this classic diner re-opened again soon.

As you may have noticed, this is my first blog post in a while. Again I apologize for the infrequent posts but I have been scanning my collection of 35mm slides and prints, which has consumed a lot of spare time for a few years. The slides are all scanned but the prints take more time. The outcome so far is that the digital archive of Diner photos is growing.

Starting this past June, I have officially “Semi-retired” from my job, working only Tuesday thru Thursday, with 4 day weekends. That being said, an opportunity arose to actually plan a road-trip to New Jersey (which took place at the end of September). Now the last time I was even in the Garden State was just over 21 years ago – in June of 1998 to be exact.

The opportunity that presented itself was the publishing of a new book by my friend Michael Gabriele of Clifton, New Jersey. The book is his 5th book overall published by The History Press and 2nd book about New Jersey Diners. The new book is entitled Stories From New Jersey Diners: Monuments To Community. Gabriele had announced within the last couple of months that he would be having an official book launch at the Nutley (NJ) Museum on the evening of September 27th, a Friday night. This fit in perfectly with my new 4-day weekend schedule. I was actually thinking about keeping it a surprise and just showing up, but immediately nixed that idea, mainly because there were a few people I wanted to see when I got down there. So I let Michael Gabriele in on the possibility of my attending and he was extremely enthusiastic about my proposed plan and encouraged me to make the effort.

At the top of the list of people I wanted to get together with was Donald Kaplan, co-author of the very first book on Diners I ever bought, Diners Of The Northeast! I refer to this book along with Diners by John Baeder and American Diner by Richard J.S. Gutman & Elliott Kaufman as the Holy Trinity of Diner books that came out in the late 1970s and into 1980.

Cover of the original edition of Diners Of The Northeast, by
Donald Kaplan and Alan Bellink, the first “Diner” book that
I purchased circa October, 1980.

The cover sleeve of the original hard cover edition of
American Diner by Richard Gutman & Elliott Kaufman.
The second “Diner” book which I purchased in late 1980.

The cover of the first edition of Diners by John Baeder.
This is the third “Diner” book I purchased, circa January, 1981.

Even though I may have been aware of the books authored by John Baeder (Diners) and Richard Gutman (American Diner) had been published in 1978 and 1979 respectively, Donald Kaplan and his co-author Alan (now Allyson) Bellink’s book came out around September of 1980 right at the flash point where my diner awareness was just starting to take hold.

I had been a diner aficionado since I was very young and already started taking Sunday morning road-trips with my pal Steve Repucci since late 1979 to discover (or rediscover) diners for Sunday morning breakfasts. Also, I had just purchased my first 35mm camera and the thought was beginning to form in my brain to document these diners that were fast disappearing from the landscape here in New England. I estimate that I purchased Diners Of The Northeast sometime in October of 1980 and it swung the door wide open for the almost 40 year obsession that followed!

I purchased the other books American Diner and Diners within 3 months and had started taking my first tentative photos as well as expanding my already existent post card collection with a “diner category”. Now early in 1981, I had met and become friends with Richard Gutman and about a year later the same happened with John Baeder. But connecting with the co-authors Kaplan & Bellink did not happen until 1996 when I met briefly with Alan Bellink at a diner-related get together. My budding friendship with Donald Kaplan started much later (2010 or so) thru Facebook. Donald, (who lives in the Bronx) and I have become fast friends in the last couple of years. We speak at least once a week. I of course let Donald Kaplan in on my plans for a trip down toward New York and New Jersey.

So as far as the proposed New Jersey road-trip, I convinced my wife Denise that we should do this. Believe me, that is a very hard sell with her. I got reservations at the Hampton Inn in Carlstadt (near the Meadowlands Sports Complex) which put me in a very central location for where I wanted to be. I had called my old friend Arnie Corrado to let him know of my plans. Arnie, who along with his late father Ralph, owned and operated Rosie’s Diner in Little Ferry, NJ until they sold and closed it in 1990. We had lost touch for a number of years until I made the effort about 6 years ago and we have been in constant contact since.

There were other people I planned to meet up with at the event. These people included Les Cooper (from the family that manufactured Silk City Diners), Gloria Nash from Queens, NY (who I actually met within the last couple of months in Massachusetts), Mark Oberndorf ( a painter of vernacular buildings as well as homes, etc.) and Alex Panko (who, with his family owned and operated the Peterpank Diner in Sayreville, New Jersey).

Which brings us to the weekend of September 27 thru 29th of 2019. Denise and I left Saugus around 3:30 AM on Friday (the27th). We made our first stop for coffee and a bathroom break at the Vernon Diner which is located at Exit 65 right off of I-84 southbound in Connecticut. This place is an easy off/on to the highway and is housed in a former Howard Johnson’s Restaurant. The place is nicely done up as a modern diner including a vast display case of baked goods. Unfortunately, it was dark and I did not get photos.

Our next stop was Exit 10 in Newtown, CT. I wanted to get new photos of the Sandy Hook Diner, a small barrel-roofed diner that probably dates to the 1920s. After those photos, we drove back to the nicely redone Blue Colony Diner at the exit to have another coffee and bathroom break. I had photographed both of these diners back in the early 1980s. The Sandy Hook had not changed significantly but the Blue Colony, originally built by Manno Diners had a complete makeover in the last 20 or so years, done by DeRaffele Diner Company.

The Sandy Hook Diner, Newtown, Connecticut.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 27, 2019

The Blue Colony Diner, Newtown, Connecticut.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 27, 2019

Continuing on, we got back on I-84 and made it to Exit 2B on the western end of Danbury, before the New York state line. Taking U.S. Route 6 to NY Route 22 in Brewster, NY, we continued driving south to North White Plains. We took I-287 west to Exit 1 in Elmsford and got Route 119 south past the Eldorado Diner to the Saw Mill River Parkway and headed south on that road until it became the Henry Hudson Parkway. We got off at Exit 23 and headed south on Broadway through the Bronx to 231st Street. We continued west on 231st to Tibbett Avenue and south one block to the Tibbett Diner, where we met up with Donald Kaplan.

The Tibbett Diner, 3033 Tibbett Avenue, Bronx, New York.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 27, 2019

Donald Kaplan & Larry Cultrera outside the Tibbett Diner.
Photo by Denise Cultrera, September 27, 2019

After meeting up and spending some time with Donald, he convinced me to head a few miles south on Broadway to take the George Washington Bridge over to New Jersey, instead of going back to the Tappan Zee area and taking the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge over to the Garden State. I took his advice and it worked out fine, saving us some time. After crossing the GWB, we headed toward Little Ferry on Route 46 and contacted Arnie Corrado. We made plans to meet at the White Manna Diner in nearby Hackensack. No sooner did I get off the phone with Arnie, Michael Gabriele called to see where we were. I informed him of the White Manna plans and he immediately said he would meet us there…

The White Manna Diner, 358 River Street, Hackensack, New Jersey.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 27, 2019

Michael Gabriele, Larry Cultrera & Arnie Corrado at the White
Manna Diner. Photo by Denise Cultrera, September 27, 2019

Now Michael Gabriele and I have been friends for around 6 years since he contacted me after he contracted to do his first New Jersey diner book for our publisher, The History Press. But until the 27th of September, we had never met face-to-face! At the White Manna, Michael, Arnie and I partook of some wonderful sliders and enjoyed the atmosphere of this fantastically preserved Paramount Diner. Afterward, Michael went home and Denise and I visited with Arnie briefly at his home in Little Ferry before heading to our hotel to check in. After we were settled in our hotel room, we went out and searched for a late lunch and found the Candlewyck Diner in East Rutherford, NJ. The Candlewyck is a circa 1970s vintage Kullman Diner that was renovated on site in recent years and the new look, inside and out represents yet another evolution in diner design!

The Candlewyck Diner 179 Paterson Street,
East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Photograph by Larry Cultrera, September 27, 2019.

Michael Gabriele’s new book published by The History Press.

So, the major reason to come to New Jersey was to attend the launch of Michael Gabriele’s new book at the Nutley Museum. In fact I was slated to give a short slide presentation along with Michael and the other guest speaker, Les Cooper. It was lucky I had spoken with Michael on the afternoon before the trip. He informed me that the Museum’s laptop computer was on the fritz and wondered if I was bringing my own laptop PC. I of course was bringing it to use to get online, etc when I was at the hotel. So the evening of the book launch we setup with the museum’s large screen TV and fired up Power Point….

Gloria Nash, Arnie Corrado and Denise Cultrera attending
book launch event at the Nutley Museum. Photo by
Larry Cultrera, September 27, 2019.

Michael Gabriele speaking at the Nutley Museum.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, Spetember 27, 2019.

I also finally got to meet Alex Panko and Les Cooper both of whom I have known for a few years but had never met. Alex was a trip, pretty much the way I expected, he is extremely outgoing (not to mention a little hyper, he drinks an ton of Coca Cola). Les was also pretty much the person I expected, interesting and well spoken.

Larry Cultrera, Alex Panko and Les Cooper at the Nutley Museum.
Photo by Denise Cultrera, September 27, 2019

The next morning (Saturday the 28th), Denise and I went to have breakfast at the Bendix Diner on Route 17 in Hasbrouck Heights. It was wonderful to see all the neon in working order. The diner itself, a rare Master Diner, is really starting to show its age, both inside and out unfortunately. I shot some photos as the morning light was coming up and then revisited it in the early afternoon to get great daytime shots…

Bendix Diner, Route 17 in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.
Early morning photo by Larry Cultrera, September 28, 2019

Bendix Diner, Route 17 in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.
Early afternoon photo by Larry Cultrera, September 28, 2019

Around mid-morning, Denise and I drove over to Michael Gabriele’s home in Clifton and met his wife Julie as well as one of his sons (sorry Mike, I forgot his name). Then Michael gave us a little tour around the area to let me document some diners that I had not previously photographed. Let me say the light for taking photos this particular weekend was totally perfect and I lucked out. The following places were shot during that little excursion with Michael.

The Colonial Diner, 27 Orient Way in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.
This is a 1950 vintage Mountain View Diner modified with that
new roof topper and sign, while maintaining the original design.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 28, 2019.

The Red Hawk Diner located on the campus of
Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 28, 2019.

The Park West Diner on Route 46. A nicely renovated Kullman
diner, originally known as the Golden Star Diner in the
Woodland Park/Little Falls area.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 28, 2019.

The Little Falls Diner, 11 Paterson Avenue, Little falls, New Jersey.
This place has been closed for many years.

On Sunday morning (the 29th), Denise and I got on the road early and headed north on Route 17. We stopped while it was still dark at the State Line Diner in Mahwah for breakfast! What a great place, I would have loved to get some photos if it were in daylight! We crossed the Hudson on I-287 over the recently completed Mario M. Cuomo Bridge. We reversed our path using the same roads we traveled down on Friday to head back to Connecticut.  On the way up Route 22, we bypassed into Katonah, New York to possibly stop for coffee at the Blue Dolphin Diner. Unfortunately, the diner was not open on Sunday morning and I noticed it is now operating as an upscale bistro. I also noticed the interior was extremely compromised with almost nothing original remaining. Very sad, but at least the outside still looked great.

The Blue Dolphin Diner, 175 Katonah Avenue, Katonah, New York.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, from September 28, 2019.

Just prior to crossing the state line into Connecticut, we stopped at Bob’s Diner in Brewster. It looks the same as the last time I saw it back in the 1980s with the exception of the paint color on the outside. A nice little downtown diner.

