Diners of Massachusetts MPS
As Diners of Massachusetts a are under Multiple Property Submission (MPS) all Diners summarized that in the state of Massachusetts of the United States in the National Register of Historic Places are registered (NRHP).
History of the Diner in Massachusetts
1880s to 1920s
As early as 1872 , Walter Scott from Providence had built the first so-called night lunch wagon by converting a disused railroad car. Eleven years later, Ruel B. Jones, also from Providence, had the first railway car built by a local wagon manufacturer as a lunch cart . In 1884 his cousin Samuel Messer Jones introduced the concept of the night lunch wagon in Worcester . These were horse-drawn wagons in which small items such as sandwiches, soups and coffee were sold. The customers were predominantly workers on the night shift who could get cheap food while conventional restaurants and bars were closed. The cars were parked on the side of the road for the night and had openings to both the sidewalk and the street side so that customers could be served quickly.
In 1887, Samuel Jones built the world's first mobile restaurant by equipping a railroad car so that, in addition to a kitchen, it also had seating and standing space for customers. After his success in Worcester, he opened a branch in Springfield in 1889 . The new and successful business idea caused imitators, so that this industry recorded strong growth well into the early 20th century. Worcester quickly rose to the center of the production of restaurant cars and was the seat of the companies Charles H. Palmer, New England Night Lunch Wagon Company, Wilfred Barriere, Worcester Lunch Car and Carriage Manufacturing Company and John JE Hennigan. Wilson Goodrich and Camille R. Remillard produced in Sterling and, from 1895 onwards, Charles Palmer, who relocated his production from Worcester to Sterling. The company of Ephraim L. Hamel was located in Lynn .
The innovation by Samuel Jones meant that almost all restaurant trucks in Massachusetts could offer their customers a roof over their head where they could eat and drink protected from the weather. Charles Palmer received the first patent for a restaurant trolley in 1890 and developed a prototype that became the standard design for the next 25 years. In the 1890s, Thomas H. Buckley and Ephraim Hamel perfected the interior design of their models sold as White House Cafe in Worcester and Lynn, which, among other things, had windows made of frosted glass , etched glass or transparent colored glass and had historical pictures or landscape paintings on the outside . At the beginning of the 20th century, the wagons were increasingly converted so that they were only dragged once from the factory to their intended location and then remained stationary, while until then it was necessary to clear the roadside every morning. Thomas Buckley's company also equipped its new models with a U-shaped counter around a centrally arranged kitchen for the first time .
With the transition to a permanent location, many operators left their restaurants open around the clock and took the opportunity to install electric light, gas stoves and running water in order to increase their customer friendliness. Technical ventilation systems and toilet rooms followed shortly afterwards. Since advancing electrification ensured that old horse-drawn trams were taken out of service, they could be converted into restaurant cars at low cost. However, they did not offer the comfort of the new cars and made the entire industry increasingly negative. This then began to use the term dining car based on the noble restaurant car of the railways . It has been proven that the term was first used between March 1923 and March 1924.
1920s to 1940s
In New England , where diner originated, horse-drawn carts were used well into the 1930s, although this form of restaurant cart was out of fashion by the 1920s. In Taunton , John F. Hickey upheld the concept of the lunch wagon even longer, where he ran a ten-seat diner from 1944 to 1986 that was mounted on a truck trailer and was located in the city's business center.
The first diners in Massachusetts had a barrel roof , sliding doors and ten stools arranged around the counter, which is why they are also known as ten-stoolers . At least seven of them still exist in Massachusetts today, all of which were built by the Worcester Lunch Car Company between the 1920s and 1940s . The Casey's Diner in Natick is the diner got the best of this era and perhaps the largest of its kind in the entire United States, which is still in operation. Its small original size of only 6.2 m by 3 m and its rustic interior design clearly distinguish it from later diners.
In the 1920s, horse-drawn carts were increasingly replaced by stationary restaurant carts. These were prefabricated in the factory and then with horses, special Diner- tractors , on a low-loader wagons brought by rail or by sea to their destination. The wheels, which are only available in a few cases, were only needed to push the diner to its final location, which was initially typically near industrial and commercial areas. Later, new customer groups were opened up, including in the vicinity of schools and, with the beginning of the population becoming motorized, also on highways and state routes . Most of these street dinners were located in Massachusetts along US Highway 1 north from Boston to the state line in New Hampshire , US Highway 6 from Cape Cod to Fall River , US Highway 5 along the Connecticut River, and Massachusetts Route 12 in Worcester County .
