Michael Engle - Diners of New York

Copyright 2008 by Stackpole Books

Published by
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Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION

Cover design by Tessa J. Sweigert and Caroline Stover

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Engle, Michael.

Diners of New York / Michael Engle and Mario Monti. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8117-3525-4 (pbk.)

eISBN 978-0-8117-5102-5

1. Diners (Restaurants)New York (State)Guidebooks. 2. Diners (Restaurants)New York (State)History. I. Monti, Mario, 1929 II. Title.

TX907.3.N7155E54 2008

647.95747dc22

2008026551

FOR LUCILLE

A Word about Diner Manufacturers

A s you read this book, youll notice many references to diner manufacturers. This section offers a crash course on the companies that made the diners and provides some pointers for identifying a diners make. Several of the following descriptions are excerpted from Diners of Pennsylvania, by Brian Butko and Kevin Patrick. We have added some regional variations.

DeRaffele. 1933present, New Rochelle, New York. Vertical fluting in the 1940s, fluted corners combined with streamline style in the 1950s, angular vestibule overhang starting around 1960, zigzag rooflines in the 1960s, arched windows with orange tile mansard roofs in the 1970s. Newer diners and remodels have many 90-degree lines and exaggerated exteriors.

Fodero. 193381, Bloomfield, New Jersey. Either horizontal stainless or flat vertical porcelain fluting in the 1940s, both having rounded corners with stainless sunbursts. The company used the name National from 1940 to 1945 and thereafter referred to those models as Foderos. Vertical stainless ribs below roofline in the 1950s.

Kullman. 1927present, Avenel, New Jersey. Vertical fluting in the 1940s, picture windows beginning in the 1950s, five-foot-wide canopy starting in 1955. The company began making other structures in 1969, and by 1990 only 7 percent of its output was diners.

Mountain View. 193957, Singac, New Jersey. Distinctive rolling roofline and glass block corners after World War II, cowcatcher corners in the late 1940s to early 1950s, square roof corners in the early 1950s, and thin scrolls at roofline in the late 1950s.

OMahony. 191356, Bayonne, New Jersey. Barrel roofs up to 1930s, monitor roofs in mid-1930s with transom windows up to about 1940. Formica ceiling work in early 1940s. Flat porcelain panels on the outside until the early 1940s, rounded end windows from the late 1930s through 1950s. Stainless steel exterior from mid-1940s.

Paramount/PMC. 1932present, Oakland, New Jersey. Completely stainless with burnished circles or vertical fluting in the 1940s, balls on wedding-cake or waterfall corner tops in late 1940s, zigzag rooflines in the 1960s.

Silk City. 192764, Paterson, New Jersey. This is the only make that was not custom built. Old-style monitor roofs until about 1952. Siding look until the mid-1950s with porcelain enamel horizontal metal area. Corners in the 1950s were slim with stainless early, glass later. Zigzag stainless pattern with large windows in the 1960s.

Sterling. 193642, Merrimac, Massachusetts. This company constructed barrel-roof sectional diners with porcelain enamel panels on the inside and outside, usually cream colored.

Swingle. 195788, Middlesex, New Jersey. Vertical stainless fluting along roofline on early models.

Tierney. 190533, New Rochelle. Patrick Tierney founded this company in New Rochelle. After his death in 1917, his sons, Edward and Edgar, took over the business and manufactured up to a diner a day by 1925. Their barrel-roof diners included indoor toilets and interior tiling.

Ward & Dickinson. 1924circa 1940, Silver Creek. Charles Ward, previously a hotel manager, and Lee Dickinson, a prominent businessman, came together in Silver Creek to build lunch cars. Their business produced the most diners of any manufacturer in western New York. Their standard model, for which Ward received a design patent, was known as the Ward Dining Car. Their diners are best known for their green stained glass on the upper sash of the diners windows.

Another way to identify a diner is to look for tags. The usual location for tags is inside or outside the main door. In later models, tags can be found inside above the doors to the vestibule or above the doors to the bathrooms. OMahony identification numbers can be found on the back of the removable interior transom windows on older diners and on the outside doors of later diners, such as the Skylark Diner in Vestal.

There are a few diners in New York built by other manufacturers: Bixler, Norwalk, Ohio (193136); Comac, Irvington, New Jersey (194751); Manno, Fairfield, New Jersey (194978); Master, Pequannock, New Jersey (194757); Valentine, Wichita, Kansas (193874); and Worcester, Worcester, Massachusetts (190661).

New York was home to many lunch wagon and diner manufacturers. The following are some of the older, more obscure ones.

Bramson Engineering. 1958, Oyster Bay. Two stainless steel diners were constructed by the company in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

Closson Lunch Wagon Company. 190317, Glens Falls, Westfield. Albert Closson built lunch wagons with monitor roofs (similar to trolley cars) in Glens Falls, New York, before his company was bought by Dr. Charles Welch and moved to Westfield, New York.

General Diner Co. 193942, Watertown, Oswego. Founded by Arthur Halladay and Morris Whitehouse in Watertown, the company quickly moved to Oswego, where it manufactured sectional diners. Whitehouse made one more go of it in Syracuse in 1942, but was unsuccessful. General diners were covered with vinyl siding.

Goodell Hardware. 1926? Silver Creek. This Silver Creek company built diners. A resident of the town noted that for a brief period they built four diners a year.

Liberty Dining Car. 192731, Clarence. When Charles Ward left Ward & Dickinson, he started his own company, with a factory in Clarence and offices in Buffalo. Liberty diners were similar in style to his former companys cars.

Modern Dining Car. Circa 1929. This company may have been located in Dunkirk. Estes Pickup Sr. was one of the investors. When the other investors bailed out, Estes was left with three diners. One went to Batavia and another to East Aurora. The third diner went to Brooklyn, but Estes later moved it to Olean and ran it himself.

Mulholland. Circa 1925circa 1934. At its factory in Dunkirk, Mulholland built truck and ambulance bodies. An independent company called Dunkirk Dining Car Company was formed to sell the diners, which were similar in style to Ward & Dickinson models.

Orleans. 194748, Albion. This company built two or three diners in Albion, Orleans County. The Highland Park Diner in Rochester is the only one that survives.

Richardson.