Bob’s Diner, 27 Main Street in Brewster, New York.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 28, 2019.

Shortly after crossing the state line, I stopped at the Mill Plain Diner (formerly the Windmill Diner) on Mill Plain Road (U.S. Route 6) in Danbury. I remember this diner as having a brick facade with a mansard roof back in the 1980s. Within the last year or so the place had an extreme makeover, inside and out by DeRaffele Diners and looks fantastic. I heard it is now owned by the same people who have the Blue Colony Diner in Newtown.

The Mill Plain Diner, 14 Mill Plain Road in Danbury, Connecticut.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, Spetmeber 28, 2019.

To finish off this early fall road-trip, we made one last stop in Connecticut before making it back into Massachusetts. We got off the highway briefly in East Hartford and I revisited a diner I had eaten in back in the 1980s, but never photographed. It has been on my bucket list for a while and I finally got my photos. The AAA Diner is a 1970s vintage brick diner with mansard roof that on the outside still looks similar to the way I remember it. The interior has gotten an update and is now bright and airy….

The AAA Diner, 1209 Main Street in East Hartford, Connecticut.
Photo by Larry Cultrera, September 25, 2019.

As I stated earlier, the weather could not have cooperated more than it did for this long-awaited interstate road-trip and I was extremely happy to get the photos I did, as well as meet new friends and reconnect with old friends. I will follow up soon with a review of Michael Gabriele’s book in the near future!

I will be doing a slide presentation in conjunction with the Plaistow Historical Society this coming Friday afternoon. It will be held at the Plaistow Public Library, 85 Main Street (Route 121A) at 3:00 PM. I will have a small supply of my books (Classic Diners of Massachusetts) and (New Hampshire Diners, Classic Granite State Eateries) for sale as well. The slide presentation is based on my NH Diners book, but slightly expanded.

I am sure a fair portion of people who read this blog are aware that Diner Hotline had started out as the first ever regular column that appeared in two of the publications made available to the members of the Society for Commercial Archeology (SCA). It first showed up in 1989 in the original News Journal which was a newsletter for the organization. Later on in 1991, the publication was split into a newsletter called the SCA News and a magazine called the SCA Journal. I was given a choice as to where I wanted Diner Hotline to appear and chose the Journal. The column ran until September of 2007. Shortly thereafter, I was influenced by my good friend Brian Butko to think about morphing the Hotline into a blog.

So on October 31, 2007 the Diner Hotline Weblog made it’s debut with a short post. Over the years I have kept true to my mission of posting about “Diners, Drive-ins and other Roadside Stuff”, making it a little more diversified than the original Diner Hotline column.

https://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/about/

Although the frequency of posts has diminished greatly over the last 6 years or more, I am committed to keeping this alive with the occasional post as the spirit moves me. I am currently expanding the digital library of photos I have shot over the last 39 years. I have completed the 35mm slide scanning and currently am working on the 3 plus years of 35mm prints I had shot prior to switching to slide film. The scanning and cleaning of the prints has proved to be hugely time-consuming but I am very pleased with the results thus far.

I hope that people will continue to check in here from time to time and like what I have to say. Also, I do have some Facebook pages that I post photos, etc to, including “Diner Hotline”, “Got Diners”, “Classic Diners of Massachusetts”, New Hampshire Diners, Classic Granite State Eateries” and of course my personal Facebook page “Larry Cultrera”….

On this day, 39 years ago (November 29, 1980) I took one 35mm photograph of a diner… namely, the By Pass Diner of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This event, small in comparison to others in the greater scheme of things, steamrolled into a multi-decade long odyssey that encompasses thousands of photos of 870 plus diners throughout the northeast United States down through the mid-Atlantic states as well as small pockets in Tennessee and Florida.

The By Pass Diner of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Photo from November 29, 1980

I have been in the process of scanning and in some cases, re-scanning the library of 35mm prints and slides, to digitize the archive. In looking back on some of the older photos, including that first one, I am delighted in how these have held up as time goes on. The slides have been scanned but the prints are only partially complete. My hope that now that I am semi-retired, I can make more inroads in the scanning project.

Now when I started this little research project of documenting diners, I will confess that I was a “diner-snob”. Of this I mean that I would only take photos of classic factory-built (prefabricated) diners. The ones built between the 1920s through to the 1950s. Initially, I sort of ignored the newer ones (1960 -1980) and have been kicking myself ever since for not including more of these. As time went on, I did get quite a few of the newer ones and just wish I had gotten more. I also started including storefront and on-site built diners as subjects for my photos.

That being said, in honor of the 39th anniversary of taking my first diner photo, I decided to take some photos of a “Diner” that is about to open within the next month.The Minuteman Diner, located on The Great Road in Bedford, Massachusetts had this honor. I had been reading earlier this year that Ed & Diane Cohen were taking over the spot in a commercial strip-mall that had housed a D’Angelo Sub Shop and planned to open it up as a diner after renovations and updates to the spot were complete. The Cohen’s plans were to open sometime in August, but these plans had a slight detour due to unforeseen building code requirements that set them back a few months. These problems have been alleviated and they are waiting for the town to sign-off and allow them to open.

The Minuteman Diner, Bedford, Massachusetts.
An exterior view from November 29, 2019

The Minuteman Diner, Bedford, Massachusetts.
An exterior view from November 29, 2019

The Minuteman Diner, Bedford, Massachusetts.
An exterior view from November 29, 2019

The Minuteman Diner, Bedford, Massachusetts.
An interior view from November 29, 2019

The Minuteman Diner, Bedford, Massachusetts.
An interior view from November 29, 2019

I had contacted Diane the other day and told her I was planning on showing up this morning to take photos. When I got there, I had a nice conversation with both her and Ed and am excited to see them do well as there are no other breakfast and lunch places in town other than McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts and various sandwich places. I am definitely planning to make a return trip or two when they open up soon….

I heard some sad news last week that an old diner located on Bennett Street in Lynn, Massachusetts was reportedly demolished last week. It suffered a very bad fire a little over a year ago. Listed as Worcester Lunch Car Number 833, it was completed and delivered in June of 1952. At 15 feet 6 inches by 54 feet, it was one of the last really large one-piece diners built by the company. Originally operated as the Lynway Diner (just around the corner from the recent Bennett Street location) on the Lynnway, its original owner was James Vellis. It was moved to nearby Bennett Street many years ago. I first patronized it here as the Lynn Diner. It has since had other names including Webbie’s Diner. In the last 20 or so years it has been operated as at least 2 Oriental Restaurants. At the time of the fire, the place was about to reopen as a Latino restaurant called Anafe.

A post card of the Lynway Diner created a number of years ago
for a “Diner” exhibit at the Lynn Museum

A photo of Worcester Lunch Car as the Lynn Diner after it moved
to Bennett Street. Early 1980s photo by Larry Cultrera

A photo from last February showing the fire damage, mostly
to the front right corner. Photo by Larry Cultrera

A photo from last February showing the fire damage, mostly
to the front right corner. Photo by Larry Cultrera

I actually was in Lynn a couple of weeks ago to have lunch at the nearby Capitol Diner and stopped by on the way home to see what was happening to this diner. It looked quite ominous surrounded by a chain-link fence. This past week, some of my photos of this diner surfaced on my Facebook feed as memories so I shared them. Not long after a Facebook friend (Paul Ferrari) left a comment to let me know that the diner had been demolished the week before. I took a ride by this past Sunday afternoon and saw that there was a hole in the ground where the diner had been.

I am happy to report that it is not all bad news with diners closing and or being demolished lately. There is good news coming out of Pawtucket, Rhode Island that happens to be a long time in coming to fruition.  A diner last operated in Middletown, Connecticut (closed in 1997) has been restored and re-opened as the Miss Lorraine Diner. Built as Worcester Lunch Car # 774, it was delivered to its first operating location, 357 Asylum Street in Hartford, Connecticut on August 12, 1941 and operated as Donwells Diner-Restaurant.

a newspaper ad announcing the opening of Donwells Diner

an old matchbook cover for Donwells Diner

According to Richard Gutman, the name of the diner came from the combining of the original owner’s names, J. Edward & Edith Donnellan and Chester L. Wells… hence the contraction, Donwells. I am not sure when the diner was moved to Middletown from Hartford, but I had heard stories that the original owners may have gotten into debt with some unsavory people who came and basically stripped the diner of any pieces of equipment that were moveable, including all the booths and tables.

Be that as it may, by the time WLC # 774 got to 200 E. Main Street in Middletown, the diner was a ghost of its former self. It was purchased by Stanley “Squeak” Zawisa to replace an older barrel-roofed diner he operated across the street as the South Farms Lunch, described as a 10 stool Worcester Lunch Car. I first came across Squeak’s Diner on a dreary Sunday afternoon diner road-trip with Steve Repucci and David Hebb on October 4, 1987. We had stopped at O’Rourke’s Diner (in Middletown) and were told of this other diner being in town.

Squeak’s Diner, October 4, 1987 photo by Larry Cultrera

Squeak’s Diner, October 4, 1987 photo by Larry Cultrera

Squeak’s Diner, October 4, 1987 photo by Larry Cultrera

We found out that it was not open on Sundays when we stopped to check it out, but on a subsequent visit on a weekday during another road-trip, I did get to eat breakfast there. I will say that I can recall that the interior was in sad shape and I never thought that this diner would ever survive.

Ironically, in November of 1987, I met Colin Strayer a documentary film-maker based in Toronto, Canada, at the opening of the new exhibit of “The Automobile in American Life” at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Colin eventually became the person who saved Squeak’s Diner after it closed. I contacted Colin Strayer in a recent email to verify when he moved # 774 and he related the next information…

Your recollection of when I moved Squeak’s is correct. I rigged it out by hand throughout September, 2003.  Moving took place on Columbus Day, 2003. I believe Stanley Zawisa finally closed Squeak’s Diner (WLC #774) in 1997.  I’m not where my paper file on it is.  But if memory serves me it was 1997. Stanley had gone through something like 4 realtors in the 4 preceding years, without any success.

As I recall, Stanley tried to sell “the business” for $175,000. for several years.  In the end, I acquired just the diner, plus a provision I fill in the hole and grade to ground elevation, as well as clear away all the debris. There was a lot of old equipment in the basement, as well as a few pieces from the South Farms Lunch, a 1920s 10-stool WLC diner that had been located across the street. (The following photos were courtesy of Colin Strayer and depict Squeak’s Diner being moved from Middletown to a storage site in 2003.)

2003 photo courtesy of Colin Strayer

2003 photo courtesy of Colin Strayer

2003 photo courtesy of Colin Strayer

2003 photo courtesy of Colin Strayer

2003 photo courtesy of Colin Strayer

2003 photo courtesy of Colin Strayer

2003 photo courtesy of Colin Strayer

WLC 774 was a project I really wanted to do myself.  I had first come across WLC 774 in 1986. I accidentally stumbled upon Squeak’s one day 33-1/2 years ago while trying to locate diners painted in John Baeder’s 1978 book “Diners”.

It was diner love at first sight. 774 was one of the largest of its type ever made by Worcester Lunch Car Co. I hounded Stanley Zawisa for 17 years.  I really wanted to restore 774 — to be a part of it.  My enthusiasm got the better of me.  I sold it to Jon Savage for less than I’d spent on it to date.  I did so, because Savage impressed upon me he had the resources to restore it to the level of Lamy’s at Henry Ford Museum.