The 1920s in the United States were also marked by an increasing urge to go out and eat in restaurants after the First World War , which attracted new customers to diners in addition to factory workers. This trend was fueled by an increasing number of women and men who worked outside of their own homes and therefore cooked less at home. In order to appeal to women and children as well, the diners - in addition to the bar stools that still exist - were equipped with seating and tables.
Massachusetts also used diners that had been made in other states; For example, Ted's Diner in Milford was built by Jerry O'Mahony, Inc. in Elizabeth (New Jersey) . As the leading diner manufacturer in Massachusetts, the Worcester Lunch Car Company offered seven variants of restaurant cars as early as the 1920s, ranging in size from 18 m² to just over 36 m² and offering between 10 and 39 standing or seats. The small width of no more than 3.2 m was due to the necessary transport of the pre-produced and fully furnished dinners in the factory. The surfaces of the interior consist mainly of oak, ceramic tiles and enamel . The diners already had connections for electricity, gas and water from the factory and were offered at prices between 3,350 US dollars (today approx. 49,000 dollars) and 11,000 dollars (today approx. 160,000 dollars) - also against payment in installments . The Chadwick Square Diner and the Boulevard Diner , both of which are located in Worcester, are some of the diners of this era that still exist today .
In Philadelphia -based JG Brill Company began in 1927 in Springfield and Cleveland with the production of restaurant cars with monitor roof . The Brill subsidiary Wason Manufacturing Company produced the first diners in the USA in exclusively steel frame construction; previously, steel beams were supplemented with wooden beams. The Capitol Diner in Lynn is the only Brill / Wason Diner in Massachusetts that still exists today. However, most of the surviving monitor roof diners were built by the Worcester Lunch Car Company, including the aforementioned Chadwick Square Diner.
The operation of a diner was feasible without major investments and therefore also attracted a large number of people who had no previous experience in the industry. The sales and manufacturers' brochures were aligned accordingly and praised the diner including "money maker" ( German as a cash cow ), who continuously transferring money, the food provided tasty and fresh and the cleanliness were excellent. Running a diner was therefore very popular as a means of livelihood during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Most of the restaurants were family-run, and some diner operators (including Casey's and Al Mac's Diner ) in the 1950s had ancestors who began with horse-drawn carts in the early 20th century. However, it has not yet been conclusively clarified whether a dinner actually brought in enough to feed the family or whether it could only serve as a sideline.
Despite its brief existence from 1936 to 1942, the Sterling Diners company in Merrimac played an important role in the development of diner design in Massachusetts. The company acquired patents from Berton G. Harley for a modular sectional structure of a diner and from Roland L. Stickney for a specific look of a diner, on the basis of which the Sterling Streamliner was developed. The oldest surviving model of this series dates from 1936 and was last in a warehouse at Worcester Regional Airport . The Streamliner models reflected the influence of the dawning machine age on industrial design in the United States. In particular, the close connection between the production of dinners and the production of trains and automobiles led to the unmistakable appearance of the Streamliner, the main feature of which was a rounded aerodynamic outer contour, inspired by aircraft construction of this era. This created a contradiction, as the dinners were now exclusively location-bound and therefore not dependent on aerodynamics; in this context one speaks of the “immobilization of mobility”. The Salem Diner in Salem (built in 1941) is one of the few remaining examples of the Streamliner in Massachusetts.
The Worcester Lunch Car Company used their "Semi-Streamliner" against it, which was a bit more angular and was much more popular with diner buyers than the streamliner of its competitors. An example of the now very rare type of semi-streamliner is The Rosebud in Somerville . In the 1940s there was an increasing need for a more modern look for diners, which is particularly reflected in the design of the stainless steel exterior walls .
1940s to 1960s
In the aftermath of World War II , large stainless steel diners dominated the industry in Massachusetts. More than 50 of these restaurants are still preserved today, most of them in New Jersey (Fodero Dining Car Company in Bloomfield , Mountain View Diners in Singac , Jerry O'Mahony, Inc. in Elizabeth , Silk City Diners in Paterson , Kullman Industries, Inc. in Avenel and Master Diners in Pequannock ) or in New York (DeRaffele Manufacturing Company in New Rochelle ). The Worcester Lunch Car Company built at least a third of the diner in Massachusetts in the late 1940s, whose traditional barrel roof increasingly had to compete with the new shapes and appearances of steel diners. The company did not use steel as a design element until 1952.