 Going back to spring, 2010, I’d proposed restoration would take 3 years.  Savage thought it could be done faster. It’s now been 9 years.  I also proposed the name Miss Lorraine Diner, which I understand Savage adopted.

From time to time I understand there’s talk about 774 finally opening in Pawtucket. I would be interested to hear about any developments.  I talked to / communicated with Dick Gutman several years ago about it a couple of times. I believe Dick was involved doing some consultation.  Dick kindly informed me of this as a professional courtesy, which I much appreciated. I told him what had happened and gave him my blessings.

I tip my hat to the gentlemen who worked on it in Pawtucket from circa 2012-2014. He was an older guy Jon Savage knew. I stopped by several times back then to look at the progress. My view was this gentleman had done some really good foundational restoration work.  The structure was stripped and really straight back then. But his work was very slow-going and he eventually stopped work on it. By 2012,  I’d done $10,000. in (unpaid) consultation work.  Savage made a lot of promises,  but never paid me for my work.  Never understood that. The math makes no sense. 774 could have been running by 2015. By now, been running for 5 years. Not being involved in 774 restoration has been one of my life’s great disappointments.

So, the restoration of WLC #774 continued with some consultation/expertise provided by Richard Gutman along with another contractor who came on board by the name of  Joe Pacheco of Abby Road Construction. Pacheco along with his crew worked on site off and on for the next few years and the outcome came fairly close to bringing the diner back to the way it might have looked when it was brand-new. The restoration included all new recreated Worcester Lunch Car style booths and tables as well as the re-chromed stools. Also, Dick Gutman provided 6 stainless steel ceiling light fixtures that had once graced the interior of the Black & Gold Diner of Roslindale, Massachusetts. Unfortunately the larger #774 needed 8 ceiling lights so 2 more were recreated  and you cannot tell which are the old fixtures and which are the new ones.

Back in November of 2019 it was announced to the press that the Miss Lorraine Diner was being readied to start serving customers in a fairly short amount of time, I guess good things are worth the wait! Denise and I took a drive down to Pawtucket on December 29, 2019 where I got my first look at the place which was 98% done. Workers were finishing up the parking area around the diner in preparation for paving. The interior still needed the restored stools installed by the counter and the completely recreated booths/tables had not been brought in. Then the news came of the diner opening on January 28, 2020 and I made plans to check it out, that happened on Monday, February 17th when myself along with my brothers Rick & Don went down for breakfast. We met Mike Arena who had signed on to operate the diner, becoming  one of five diners and restaurants that he’s currently running. The other places include the West Side Diner, Broadway Diner, the Lighthouse Restaurant and Amanda’s Kitchen, open for twenty-four years and named after his daughter.

Exterior view of the newly opened Miss Lorraine Diner.
February 17, 2020 Photo by Larry Cultrera

Exterior view of the newly opened Miss Lorraine Diner.
February 17, 2020 Photo by Larry Cultrera

Interior view of the newly opened Miss Lorraine Diner.
February 17, 2020 Photo by Larry Cultrera

Interior view of the newly opened Miss Lorraine Diner.
February 17, 2020 Photo by Larry Cultrera

Interior view of the bar/dining room of the newly opened
Miss Lorraine Diner. February 17, 2020 Photo by Larry Cultrera

Interior view of the bar/dining room of the newly opened
Miss Lorraine Diner. February 17, 2020 Photo by Larry Cultrera

It seems that lately, good news is hard to come by on the Diner front, but here is one that finally seems to have a happy re-birth! I will be back to try some other meals, hopefully in the near future and for years to come…

1st pet peeve – Writers and or reporters referring to Diners as Greasy Spoons

Back on March 25, 2020, Jeremy Ebersole – a current Vice President of the Society for Commercial Archeology (SCA) who makes frequent contributions/posts to the SCA Facebook page posted a photo album to that page entitled “Greasy Spoons from sea to shining sea”. Now I had no problem with the photos per se, but I have always bristled at the term “Greasy Spoon”. In fact being a member of the SCA myself since 1981, I was somewhat shocked to see the term used by someone affiliated with the world’s premier organization that deals with documenting and preserving the businesses and sociological aspects of the American Roadside. Especially since the origins of this blog came out of the first ever regular column (Diner Hotline) that was featured in SCA publications.

Because I personally believe the use of this term in regards to Diners is derogatory… shortly after reading the post by Jeremy Eborsole, I decided to hold an informal poll and ask a few people I know and respect, what their feelings are on the use of the term “Greasy Spoon” in reference to diners?

Glenn Wells, diner aficionado, Roadsidefans.com

Glenn Wells: I agree. I think the term is used more by people who dislike diners to put them down, rather than embraced by people who like diners. As you saw I was VERY surprised to see SCA use that term the way they did Also found something I wrote around 2001 on my web site (not updated for a long time) under Diner FAQs: Some people refer to a diner as a “hash house” or a “greasy spoon.” Does this mean the food is bad? Let’s be honest for a minute. If every diner from the beginning of time had been spotlessly clean and served delicious food, such terms never would have entered the vocabulary. Some diners DO serve food deserving of the epithets that some people hurl at ALL diners. But diners are hardly alone in serving sub-par food. Even some very high priced restaurants can turn out some meals that are less than satisfactory. Then, of course, there are the fast food chains, where the fare is more consistent from location to location, but that does not mean that it is good.

Richard J.S. Gutman, preeminent Diner Scholar

Richard J.S. Gutman: I hate the phrase! Glad you are doing this. I can’t believe that the SCA used it recently…several times.

Ron Dylewski, diner aficionado, writer,
designer, commercial director and editor

Ron Dylewski: We often hear people refer to classic diners as “greasy spoons.” To many this might seem like an innocuous term, even a term of endearment. It is perhaps a more visual nickname than simply, diner. It can appear more evocative, denoting a certain je ne sais quoi or an ineffable quality that can’t be captured by simply saying “diner”. But none of that matters. The phrase is pejorative and should be stricken from any journalistic or scholarly writing, unless the phrase is called out for what it is; a slur. Similar names, such as grease pit, hash house and beanery are similarly used to denigrate diners. Writers are often encouraged to spice up their writing by using these terms. It just seems to add flavor to their prose, but in this case the flavor is all off. It actually distracts from the reality of what diners are and were. Now, don’t get me wrong. Not every diner is spic and span and not every one serves wonderful home-cooked meals. But that’s a decisionthat a writer would have to make on a case-by-case basis, not as a blanket statement about all diners.

Bill Katsifis, owner/operator of the East Shore Diner, Harrisburg, PA

East Shore Diner, photo by Larry Cultrera, January 1, 1985

Bill Katsifis, East Shore Diner: I do think the term greasy spoon is a degrading adjective. Makes it feel dirty. Yes, Greasy spoon, makes a diner/restaurant sound like a less than desirable place to eat. Thanks for the diner work you do….

Alexis Lekkas, owner/operator of Alexis Diner, Troy, NY

Alexis Diner, photo by Larry Cultrera, August 8, 2002

Alexis Lekkas, Alexis Diner: I agree with you. Only greasy spoon diners consider that a compliment and there are not many of them. By the way I am still in business even with all the Covid-19 issues…

Alex Panko, former owner of Peter Pank Diner

Larry Cultrera, Alex Panko and Les Cooper. Alex Panko is
the former owner of the Peter Pank Diner, Sayersville, NJ

Peter Pank Diner, photo courtesy of Alex Panko

Alex Panko, former owner of Peter Pank Diner: Hey Larry I am with, you, greasy spoon is derogatory. But I would always make a joke and made the people who referred to the diner in that way look stupid if they said that to me. LOL !!!!

Maria Pagelos Wall, co-owner of the Village Diner, Milford, PA

Village Diner, photo from Larry Cultrera, November 27, 1981

Maria Pagelos Wall, Village Diner: I don’t like it. To me, it makes it sound like a place is dirty with low quality food.

Michael Engle, diner aficionado/author

Michael Engle: I think for anyone who has put the time, passion, energy, and back breaking labor into running their diner or restaurant, that is the last thing they want to hear.  There are a number of people who are so far removed from the food industry. Many of these same people, especially the ones who find a diner “cute,” like they would a puppy, these are the people who are perfectly fine with the term.  They don’t mean any harm by the term.  And these people are validated by the few restaurant owners who adore the term.

Brian Butko, diner aficionado/author

Brian Butko: I agree, we’ve always avoided that term. I recall old diner industry mags discussing the term, and always talking about how diners should help themselves by paying attention to details, paving parking lots, lifting the industry, acting like “real restaurants,” that could be a fun angle.

Jeremy Ebersole, current Vice President of
the Society for Commercial Archeology

Jeremy Ebersole: Thanks so much for letting me know, Larry. I certainly didn’t mean to offend. I’ve used the term my whole life and never thought of it as derogatory, and that photo album has been up for years without any negative feedback. However, I certainly do not want to offend or imply that the SCA does not hold diners in the highest esteem. I love diners with every fiber of my being and just had no idea that term was contentious. I’ve been going back through all the old SCA publications and reading them. They’re just so great, and I always really enjoy your column! Please let me know when your blog is published and I will make sure we promote it on the SCA Facebook page!
P.S.: Jeremy changed the title of the post to “Awesome eateries from sea to shining sea”.

2nd pet peeve – Writers and or reporters mentioning railroad cars/trolley cars when writing about Diners

Another thing happened recently which tends to cause me to freak out. In fact it is something that I have been calling out newspaper reporters on for the better part of 40 years. Around the beginning of June, 2020, reports came out of Maine about the resurrection of the Farmington Diner of Farmington, Maine.

A number of years ago (2008), Rachel Jackson decided to embark on a risky adventure and save the Farmington Diner when the land it was on was sold to a national pharmacy chain. She had the diner transported to property she owned a few miles away where it has sat in storage since. Within the last couple of years, Ms. Jackson actually bought another old diner that had operated in Pennsylvania and Connecticut under various names. Her plan was to use parts of each to restore  (the one out of Connecticut) and return it to operation under the Farmington Diner name.

The reporter , Donna M. Perry of the Sun Journal wrote the first recent report I read on the Farmington Diner, kept referring to both diners as railroad cars. I immediately sent off an email to this reporter:

 I just read the piece you wrote on the Farmington Diner. Thanks for the update as I was wondering what was happening up there. I write a blog on diners (www.dinerhotline.com) and have written 2 books for The History Press, (Classic Diners of Massachusetts, 2011) (New Hampshire Diners, Classic Granite State Eateries, 2014). I have been conducting a personal research project on diners since 1980. I have photographed approximately 870 plus diners since November 29th of that year. I just want to point out that writers/journalists like yourself have periodically perpetuated a common misconception that diners are rail cars or trolleys. That is far from accurate. Diners are custom built buildings, usually built by a Diner manufacturer and shipped to a specific (or more than one) location. The diners in question are both Mountain View Diners, manufactured in Singac, New Jersey.

Donna Perry responded to my email and told me she had used railcar diner in her piece because Rachel Jackson thought that it was a commonly used generic term. Perry went on to say that she would amend her online piece to just say diner.

The second report I read was from Maureen Milliken of Maine Business News (www.mainebiz.biz) and I was very happy to see that Ms. Milliken, a seasoned reporter had done her homework. Her piece was well researched and mentioned Mountain View Diners. Not only that, she found a blog post I wrote from 2010 on The Silver Diner of Waterbury CT being closed and in jeopardy, (this became the second diner rescued by Rachel Jackson). The link to my bog post is here… https://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/tag/the-new-lafayette-diner/
So I immediately wrote Maureen Milliken and thanked her for referring to my blog as well as doing her diligent research.

Just to give a quick primer, here are exterior and interior views of an old Dining Car from the Boston & Maine Railroad…

That being said, let me say that there were and are still examples of diners that had been created from converted train and trolley cars. Here are a few examples…

an old Postcard of Leona Hillier’s Dinette from my collection.
This is a converted railroad car…

The Club Car Restaurant, a converted railroad car,
located in Nantucket, Massachusetts

exterior view of Sisson’s Diner, a converted trolley located
in South Middleboro, Massachusetts

interior view of Sisson’s Diner, a converted trolley located
in South Middleboro, Massachusetts

exterior view of Bill Gates’ Diner, a converted trolley formerly
located in Bolton Landing, New York

interior view of Bill Gates’ Diner, a converted trolley formerly
located in Bolton Landing, New York

The following photos are examples of factory-built diners that had the railroad car resemblance in their details…

Chadwick Square Diner, Worcester, Massachusetts

The Sparky Diner, formerly of Pittsfield, Massachusetts

The Capitol Diner, Lynn, Massachusetts

Casey’s Diner, Natick, Massachusetts (looking like a caboose)

This coming Saturday, October 31, 2020 will mark 13 years since I started this blog. Granted I have not been very regular with my posts this year, but there is nothing “very regular” about this year anyway!

Truth be told, I am still working on my multi-year project – scanning of my diner photos/slides. I have completed scanning all the 35mm slides that I shot between March 1983 thru to mid-2008. For the last two years I have been slogging thru the scanning and cleaning up of the 35mm prints I shot between November, 1980 and March, 1983. The prints take longer as the clean-up/enhancing is fairly time consuming as I am extremely particular on how the photos should look.

To mark this anniversary, I want to look back to the origins of Diner Hotline and how it eventually morphed into this blog. Diner Hotline started way back in the early to mid-1980s (long before the internet) as an unofficial way to communicate info and issues concerning American Diners. Basically I would phone Dick Gutman, John Baeder, David Hebb or other interested people (usually a select group of like-minded members of the Society for Commercial Archeology) to let them know some tidbit of info on the goings on in the diner community. I would usually start off the greeting by saying… “Diner Hotline, Diner Hotline” and then proceed to impart the news I had to tell the particular individual that I had called.

In November of 1988, the Society for Commercial Archeology had a yearly gathering hosted by The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It was a memorable event with hundreds of people from all over the country in attendance. A few weeks after I attended the event, I had phoned the then President of the SCA, Michael B. “Mike” Jackson. I happened to mention some now forgotten diner news and he suggested that I should write a piece for the SCA NewsJournal. He even went as far as saying it should be a regular column! My first reaction was to almost decline as in my mind, I was not a writer. But as we continued talking, I started to warm up to the idea and basically said yes, I would give it a shot. I do recall telling Mike that I already had a name for the column – Diner Hotline.

So, in December of 1988, I wrote the first brief installment of Diner Hotline. It appeared in the Spring, 1989 issue of the SCA NewsJournal.

I continued to write Diner Hotline, which became the first ever regular column for any of the SCA publications. Within a few years, the SCA Board of Directors decided the NewsJournal was not being produced as frequently as they would have liked. After all, it sort of started as a newsletter that had actually outgrown the format and it was taking longer for all the different pieces of the puzzle to come together and be published. It was decided to revamp the concept and split the publication into a newsletter called The SCA News which would be published four times a year. They would also create a new publication, a magazine called the SCA Journal which would be published twice a year. The Board offered me the option as to which publication to contribute Diner Hotline to. I opted for the Journal as I would only have two deadlines.

I wrote all but one Diner Hotline from that first Spring, 1989 Issue of the NewsJournal until the Fall, 2007 Issue of the Journal when I officially retired the column.

So, not long after I retired the Diner Hotline column I was convinced by long-time friend Brian Butko to create this blog. He suggested the WordPress platform to use for this new endeavor. I checked it out and made my first tentative post into blogging on October 31, 2007. Here is the link to that short piece… https://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/

Since that inauspicious & brief blog post, I have written many posts! Quite a few have taken a life of their own, such as an early one on local (to the Boston area) drive-in restaurants… https://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/drive-in-restaurants-from-years-past/ and my personal favorite is the only post that was co-written by me and someone else (my friend Matt Simmons)… the one about the The Abandoned Luncheonette, aka the Rosedale Diner, the diner depicted on the cover of Daryl Hall & John Oates 1973 LP of the same name…. https://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/the-story-of-the-the-abandoned-luncheonette-aka-the-rosedale-diner/ Those two blog posts have generated the most comments by far!

But the biggest thing that happened was being contacted by The History Press in early 2011 about the possibility of me authoring a book for them on Diners. It was initially proposed as a book on Diners of New England. But I was familiar with the books that The History Press put out and I informed the editor that you could not do justice to the region with a book that only had just under 200 pages. So it was suggested that I do one on Massachusetts Diners. I agreed that would be more doable and put together an outline which was accepted. This led to me writing my first book for them entitled Classic Diners of Massachusetts (October, 2011) and ultimately my second book, New Hampshire Diners: Classic Granite State Eateries (October, 2014).

After these books came out, I continued to write the blog but the frequency of posts have dwindled. But I promise that I will continue to keep the blog alive and make more posts. The next one will be in a month to mark a huge milestone – 40 years of photographing diners!

Thanks for coming along for the ride!!!

This year November 29th falls on a Sunday. Who knew that a tentative single 35mm photo taken on this same date 40 years ago in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, would lead me into a multi-decade mission to document diners (at last count 875 in my database) throughout the Eastern United States with my photographs.

Now granted, I have always had a fascination with diners that goes back to my early childhood in Medford, Massachusetts in the late 50s and early 60s. I recall going with my dad to a few local diners like Bobbie’s Diner and the Star Lite Diner, both on Mystic Avenue in our hometown as well as the Victoria Diner in Boston.

I also recall after Easter Morning Mass going for breakfasts with my family to Carroll’s Colonial Dining Car on Main Street, a large “L” shaped diner delivered in the early 60s that was a brand new replacement for a smaller stainless steel diner that the Carroll family had operated previously in the city from 1948, that itself was a replacement for an even earlier diner started in 1929.

Later on during high school as well as years after graduating, Carroll’s was the go-to meeting place that was open 24 hours a day. Myself and my friends could be found there, day or night! So I can safely say that diners became part of my DNA, a constant throughout my life and by 1979, I started thinking about them in an expanded view. My pal, Steve Repucci and I started taking Sunday morning road-trips around the area and the first stop along the way was a local diner for breakfast. Soon, the task of finding a diner to have breakfast determined the direction of the road-trip.

All through the 1970s, I had owned one or two Kodak Instamatic cameras and never seriously looked at photography as a hobby. As 1980 began, I had been toying with the idea of getting into photography after being exposed to it by Steve Repucci who had been shooting 35mm photos for a number of years. So the first of two key events leading me to take that first diner photo occurred sometime in the Summer of 1980, when I co-purchased my first 35mm camera along with my older brother Steve. My friend and former co-worker Scott Drown was selling a used Mamiya 1000 DTL that he had been shooting with for a few years. So my brother and I alternated using this camera for around 9 months before I decided I needed my own camera and sold him my half.

The first couple of months I tested my wings by shooting scenic photos, etc. It was just a month or so into using that first camera when the second key event happened. Steve Repucci had decided to try living outside of Massachusetts and moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This happened on Labor Day weekend. Because I owned a van, I of course offered my services in helping with the move. This was my first ever trip down to the Keystone State. During that first visit to Pennsylvania, I had taken notice of one or two diners driving around the Capitol region. After that first trip a second one was already planned for Thanksgiving weekend.

Thanksgiving fell on Thursday the 27th that year. If I remember correctly, my brother Rick and friend Scott Drown accompanied me on that trip. We left not long after midnight on the 28th and drove out through Connecticut and New York on Interstate 84. In fact we took I-84 all the way to Scranton, PA to access I-81 south to Harrisburg. I recall hitting some pretty bad fog through that stretch of highway between Scranton and Harrisburg, possibly the worst I have ever attempted to drive through in my life. After arriving we rested a bit and visited as well as probably going out to eat somewhere and probably called it a day fairly early. The next morning we went to breakfast at the nearby By Pass Diner on Herr Street, probably around four miles or so from where Steve was living on North Progress Avenue. This is when I snapped my first photo of a diner. Little did I know this would be the first in what has turned out to be a few thousand photos taken in the next four decades!

Well, the dam was broken and after I came home from Harrisburg I started going around the Greater Boston area and shooting photos of all the diners I knew of. Unfortunately, in my inexperience, I was insisting on using a wide angle lens in a lot of these early photo excursions. The reason I say it was unfortunate was that I was usually across the street using the wide angle lens and it pushed the subject a little too far away. Now in hindsight this seemed to work out OK as anyone who sees these early photos can get the perspective of seeing the diner in relation to its surroundings. And seeing that I am currently in a multi-year endeavor of scanning all my archive of diner photos, I have developed a way to create new versions of these photos by zooming in and re-cropping the image to represent the photo it should have been (and keeping the original version intact).

Here are a few of those early shots after Harrisburg…

Since those early days I have used quite a number of different cameras to shoot diner photos including some Kodak Brownie and Dual Lens Reflex cameras that I have collected. Also two Chinon 35mm cameras as well as some small digital cameras. Since 2008 when I changed totally to digital, I have used my trusty Pentax DSLR, a couple of Nikon Cool Pix and my newest an Olympus Pen mirror-less camera. After changing careers in 1996, I have become proficient in using Adobe Photoshop to digitize all of my 35mm slides and am currently working on the early 35mm prints. I hope to complete the digital archive of all the diner photos within the next year!

Back on June 17, 2008 when this blog was less than a year old, I wrote a post called Interesting places I have photographed… https://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/interesting-roadside-places-i-have-photographed/. Now in July of 2021, I want to revisit this subject – to expand, update and utilize the pretty much completed digital archive I now have at my disposal. After spending the better part of four years scanning (and in some cases, re-scanning) all the 35mm prints and slides for all my Diner photos (dating from my first diner photograph, the By-Pass Diner – November 29, 1980 until switching totally to digital cameras in the summer of 2008) as well as scanning most if not all of my roadside related photos, I am now back to hopefully writing my blog on a more regular basis!

This newly completed archive of scanned photos are now up to my personal standards as to how my photos should look. This means that to the best of my ability and 25 years of using Adobe Photoshop, that regardless of the lighting conditions of how each photo was shot, I have tweaked and enhanced all these photos to be as close to what I had intended them to be when I initially set up the shots back in the day. The differences will be noticeable if you compare some of the photos in that earlier blog post to this one because I am more than likely going to use some of those images again here.

I want to explain my decision to revisit this subject about unique or unusual buildings instead of something more Dinercentric. Being a long-time member of the Society for Commercial Archeology, my interest’s run the gamut from my first love of Diners to Drive-In Restaurants, Hot Dog Stands, and selective old-time fast food places. But the unusual shaped buildings, (termed Programatic Architecture) hold a special place as well. This interest might also go back to my childhood when I noticed restaurants in the local area shaped like a Clipper Ship or Take-Out cardboard Fried Clam Box. So when I had decided to start taking photographs of Diners, it was a very small step to including other commercial roadside architecture as subject matter.