More and more families were among the customers of the diner, so that the rooms became larger, had more seats and service at the seat was increasingly placed in the foreground. The kitchen has also been moved to a separate, adjacent room. The interior areas regularly featured design elements such as fluorescent lamps and mirrors as well as terrazzo floors and were painted in pastel tones . Improved ventilation systems made it possible to dispense with a monitor roof and install fixed, non-opening windows. In the outdoor areas, steel elements were combined with colored accents made of enamel, and the features of the pre-war streamliner were subtly taken up. The Shawmut Diner in New Bedford and the Agawam Diner in Rowley are some of the examples of this era that still exist today .
Technological advances made it possible to build diners in sections that were transported to the site and only assembled there, which allowed the construction of considerably larger dinners than before. Corner Lunch in Worcester, built in 1955, is the best-preserved example of its type. During this time, the Worcester Lunch Car Company continued to produce enamel-clad diners such as the Miss Worcester Diner in Worcester or the Wilson's Diner in Waltham, contrary to the trend . At the end of the 1950s, however, the barrel roof finally went out of fashion and was no longer offered by the Worcester Lunch Car Company.
As early as the 1930s, a market for used and refurbished diners arose due to the growing need to renovate older diners and for new buildings. While used diner in any condition were sold privately, the manufacturers offered refurbished and professionally refurbished diner. An example of a renovated and expanded diner is the Town Diner in Watertown from 1947, which replaced an older model from the 1920s that now houses the kitchen.
1960s until today
The Town Diner, together with Al Mac's in Fall River, marks the beginning of a trend towards a restaurant atmosphere. After the Second World War, the diners began to advertise their services as casual family meals and by the 1960s, at the latest, increasingly relied on this concept in order to differentiate themselves from the newly established fast food chains that offered standard dishes at low prices. The diner got a conservative image and some of the owners renamed them diner-restaurant . Some diner manufacturers even dispensed with this name entirely. Against this background, more tables and chairs and fewer bar stools were built into the dinners, and there was also a return to traditional architectural details with colonial elements.
The early 1970s built Fillin 'Station in Whately is the oldest existing Diner from this period, which in combination with a gas station and a truck stop near the Interstate 91 was set up. In the 1970s, the first Mediterranean-style diners hit the market, while from the 1980s onwards, the design relied on standard exterior cladding instead of enamel and stainless steel.
List of NRHP-registered diners in Massachusetts
For inclusion in the NRHP list, a diner was considered relevant by the National Park Service if it had achieved sufficient importance in Massachusetts between the late 19th century and the mid-1960s; a total of around 150 diners were counted in Massachusetts at the time of registration, which came from this period. However, only some of them were given sufficient importance to be included in the NRHP. This restaurant design, which is widespread in the United States, gained its current level of fame, particularly through its history in Massachusetts, as the first and later also the largest producers were based in this state. Although nearly two-thirds of the state's diners still in existence today were built by the Worcester Lunch Car Company , the manufacturer's production location was irrelevant for inclusion in the NRHP; instead, only the location of the diner within Massachusetts was of importance. As a result, all non-state dinners were excluded from the Massachusetts Diners List .
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literature
- Kara Baskin et al .: 16 must-visit New England diners. In: The Boston Globe . October 29, 2014, accessed July 6, 2016 .
- Kathleen Kelly Broomer, Betsy Friedberg: National Register of Historic Places - Multiple Property Submission Form. ( PDF ) National Park Service , August 6, 1999, accessed July 5, 2016 .
- Larry Cultrera: Classic Diners of Massachusetts . The History Press, Charleston, SC 2011, ISBN 978-1-60949-323-3 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
- Randy Garbin: Diners of New England . Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA 2005, ISBN 978-0-8117-3141-6 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- Richard Gutman: American diner then and now . Harper Perennial, New York 1993, ISBN 978-0-06-096956-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 3.
- ↑ a b cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 4.
- ↑ a b c cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 5.
- ↑ a b cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 6.
- ↑ cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 7.
- ↑ cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 8.
- ↑ cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 9.
- ↑ cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 10.
- ↑ a b cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 11.
- ↑ a b cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 12.
- ↑ a b cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 13.
- ↑ cf. Broomer / Friedberg, p. 14.