In fact, as I have written before, the impetus to start the documentation of Diners, etc. with my own photos were the first three Diner books that were published just prior to me starting on this 40 plus year project, (Diners by John Baeder, 1978 – American Diner by Richard J.S. Gutman & Elliott Kaufman, 1979 – and Diners of the Northeast by Donald Kaplan & Allyson Bellink, 1980). In fact there were other Roadside Related books starting to be published that got my attention as well. I recall purchasing two of these books, the first of many, more than likely by 1982. The End of the Road by John Margolies and Vanishing Roadside America by Warren H. Anderson, both published in 1981.

Other books that came to my attention as well as into my personal library include; White Towers by Paul Hirshorn and Steven Izenour – published in 1979, California Crazy by Jim Heimann and Rip Georges – published in 1980, Main Street to Miracle Mile by Chester H. Liebs – published in 1985 and Orange Roofs, Golden Arches by Philip Langdon – published in 1986.

But the book that became an inspiration for me to expand my photography to include the unusual and unique roadside commercial buildings was titled The Well-Built Elephant by J.J.C. Andrews. I bought it as soon as it was published in 1984 and was completely intrigued by it!

In his book, Mr. Andrews mentioned something about his growing up in my home state of Massachusetts, but did not really go into any details about his early life and very general info on how he came to pursue his own hobby of documenting these places. He did mention about being a tour manager for recording artists such as David Bowie and how late one night while riding on a tour bus between gigs, he saw a restaurant shaped like a hamburger somewhere. He knew he could not stop the bus and photograph it but was determined to get back there at his earliest convenience and document it. Unfortunately, when he did get back to that location, he found it had been demolished prior to his return! This led him to make an effort to document as many of these places as he could. This eventually gave birth to an exhibit of his photos and the publication of his book.

When I was planning this blog post I started doing a little research to find out more about Mr. Andrews. I knew I had read somewhere previously that he passed away at a young age and was surprised to find that he died within a year or two of the publication of his book. My research led me to a podcast featuring Tony Defries, who was the person behind the Mainman group of companies, the “first of its kind” rights management organization formed by entrepreneur and impresario Defries in 1972. This company supported and helped to develop the careers of various artists including David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Mick Ronson, Mott the Hoople, Ian Hunter, Mick Ralphs, Dana Gillespie, Amanda Lear, Wayne/Jayne County, John Cougar Mellencamp and many others. This was the company that Jamie Andrews (as he was known by friends and colleagues) worked for from the mid-1970s until his death approximately ten years later. In this podcast, Mister Defries speaks mainly of Jamie Andrews and his involvement in Mainman as well mentioning the Well-Built Elephant book project. You can hear the podcast here… https://mainmanlabel.com/episode-31/ .

One of the recording artists that Mainman handled was Cidny Bullens (formerly Cindy Bullens) who also grew up in Massachusetts. I am friends with Cidny thru Facebook and asked him about Jamie, trying to find out where he grew up. Cid seemed to recall Andover or North Andover but acknowledged that he could be wrong on that fact. He did have these thoughts on Jamie though… Hi Larry-Oh to see Jamie’s name brings back such good memories. Jamie was a dear friend from the late 70’s when I signed with Mainman to his untimely death. He was a sweet man and a wonderful photographer. After Cidny’s response, I decided to dig a little deeper and did a Google search on Jamie’s mother’s name Dora Andrews and found mention of Lawrence, Massachusetts, so Cidny was pretty close on his recollection as Lawrence borders both Andover and North Andover.

Anyway, after being a little long winded here, I will get to the meat of this blog post. By showcasing my own photos of these unusual buildings as a tribute to Jamie Andrews and his Well-Built Elephant book…

Lucy The Elephant – Margate, New Jersey

In honor of the photo on the cover of Jamie Andrews’ book, I decided to go with one of my photos of Lucy the Elephant located south of Atlantic City in Margate New Jersey….. my photo is at a slightly different angle than his photo but the mid-November light was perfect for mine.

The Big Duck – Flanders, New York

I chose one of my later photos of The Big Duck which was taken at a different location than when I first found it in the 1980s. This was one of two photos I shot on the one and only road trip to Long Island with my wife Denise. I love this shot as Denise is posing at the front door to the building….

Hood Milk Bottle – Museum Wharf,
Boston, Massachusetts

This is actually one of my newest photos. The bottle had just gone through a restoration and an updating. It really looks beautiful…

The Milk Bottle Restaurant – Raynham, Massachusetts

This was very similar to the current Hood’s Milk Bottle. These two as well as Frates Restaurant in New Bedford were built for the Sankey Dairy who sold Ice Cream out of them. The Raynham location has been enlarged over the years and is a great little restaurant.

Frates Restaurant – New Bedford, Massachusetts

Frates Restaurant had also been expanded and is currently operating as G & S Pizza, just minus the awnings around the bottle.

DuFresne’s Dairy Bar – Granby, Massachusetts

I stumbled upon DuFresne’s Dairy Bar in mid-afternoon on a Sunday coming back into Massachusetts from Connecticut. The Milk Bottle and Can were attached to a regular building with a hip roof, just behind the two mimetic structures in this shot where the large awning is sticking out. Currently operating as the Earlee Mug Restaurant.

Salvador’s Dairy Ice Cream Stand – South Dartmouth, Massachusetts

Here’s another place I stumbled upon on another Sunday morning road trip. I firmly believe that I had just purchased The Well-Built Elephant book not long before and had actually seen Jamie Andrews photo of it. But as I recall, I was not actually looking for this place. We more than likely left New Bedford after having breakfast at the Orchid Diner and headed west on U.S. Route 6. I surmise we took a left hand turn and just drove south from Route 6 and eventually found our way to this fantastic Ice Cream place. This is one of three photos I shot in 1984. I actually just took a ride last month to revisit this place and found out the business closed within the last two years, below is a photo from that trip…

Gulf Hill Dairy Ice Cream Stand – South Dartmouth, Massachusetts

On that same Sunday morning last month when we drove down to the South Coast of Massachusetts to revisit Salvador’s Dairy, our other destination was this other fantastic place within a few miles in the same town. I have to say the park-like area where this stand is located is one of the prettiest places I know in that area. It borders on Buzzards Bay.

Bayrd’s Indian Trading Post – Wakefield, Massachusetts

Bayrd’s Indian Trading post was a unique little family business, operated by actual Native Americans. The property was sold for redevelopment and the building was gone by the end of the 1980s.

The Gallon Measure Gas Station – Buchanan, New York

Here’s another place that I knew about from The Well-Built Elephant book. Located north of New York City in the little town of Buchanan. This place was built to resemble an old Gallon Measure oil can.

The Ship Restaurant – Lynnfield, Massachusetts

The Ship Restaurant started out as a place called Ship’s Haven and looked like a Steamship. In the early 1960s the building was enlarged and rebuilt to look like this. The restaurant closed a few years ago and was demolished to make way for a new strip mall.

Sailor Tom’s House – Reading, Massachusetts

Sailor Tom’s house was the final remnant of a unique roadside restaurant complex that closed in the late 1950s. Sailor Tom was in actuality Joseph Lafayette Thompson who built a small Seafood Grill on Route 28. The small building was expanded to become a large restaurant and the center of a 36 acre complex with a miniature New England Fishing Village and a former P.T. Boat as a gift shop. Thompson built his house on a rise just behind the complex. The house was torn down within the last 15 years or so for a new upscale housing development.

The Clam Box – Ipswich, Massachusetts

The Clam Box has been in business under various operators since 1935. It was originally just the box shaped building with the flaps. It has been expanded over the years to have an enclosed ordering area as well as a side dining room. It is ultimately our favorite place to get fried clams, etc.

Prince Pizzeria – Saugus, Massachusetts

Though technically not a different shaped building, Prince Pizzeria is noteworthy for the Leaning Tower that is part of the structure. The restaurant was originally part of the Prince Spaghetti House chain operated by Prince Spaghetti Company of Lowell, Massachusetts. There were other Spaghetti Houses I knew about in Somerville, Massachusetts and Quincy, Massachusetts. The chain ceased to exist by the early 1960s and this one was taken over by a former Prince employee, Arthur Castraberti and is still operated by his family today. This is the only one left.

The Leaning Tower Restaurant – Quincy, Massachusetts

The Leaning Tower looks pretty close to the way it was built in the 1950s when it was part of the Prince Spaghetti House chain. This was right next door to the original Dunkin’ Donuts shop (a little of that building can be seen at the left). This was gone by the 1990s.

Twisty Treat Ice Cream Stand – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I came across this one evening prior to eating supper at the Mayfair Diner in Northeast Philadelphia. The light was not perfect but this was the best image.

I have been documenting Diners with my photos for over 40 years now and every now and then a piece of the vast puzzle of American Diner history finally shows up and fills in a blank. Especially since the advent of social media and Facebook in general, the amount of information has increased and the legions of Diner aficionados that have come out of the woodwork or in this case, the world wide web have helped considerably!

Worcester, Massachusetts historically is the birthplace of diner manufacturing with people such as Samuel Messer Jones, Charles H. Palmer and Thomas H. Buckley building horse-drawn lunch wagons from the 1870s into the early 1900s. Buckley’s concern gave way to the Worcester Lunch Car And Carriage Manufacturing Company in the early 1900s and Worcester Lunch Car continued until the late 1950s when they built their last diner. The company’s assets were auctioned in May of 1961, thus ending diner manufacturing in that city. But years before that happened, Worcester Lunch Car was finding it hard to compete with the other manufacturers in New York and New Jersey. This was evidenced with the fact that some local diner owners ended up upgrading to larger more modern diners out of the mid-Atlantic region.

In fact, the City of Worcester had received at least two Jerry O’Mahony Diners, Messier’s Diner and the nearby Kenmore Diner, more than likely in the 1940s. Another non-Worcester built diner, the Corner Lunch Diner showed up in the city circa 1967. Even though this diner was delivered a few years after the Worcester Lunch Car Company closed up, the Corner Lunch was a slap in the face – being relocated almost across the street from the former Worcester Lunch Car factory!

Now granted, the Corner Lunch was a used/reconditioned diner originally built by DeRaffele Diners out of New Rochelle, New York. I am not sure when I first heard that this diner was originally located on Long Island, NY prior to be taken in on trade by Musi Dining Car Company, but I will say that I had probably known this for two or three decades now. What we did not know was what its original operating name and location was. Until two years ago that is!

Back on July 9, 2019, a guy named Chris Barbuschak posted three black and white photos he came across in his research on the Dinerville Facebook page. The first photo was an exterior of a diner called the O-Co-Nee Grill. The other two photos Chris said were unidentified but I knew right away they were interior views of the same diner! I also figured out that this was the original location of the Corner Lunch before it came to Worcester. Right after I saw these photos, a Post Card came up for Auction on Ebay and I got it! As I suspected the diner was much longer when originally built by DeRaffele circa 1950 or so. The front elevation had a large entryway centered on that wall and flanked by five windows and a curved corner window on each side.

I immediately got in touch with Chris thru Facebook by sending him a Friend Request and told him those photos cleared up a mystery and how important they were. Chris got back to me and said… Hi Larry, it’s an honor to be friend requested by you. As a diner enthusiast, I’ve been following your amazing blog for years. I’m thrilled to have been of some assistance to the O-Co-Nee Grill/Corner Lunch puzzle. You are more than welcome to use the photos. They’re probably public domain anyways since the New York ABC Board had them photographed. Looking forward to seeing the new photos of the Corner Lunch that you’ll take!

I told him that the biggest change to the diner when it got to Worcester was to the left end, possibly 10 to 15 feet or so were chopped off of both the front diner section and the factory-built kitchen section so the diner could fit on the property at its new location in Worcester. Also, the original entryway did not make the move to Worcester.

They actually put the stainless steel and enamel stripes on the redone side wall of the front section to make it look more finished. The back section just got a plain metal clad exterior covering. The interior was also finished off very professionally by Musi and one would never know that this diner was a dozen or more feet longer at one time.

Over the years, the diner has not changed much on the inside as this next photo will show. Seen in this shot is my wife Denise, sitting at the counter and Charlie Boukalis the current owner at the grill. Charlie and his daughter Joanna (aka JoJo, seen in the background behind the counter) have been operating the diner for 18 years at this point in 2021.

The exterior of the diner is showing some wear and tear after over 70 years of service but hopefully will continue to serve the people of Worcester as well as diner lovers from New England and beyond for many years to come…

I recently received a copy of a new book by Jimmy Rosen of Duncannon, Pennsylvania. The book is titled Got Gas? – A pictorial look at central Pennsylvania service stations from the 20th Century. I have known Jimmy for quite a few years through Facebook and we have a lot of friends in common. Jimmy and I have actually never met but we are certainly kindred spirits. Jimmy is an old sole at heart and enjoys collecting among other things, antique autos, motorscooters, arcade games and vending machines. He is the proprietor of The Old Sled Works, a retail market for antique and craft vendors located in the building complex that for many years housed Standard Novelty Works, famous for their Lightning Guider sleds. As Jimmy told me, most people are familiar with Flexible Flyer sleds which were a main competitor to Lightning Guider sleds. You can find out more info on the Old Sled Works here at http://www.sledworks.com/

For some background, Standard Novelty Works started manufacturing sleds in 1904. Jimmy’s dad, Norm Rosen became the second owner of the company in 1968 at the age of 29 and continued making the sleds through 1990 prior to shutting down due to dwindling sales. Jimmy was given the opportunity to reopen the buildings as Old Sled Works in April of 1991. As Jimmy went on to tell me, “I had traveled around central Pennsylvania looking at other similar type malls and flea markets to get ideas. I expected a two or three year run while I was still figuring out what “real career” I wanted to be involved in. Well, we just celebrated thirty years and I still haven’t decided what career I want to be involved in”.

Luckily for us, Jimmy stayed with this non-career he never planned on pursuing. He came across a lot of interesting things from a collecting standpoint. Not long ago an old acquaintance by the name of Bob Shultz contacted Jimmy and asked him to take a look at some items he was looking at finding a new home for, among them a decent amount of cases and boxes of artifacts from the former Atlantic Refining District Office, once located at 2217 North 7th Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Schultz had been employed at the district office for Atlantic Refining from 1962 to 1996 when it closed and was among the employees instructed to have everything removed from the office. These cases and boxes had been slated for the trash heap but Shultz knew of the existence of the old maps, car advertisements and some photos of area gas stations that were stashed and could not bear to just toss these, so he took them home.

These photos of area gas stations were actually more than 300 large-format negatives dating from the 1920s and 1930s. The photos from the negatives from this collection have become that basis for Got Gas? In fact most of these have never been seen by the general public before and it is most certainly a huge glimpse into the early history of service stations in and around the Capitol Region of Pennsylvania.

I had been following Jimmy Rosen’s posts about the impending publication of this book when earlier this year he posted a photo of a place called The Park Side Service Station which was located at the corner of State and Walnut Streets in Harrisburg. I recognized this place immediately but knew at as The Park Side Cafe from the 1980s. I was very excited to see this old photo and sent Jimmy my one and only photo of The Park Side Cafe from a 35mm slide I shot in 1983.

Jimmy immediately asked for permission to use my photo as part of a then & now section in his book. I of course said that would be great. I am always thrilled to see my photos being used (with permission and attribution). Otherwise they may only show up in my Facebook posts… My photo, along with The Park Side as the service station and a more current photo appear on page 49 in Jimmy’s book.

When I shot my photo, I had often passed this building when visiting Harrisburg and was taken by the old neon signs as well as the retro look of the cafe itself. I guess I was lucky to get this one shot as it captured everything I liked about the place. I know I did finally get to go in and have a meal approximately four years after I took the photo.

Anyway, to talk more about this self-published book, this will appeal to people who enjoy Gas Station photos and/or collectors of gas station memorabilia, as well as anyone who has grown up in the Greater Harrisburg area. It shows a lot of places that may still be around, though altered and used for other purposes as evidenced by The Park Side photos. The photos are just plain wonderful. Jimmy had help with identifying a good portion of the locations from researchers Emily McCoy and Kurt Harlacher, leaving only a small amount unidentified. The book features a wonderful Foreword written by my old friend from the Society for Commercial Archeology – Brian Butko.

This book is a great addition to anyone’s roadside library and at $29.95 it is a good deal as well. To purchase this book you can contact Jimmy at the Old Sled Works for more information….http://www.sledworks.com/

When I first started photographing diners in the early 1980s, I revisited places in my home state of Massachusetts I recalled from earlier travels. These places were not only in the eastern part of the state where I live, but also extended to the greater Worcester area. You see for a good portion of the 1970s, my older brother Steve lived in Dudley and Auburn, both suburbs of Worcester, so I was familiar with the area. Among the diners I recalled seeing from those earlier times was Sherwood’s Diner, Worcester Lunch Car No. 755. It was located in a commercial stretch of State Route 12, south of Worcester in Auburn. The diner was last used as an ice cream stand and by the time I started documenting diners with my photographs, Sherwood’s had not been in operation for quite some time. According to my Diner Log database my first photos of Sherwood’s date to September 26, 1981.

In the intervening years, between 1981 until now, quite a bit of information has surfaced concerning the history of this diner. One of the most interesting pieces of information I learned was the fact that when the diner was brand-new, it was delivered to its first operating location in my hometown of Medford, Massachusetts on February 8, 1940. It was built for Treadway L. Sherwood who ran it for a short time before the Worcester Lunch Car Company repossessed it. According to what I can gather from the info written on the Worcester Lunch Car Company preliminary layout drawing, Mr. Sherwood may have been from Brooklyn, New York but was going to operate the diner at 109 Middlesex Avenue in Medford. That address would be close to the northern edge of Wellington Circle, the intersection of State Routes 16 and 28. A number of years ago when I found out that the diner had been located briefly in Medford, I asked a handful of older local people I knew if they recalled Sherwood’s. I found for the most part, the people I asked either did not recall the diner or had vague recollections of it. Also, to my knowledge no photographs exist of the diner when it was operating at that first location. Interesting note (circled on the layout drawing) was the later addition of the new address of 70 Foster Street @ Commercial Street when the diner was moved to its new operating location Worcester in 1942.

I found it curious about the note on the drawing listing the new address as 70 Foster Street in Worcester as there are other accounts stating that Ernest Ryan bought the diner in 1942 and it remained in business at 56 Foster Street until it closed in 1969. I believe there could be two schools of thoughts accounting for the discrepancy… 1. that maybe street numbers changed at one point in time, or 2. Charlie Gemme got it wrong when he made the note on his drawing.

The Worcester Redevelopment Authority took the property where the diner was located along with adjacent parcels by eminent domain in 1970 to make way for the development of what is currently known as the DCU Center (originally named the Worcester Centrum when it was built). At that time, the diner was moved briefly to Shrewsbury prior to being relocated to Route 12 in Auburn, where it was used as an ice cream stand for a while before it closed. As I stated above, when I photographed it in 1981, it had been closed for a few years already. It eventually fell victim to vandals by the mid to late 1980s and by the middle of the next decade it was in very sad shape before it was ultimately saved from demolition in the late 1990s. The diner was moved to various storage locations in Rhode Island before it ended up stored in shrink wrap behind a business on Route 146 in Sutton, Massachusetts. The diner stayed at the Sutton storage location for over a half dozen years, until recently.

Jump ahead to July, 2021 when it is reported by the Worcester Telegram as well as other news sources that the WooSox Foundation, a charitable arm of the Worcester Red Sox had purchased and was restoring Sherwood’s Diner. The plan as described was that the diner would serve as headquarters for the Foundation and be installed into the new Polar Park complex. The WooSox, a professional minor league baseball team based in Worcester, Massachusetts is the Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. From 1973 until 2020 the team had been known as the Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Red Sox. The restoration was being made possible through a donation from the Fuller Foundation.

After the WooSox Foundation took possession of Sherwood’s, they contracted with Steve Stutman of Stutman Contracting to start working on the diner. It was transported to Worcester and placed in a vacant lot behind the O’Connor Brothers Funeral Home on Park Avenue, which had donated the place to allow for the restaurant’s renovation. Finally inspecting the diner after the shrink wrap was removed, Stutman was quoted in a newspaper article that “It was worse than we thought,” he said. “The front and back walls had to be completely rebuilt, and a lot of other things had to be done. We had the shell and some parts that were inside like the old refrigerator, some equipment that was left behind. “ Perhaps the most important part of any restaurant is the counter and it was gone.

However, the executive director of the Worcester Historical Museum, William Wallace, put the architect Janet Marie Smith, who was leading the baseball stadium project for the WooSox, in touch with Richard J.S. Gutman of West Roxbury, author of four books on diners and considered the best restoration expert in the country. His advice was invaluable in restoring the restaurant to an approximation of its original condition. He helped facilitate the donation of a marble counter top and stools that had been salvaged from another Worcester Lunch Car. “Ramshackle is an understatement,” Gutman said of Sherwood’s Diner. “I know Steve Stutman did a miracle… it’s perfectly awesome that they are doing this. This puts an exclamation mark on something that has been one of the city’s triumphs.

Before Gutman was asked to join the project, a decision had already been made not to use porcelain enamel walls on both the exterior and inside of the diner where the original panels were gone. MDF board (an engineered wood product similar to plywood, but made using wood fibers combined with wax and a resin binder) was already in place on the façade when Gutman first saw the partially-renovated diner on April 21, 2021. A sign-painter had been hired to reproduce the original graphics.

So work on the diner’s restoration was fast-tracked through this summer and the diner was actually moved into its new spot on Summit Street just beyond centerfield of the Worcester Red Sox’s Polar Park on August 23, 2021. A crane lifted the structure off the flatbed truck that was used to transport it onto a new foundation facing the ball park. This location on Summit Street is to become Worcester’s de-facto version of Boston’s Jersey Street. Dubbed Summit Street Fair, it will be a boulevard packed with fans, food and activities before the game. Sherwood’s Diner will be featured along with other attractions like the retired Boston Duck Boat, “Beantown Betty” which had been used by the Boston Red Sox for celebrating their 2004 World Series championship. Murals and playgrounds will also add to the flavor of the street. Summit Street Fair will typically have music, magicians, face painters, and other family fun elements. Mascots Smiley Ball and Woofster are expected to be frequent visitors.

The diner will still be a spot to grab food such as coffee, Table Talk Pies and Polar Beverages. The WooSox Foundation also plan to use it as a space to host player autograph signings, mascot meet-and-greets, broadcast radio shows and host other events. Another report from Spectrumnews1.com stated that Sherwood’s Diner will house information on all of the charities and non-profits they work with, as well as serve as a broadcast booth. Worcester Red Sox president, Charles Steinberg, says this will act as a community gathering place at the ball park. “Imagine walking into the diner, seeing the gang at “Cheers,” except it’s actually former ballplayers signing autographs, doing a post game radio or TV show or just talking to fans,” said Dr. Steinberg. “So imagine there could always be a surprise as far as who you will see, what you might get. It might seem like a diner, but it might be even more than that.”

After following the news on Sherwood’s and updates of the progress from Dick Gutman, I finally found some time to take the ride out to Worcester on Saturday, September 4th. Accompanied by my brother Steve (who has memories of actually getting ice cream at Sherwood’s when it was in Auburn), we hooked up with Brian Goslow, the managing editor of Artscope Magazine. I contacted Brian, a born & bred Worcester native a day or two before we drove out from the Boston area. Although we have known each other for years as long-time Facebook friends, this was our first face-to-face meeting to my recollection. We checked out the diner without getting too close. It was within a fenced-in work zone and there were workers in and around the diner’s location. We asked permission to come into the fenced-in area to take photos of the diner and it was granted.

While there, we checked out Polar Park and it is beautiful, I could not resist taking some photos of this brand-new ball park. Maybe we’ll take in a ballgame sometime in the near future…

After our visit to the park, we drove around the corner to have lunch at George’s Coney Island Lunch, a favorite stop of mine while in Worcester. We had some chili dogs to top off a great visit….

October 31st came and went and it was not until yesterday, November 2nd that I realized that I failed to acknowledge the anniversary of the creation of this blog. The reason that it slipped my mind was that Denise & I took my usual long weekend and attended a special event in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the wedding of my oldest nephew Christopher Cultrera and his lovely wife Kayla.

So, October 31, 2007 marks the very first blog post from Diner Hotline but that was not the true beginning. Some people may know that Diner Hotline started as a hard copy column I penned for the Society for Commercial Archeology. I wrote the first brief column, minus photos in December of 1988 and it was published in the Spring 1989 edition of the SCA News Journal. After a few years, the column was moved to the SCA Journal Magazine. I retired the column in August of 2007. But even then I knew I was not finished with Diner Hotline. In fact Brian Butko of the SCA convinced me it was time to take Diner Hotline into the 21st Century and onto the internet.

So, I continue to write the blog, although sporadically. I try to be more regular with the posts but as I have learned, I am getting more particular how and what I write. I start to write a post and I reach a point that I get distracted and the process sometimes stalls. Case in point, I have a post I started over a month ago and have yet to finish it. I will revisit it soon, to complete the piece and have others in my mind to eventually write. So, be patient and you will be rewarded with some future posts that I hope you will enjoy.

Monday, November 29, 2021 marks the anniversary of me shooting the first of thousands of “Diner” photographs. Most regular readers probably know I always acknowledge this date every year on the Diner Hotline blog. A couple of things have come together in recent months that sort of underline the importance to my life that this seemingly innocuous event that happened forty one years ago has loomed large in the scheme of things, at least to me.

Number one: I have completed the digitizing of all my 35mm prints and slides of “Diners”. This task in itself took all told at least 4 years to complete. I have also updated my database (digital Diner Log) to reflect the location of the original slides and negatives of those images as well as included two photos of each diner entry into the log. I am currently revamping the 35mm slide archive of “Diner” images to be housed in new archival boxes. This task is being done to get all images into a semblance of order to possibly facilitate the eventual donation of these slides to an institution that might want them as part of an historical record. Doing something like this to the 35mm prints (and negatives) might actually be a little more daunting. Not so much for the prints more than the negatives as other non-diner images are mixed in with the diner images. That is a problem to be attacked at another time.

Number two: the future of diners in general is still precarious and to place a spotlight on this fact, that first diner I documented with my photos, the By-Pass Diner of Harrisburg, PA is currently in limbo. The diner had changed hands in the 1990s and been operated as the American Dream Diner right up until the last year or so. It changed hands again earlier this year to become Harry’s Bistro. If you check it out online, it has gotten some great reviews and it gives the impression that it is still in operation. But someone I know recently stopped by and found it closed with an ominous notice taped to the window that says there were problems that have shut down the business. For how long, I do not know but the person who reported this fact said it looked like it had been closed for some time.

It turns out there are other diners I have documented over the last four decades that are also in jeopardy, including another Harrisburg diner, the East Shore Diner. The East Shore Diner is being threatened with possible demolition or at least in the best scenario moved to a new location because of a planned construction project to revamp highway on/off ramps adjacent to the property where the diner has been since the early 1950s when it was first installed as Seybold’s Diner.

Another diner threatened with demolition is Bishop’s Fourth Street Diner of Newport, Rhode Island as the property owner wants it gone to expand an adjacent business.

Back at the end of July, 2021, it was reported that the Daddypop’s Tumble Inn Diner of Claremont, New Hampshire had suffered a suspected arson fire. They were reported to start repairs on the damage which affected the basement and electrical equipment. Unfortunately this may be complicated by the fact that Deborah Ann Kirby, the owner of the Tumble Inn passed away suddenly towards the end of October, putting the fate of this diner in limbo.

Another diner is also in limbo and slated for demolition is the former Ann’s Diner, operated more recently as Pat’s Diner of Salisbury, Massachusetts. Pat Archambault the owner for many years has had the diner up for sale for quite some time. She finally sold it at the end of July and unfortunately the owner of the gas station next door to the diner bought the property and has no intention of utilizing the diner. Ironically as I write this I just found out that Pat Archambault just passed away herself.

Two other Massachusetts diners future are questionable, the first is the Salem Diner which is currently owned by Salem State University. The university stopped using it as a food option within the last two years and is trying to get someone to buy and move the diner. As far as I know, no one has come forward with a likely proposal to move and reuse this very rare Sterling Streamliner.

The second Massachusetts diner is a late model Worcester Lunch Car currently operating as the Breakfast Club in Allston, Mass. The diner sits on leased property which is slated to be redeveloped. The future of this diner is not looking good at this point.

Within the last week or so we have heard that the 29 Diner in Fairfax, Virginia has had a very bad kitchen fire that miraculously has spared the diner in front but closed the business for at least 6 months.

It’s not all bad news as the Edgemere Diner of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts which has been closed fairly recently was sold at auction within the last two weeks. The diner had been owned since 1995 by the town of Shrewsbury when the diner and property was taken for back taxes owed by the owner of the business. Since then the town has leased the diner out to numerous operators until now. The town finally decided that they did not want to be landlords anymore. The good news is that Michael Cioffi bought the diner and said he plans to move it from its location on U.S. Route 20 – which was a stipulation of the sale – to New York’s Catskills, where he already owns and operates the Phoenicia Diner.

So this post not only highlights that first photo of the By-Pass Diner but also sheds some light on the fragility of the American diner and the diner business in general. It points to the fact that my photos are my contribution to documenting diner history over the last forty one years….

As I am wont to do, I initiated a Google search on my name one day this past April and found it associated with an interesting research document. This document titled Post World War II Automobile Era Roadside Architecture in NH was prepared by Lisa Mausolf, a Preservation Consultant, under contract for Cumberland Farms (a New England Convenience store and gas station chain) as mitigation for the removal of Earl’s (Martin’s) Drive-In at 2 Flat Rock Bridge Road in Rochester, New Hampshire.

Being curious as to why my name would come up in association with this document (although I had my suspicions), I started reading and found out that my New Hampshire Diners, Classic Granite State Eateries book was used as a reference on diners located in New Hampshire! Fair enough! I actually read the whole piece and was impressed with Lisa Mausolf’s research. In fact I believe this would actually make a decent “Coffee Table” book. As I read through, I found some interesting facts as well as corroboration of one or two things I had come across in years past, checking out roadside stuff in the Granite State.

One of the pieces of corroboration I discovered was about a former Drive-In Restaurant I learned about circa 1995 in Keene, New Hampshire. At that time it was operated as Gary’s Remember Then Drive-In. Located on Marlboro Street a few blocks off of Main Street, Gary’s was certainly a throw back with Car-Hop service. Denise & I went there at least three times after hearing about it. I spoke with the owner Gary once and told him how much I liked the place. He informed me that it was a former Dog N’ Suds Root Beer Drive-In. I was kind of puzzled about this surprising information as I had thought the Dog N’ Suds chain never made it this far east from its Mid-West roots. I did not contradict him but remained skeptical.

Well, in reading Lisa Mausolf’s research I noticed she included a newspaper ad from the mid-1960s for the Dog N’Suds in Keene, New Hampshire! Corroboration big time !!!!

Unfortunately, Gary’s only lasted a relatively short time as on a subsequent visit to Keene, possibly within 10 years after I first heard about it, I drove down Marlboro Street and found the building almost unrecognizable and operating as a Suzuki Auto Dealership. A more recent Google search has confirmed even the Suzuki dealership is long-gone and there is a Kickboxing School now in the building.

The second piece of info I found of interest was the fact that the place I knew as Poor Pierre’s Restaurant in Nashua was originally opened circa 1967 as Mr. Hot Dog. The building itself looks to have been of on-site construction but may have been built as possibly either part of a chain of restaurants or at the very least marketed as a commercial structure for various uses.

There is another building of the same design in Concord, New Hampshire that has housed other businesses in the past including restaurants, now currently operating as a Men’s Wearhouse store. As Ms. Mausolf states in her research, although the two buildings were built using a similar design, it is not actually known if they were related business -wise, or like I mentioned above, just offered to entrepreneurs as a viable commercial building.

In closing, I enjoyed reading this research report and have downloaded a pdf to keep as a reference. You can access the document at this link…. https://www.nh.gov/nhdhr/publications/documents/roadside_architecture.pdf

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1ST @ 7:00PM EDT

Larry Cultrera
From Lunch Carts to Mega-Restaurants:
The Evolution of the American Diner

Starting with the shooting of one fateful photograph of a diner on November 29, 1980, Larry Cultrera has logged thousands of miles and shot thousands of diner photographs in the last 41 plus years. He considers himself an archivist/photographer of the American Roadside, specializing in documenting the American Diner through his photographs. In October of 2007, he started writing the Diner Hotline Weblog which is a continuation of a column he penned for the SCA’s Journal Magazine for over 18 years previously.

Join Larry, who has photographed and kept a running log of just under 900 of these truly unique American restaurants, as he covers the various styles and designs that diners have had through history.

The SCA will make registration available to followers of the Diner Hotline Blog at no charge. To view this you will need to register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/from-lunch-carts-to-mega-restaurants-the-evolution-of-the-american-diner-registration-320399021097

The SCA since its inception in 1977, is an all-volunteer membership organization that celebrates the living history of America’s roadside.

I have not done a “Notes from the Hotline” in quite some time and while starting to write this, I decided this format would be right for this particular post. First up on the agenda is news from my friend Roger Elkus, owner of Roger’s Redliner Diner in Portsmouth, New Hampshire…

Roger’s Redliner Diner of Portsmouth, New Hampshire
closes due to end of lease…

Roger Elkus posted an announcement on his diner’s Facebook page that as of April 4, 2022 the diner was officially closed due to the end of the lease where the diner has operated since February of 2014. Roger told me it was a good run for the diner and even though it was a labor of love for him, he decided to concentrate on operating his other business – Me & Oliie’s Bakery Cafe in Exeter, New Hampshire, the remaining outlet for his original chain of bakery cafes.

Roger’s Redliner Diner has been the subject of a previous post or two and was featured in my New Hampshire Diners, Classic Granite State Eateries book (The History Press, 2014)… I will re-tell the story here about the history of this classic 1950 vintage diner….

Roger’s Redliner was originally named the Monarch Diner and was part of a “chain” started by the Decola brothers based in Waltham, Mass.  The chain consisted of quite a few diners that traded under the “Monarch” name including several Massachusetts locations… the flagship Monarch was on Main Street in Waltham, Mass. (it is currently the Tilt’n Diner in Tilton, NH). There were other Monarch Diners located in Saugus, Mass. (now Martha’s Coventry Diner, Coventry, VT), Arlington, Billerica, Littleton and Woburn (all gone). The other Monarch Diners were located in Dover, NH (more recently Roger’s Redliner Diner), as well as Milford, NH (now gone). Other diners in this chain had traded under names such as the Bedford Diner of Bedford, Mass., as well as one (or both) of the Paradise Diners of Lowell, Mass. I first became aware of the Monarch Diners collecting diner postcards in the early 1980s. I obtained one for the Monarch Diner of Waltham and the image depicted that diner but also mentioned the Dover, NH location. As far as I knew, the Dover location was defunct by the time I obtained the postcard and I figured it did not exist anymore. I later learned that both diners were built in 1950 by the Jerry O’Mahony Diner Company and were very similar, pretty much the same size though the configuration on the interior was slightly different. The Monarch in Dover was serial number 2163-50 while the Monarch in Waltham was serial number 2179-50. Serial numbers for Jerry O’Mahony diners (when found) will always be 4 digits then a “dash” with the last 2 digits representing the production year. It seems the Decola’s leased or eventually sold their places to other people to run. The known operators that were associated with the Monarch in Dover were Fred & Irene Jewell.

By the time I started documenting diners, the only diner left in Dover to my knowledge was Stoney’s Diner (more recently the Sunny Day Diner, now operating as Arnold’s Wayside Diner in Lincoln, NH). It was not until March 12, 1989, on a surprise visit to an old friend Rick Clauson, who was living in Acton, Maine, that I found out the fate of the Monarch Diner from Dover. When my friend Steve Repucci and I showed up early on that Sunday afternoon, we talked for a while with Rick and his wife Dawn. After a period of time, Rick said “c’mon let’s take a ride, I have something to show you”. So we proceeded to drive heading east away from his house on a side road that was used by locals as a short cut into nearby Sanford. As we rounded a curve on Twombley Road, this large stainless steel diner sitting up on timbers came into view. We stopped to check the place out and I snapped a few photos.

The owner, Phyllis Neal, who lived in the house on the property where the diner was being stored was there and I approached her to ask about the diner. She proceeded to tell me that the diner had originally been located in Dover. I asked, was this the Monarch Diner? She answered in the affirmative and she invited us to take a look at the interior, which was accessed by a set of temporary stairs. We discovered that aside from it being used for storage in conjunction with her greenhouse business, the diner was surprisingly intact. Mrs. Neal told us that her husband had purchased the diner in 1968 after it had closed in Dover and moved it to downtown North Berwick, Maine. I have since found out through information gathered by the late Will Anderson for his 1995 self-published book “More Good Old Maine” that although they had originally thought about using the diner to sell flowers out of, the Neal’s changed their mind and decided to set it up and lease the diner to a lady named Lois Griffin who operated it as Lois’ Diner until late 1973.

The diner remained closed and vacant at the North Berwick location until the Neal family relocated it to their property in Sanford at 604 Twombley Rd. in 1986, where they began using it for storage. Even though I had been documenting diners with my photographs since 1980 and made quite a few friends who had been doing the same thing even longer, I found the fact interesting that none of us who followed diners were aware of this diner being in North Berwick. The only reason it may have been under the “diner radar” is the fact that it had been closed there since 1973.

A number of years later, Dave Pritchard of Salisbury, Mass. convinced Mrs. Neal to sell the diner to him. Pritchard already had the former Fasano’s Diner (aka, the Olympian Diner) from South Braintree, Mass. along with the Miss Newport Diner from Newport, VT and the Englewood Diner of Dorchester, Mass. being stored at his Aran Trading Co. Ltd., a Container, Truck and Trailer sales yard, in Salisbury. This would have been around the summer of 2004. In fact I was traveling back from seeing the newly installed Blast From The Past Diner in Waterboro, Maine on August 20, 2004 along Maine Route 4 if I remember correctly, when I was surprised to see the diner again, this time at a different location. I did not stop to photograph it, or even take note as to the location (still kicking myself to this day). But by my best guess, it was sitting on a trailer at the side of the road near the intersection of Morrills Mill Rd. and Rte. 4. Obviously it was being moved somewhere, as it turned out, to Salisbury and Dave Pritchard’s yard. Probably within a year or so of that sighting I again ran across it at Aran Trading Co. and photographed it there.

Roger Elkus ended up buying the former Monarch/Lois’ Diner from Dave Pritchard circa December of 2012. Around that time I was introduced to Roger by my friend Beth Lennon when we met him at Aran Trading to view the diner.

Within a few months Elkus secured a new home for the diner and had it moved in June 2013 to Southgate Shopping Plaza right next door to Water Country Water Park. The diner anchored a new wing of the reconfigured plaza just behind the branch of the First Colebrook Bank, which has frontage on U.S. Route 1. After months of setting it up and performing a fantastic restoration, as well as bringing the electrical and other amenities up to code, the diner was opened in February of 2014. There was a brief break in service a few years ago and the diner became the bakery for Elkus’ chain of Me & Ollie’s Cafes for a while before again operating with as the Redliner with a reduced menu.

After closing the diner this past April, Roger started trying to find someone who wanted to purchase it and move it from Portsmouth. We spoke early on and I recommended he try to contact Alex Ray of the Common Man Restaurants. Ray already had the Tilt’n Diner, the Route 104 Diner and the Airport Diner in his family of restaurants, as well as the two Hi-Way Diners at the Hooksett Welcome Centers on the Northbound and Southbound sides of Interstate 93. Coincidentally as mentioned above, the Tilt’n Diner was the second version of the original Monarch Diner (from Waltham, Mass.) and the sister to Roger’s Redliner. Roger attempted to leave messages via phone and email for Alex Ray but never got a response.

I received a message from a friend, Cliff Hodgdon on July 11th that he saw that the diner was being prepped for moving. He asked me if I knew anything about what was happening and I told him I would contact Roger Elkus to get the lowdown. I spoke with Roger and he told me how initially, he had been unsuccessful in trying to contact Alex Ray. But ironically, a friend of Ray’s who lived in the Portsmouth area had seen that the diner was for sale and was able to contact him. He sent photos and info about how to get in touch with Roger Elkus and shortly after, Roger received a message from Ray. They made arrangements for Ray to come and inspect the diner a few days later and Ray was impressed with the condition of the diner and decided to buy it.

The diner was moved from Portsmouth on July 14th to a storage location in Bow, NH. As I understand it, the diner will eventually be located adjacent to Alex Ray’s Common Man Restaurant in Lincoln, NH. As I mentioned previously, this diner was originally located in Dover, NH coincidentally diagonally across the street from Stoney’s Diner. If in fact the former Redliner does get relocated to Lincoln, it will be right around the corner from Arnold’s Wayside Diner, the former Stoney’s Diner! I hope to be following up on how this continuing saga will end up and report on this in the near future!

Bishop’s 4th Street Diner of Newport, Rhode Island forced to close due to a proposed redevelopment of its site…

Dan Lederer of the Newport Daily News reported late in 2021 that Bishop’s 4th Street Diner was slated to close because that although Steve & Vicki Bishop own the diner itself, a modular 1950 vintage Jerry O’Mahony dining car with attached kitchen and additional dining space, they do not own the land it sits on. That belongs to Colbea Enterprises, which also owns the Shell Gas Station next door to the diner. Colbea Enterprises, doing business as East Side Enterprises, LLC has its own vision for the land. It includes a proposed expansion of the gas station, along with the Seasons convenience store and a car wash.

Here is a short history of this diner, It was originally delivered and installed along U.S. Route 6 in Swansea, Massachusetts. It operated from circa 1950 or so as The Princeton Diner here before it was moved to Newport by 1967. When I found it on an early Diner Hunting trip on June 19, 1982, it was still operating as the Princeton Diner.

When I visited the diner on another trip in May of 1986, it was operating as the Galley Diner. According to a quote by Steve Bishop, It continued operating as The Galley Diner until Tish Warner bought the restaurant in 1989 and ran it with her daughters, she called it The 4th Street Diner. Newport’s Third Street is just around the corner, but in actuality, there is no Fourth Street.

Warner owned the diner until 1998, when Bishop and his then wife, Nancy, bought it and modified the name to Bishop’s 4th Street Diner. They operated it together until about 2008. After a divorce, Nancy Bishop ran the diner alone until 2018, when Steve Bishop and his current wife, Vicki, bought the business and took over its operation. I last visited the diner to eat breakfast on a long weekend on October 9, 2004 and got my first digital photos of it as Bishop’s 4th Street Diner. As I recall I had Rhode Island Johnny Cakes for breakfast!

As to the current situation of this diner, Colbea purchased the property in the beginning of 2020, with the intention of expanding the gas station, only giving the Bishops a four-month lease, and then renting the space month-to-month after March 2020. Then this past November, Colbea alerted the Bishops that they would have to be off the property by the end of January 2022. The Bishops had previously rented the lot from Paul Miller before Colbea, and had a similar tenant agreement. A few months ago, a judge ruled that the Bishops could keep the diner open until August when they then would need to vacate the premises.

I have been following the news blurbs since the end of last year and been in contact with co-owner Vicki Bishop. In fact Ms. Bishop got in contact with me to ask if I knew how much the diner weighed. Vicki and her husband Steve were planning on trying to save the diner by putting the building up for sale and prospective buyers would need to know how much the building weighed for moving purposes. I actually contacted Roger Elkus of Roger’s Redliner as his diner was virtually the same age and size as Bishop’s and he already had paid to transport his diner from Salisbury, Mass. to Portsmouth, NH a few years earlier. Roger told me the estimated weight came to approximately 60,00 pounds, which I relayed to Vicki Bishop.

Now here we are in August and the closing date for the diner was announced to be August 14th. This past Sunday, the 7th, Denise and I decided to take a small road trip down to Newport so we could have one last meal at the diner. I shot a couple of interior photos as well as four exterior ones to commemorate this last visit.

As I finish writing this blog, the diner is closing today and we wish Steve & Vicki Bishop all the best in their future endeavors. Also, there is news of a highly good possibility some people from New Hampshire are extremely interested in purchasing the diner. We hope that this comes to pass and that the diner will be moved to a new location in the Granite State. If this happens, there will be three 1950 vintage Jerry O’Mahony diners of similar style and size eventually operating in the state. That would be the Tilt’n Diner, the former Roger’s Redliner Diner (at its new location in Lincoln) and Bishop’s 4th Street wherever that gets relocated.