Developers in Philadelphia want to knock down old greasy spoons and rebuild them inside brand-new apartment buildings.
Growing up , I was submit to the same dad trick every clock time we pull in up to Bob ’s Diner . The classic 1940s untarnished blade dining railroad car in the Roxborough neighbourhood ofPhiladelphiawas tightly cuddle between a church and a sprawl 300 - twelvemonth - oldcemetery , which always begged the question : Why did they need to build a fencing around the burying ground ?
" Because everyone is dying to get in there , " my father would quip without fail . The joke seemed as irresistible to him as the creamed potato chip beef or the black - and - blanched milkshake he ordered every meter we sit down at bottom . For my pappa , coming to this dining car was a lifelong ritual that began sometime in the 1950s while he was growing up nearby — and one that he was eager to share with his own kids .
It ’s unclear if I ’ll ever be able-bodied to pass that custom down myself . Leverington Cemetery is still actively accepting new burial , but Bob ’s is barely fall on by a thread . dining car in the city are disappearing , but it ’s not just a Philly phenomenon . Even New Jersey — theso - call diner majuscule of the human beings — lost a quarter of its diners over the course of the past decade , according to an unofficial industriousness tallyrecently cited by NPR .
Bob’s Diner is a ’40s-era staple of Philadelphia’s Roxborough neighborhood, but developers have their eyes on the building.|Photo by John Paul Titlow
" The state of affairs has changed dramatically , " say Randy Garbin , an expert on classical American diners and the founder ofRoadside , a print magazine that lovingly chronicle the land ’s diner picture for 15 days . I would take it somewhat further and say that , over the last decade , the diner death toll in Philadelphia has started to feel downright apocalyptic . Little Pete ’s . trolley car Car Diner . Ridge Diner . Oak Lane Diner . South Street Diner . Midtown III . The Continental . Melrose Diner . All of these places have dimmed theirneon lightsfor good . Garbin told me that there were probably close to 30 diners when he first came to Philadelphia in the late 1980s .
Now , there are only a handful pass on . The exact number count on who you involve , but virtually no one will disagree that it ’s shrinking . “ It ’s very operose to be in this business now , ” Garbin tells me , cite ballooning business costs , evolving consumer tastes , and the lingering issue of the pandemic . “ It ’s always been a challenge , but now it ’s just crazy hard . ”
Most history of the American dinertrace its rootsback to 1872 , when a newspaper pressman bring up Walter Scott started selling sandwiches and burnt umber from a horse - draw dejeuner cart to nighttime shift proletarian inProvidence , Rhode Island . But the dining compartment most people acknowledge and love today first appear in 1913 . That ’s when an entrepreneurial Jersey native named Jerry O’Mahony built the world ’s first stationary roadside diner . O’Mahony ’s chrome - plat , geartrain railroad car - like bodily structure became the mannequin for the classic American diner that would soon pepper the roadway of the northeasterly United States and typically be deck with neon sign , sate with vinyl radical booths , and splendid with the perfume of freshly brewedcoffee .
The interior of Bob’s Diner still looks straight out of the 1940s.|Photo by John Paul Titlow
By the 1950s , O’Mahony ’s company was one of several manufacturer — including Paramount , Kullman , Silk City , Podero and Sterling , to name a few — that were busy mass - producing diner in an travail to run into the demand that issue forth with the expanding upon of America ’s highway system . For his part , O’Mahony built more than 2,000 prefabricated dining compartment by 1952 , include about 20 in New Jersey and a few more in the Philadelphia area . One of them , an original 1930s O’Mahoney diner in the Philly suburb of Frazer , appears to have quietly shut downin January . One of the few remaining ones is Bob ’s , in Roxborough .
“ It ’s the primordial example of a classic diner , ” Garbin enunciate of Bob ’s . Perfect omelet ? Check . The kind of retro inner that make it finger like you ’re stepping through a meter portal ? Also present . He has strict standard , too . As far Garbin is concerned , a dining compartment has to have riposte service and it has to be build in a manufacturing plant and brought out to the site . Sure , there are many perfectly fine diner - like establishments that exist outside of this strict , almost pedantic conceptual framework , but they are n’t really diners . " It ’s a very unique part of American roadside history that is being quickly lose to time , " laments Garbin . " There ’s nobody establish them any longer . "
By that he imply most of the old school dining car maker went out of business year ago , though a few others pull off to swivel — oneeven found a subsidiary in the late ‘ 90s with the sole purpose of export the classical American - style diner experience toGermany . While the factories that once mass - produced yard of untarnished steel diners are no longer doing so , there are still plenty of people who stay enthrone in keeping the American diner alert in one physical body or another . Richard Gutman , a ethnical historian and generator who is reckon as the preeminent expert on American diners , has been ask in more than 140 diner mental synthesis and restoration projects over the last 45 geezerhood . During that time , Gutman has consult with everyone from enterpriser launch new diners to museum curators and historical conservation mathematical group trying to restore old 1 .
Midtown III, which was once part of a local empire of diners, closed unexpectedly during the pandemic.|Photo by John Paul Titlow
“ I imagine that the whole approximation that it ’s an queer coinage is not true , ” Gutman says . “ yard of diner have come and gone over the 150 age that lunch waggon and diners have exist . I think that hoi polloi love them enough to assure that they will last forever . "
Admittedly , Gutman ’s optimism is somewhat dependent on the evolve semantics of what constitute a buffet car . Over the years , he has seen various iterations of the concept , many of which cast jolly far from the classic , prefabricate diners he has written four script about . While some rest honest to that custom , others adopt various ingredient from the extensive menus and retro design esthetic of the classic diner to make something new , yet familiar . In some case , Gutman thinks these conceptual tangents are fine . He finds others — like when a coffee shop class or restaurant that happens to have counter service shout itself a diner with small justification — unforgivable .
" When you see it , you know it , " Gutman says . " If you look at a buffet car like the Mayfair Diner or the Melrose before they demolished it , you saw it and you knew it was a dining car . "
The Mayfair Diner in Northeast Philadelphia in the 1970s. It’s still going strong today.|Photo courtesy of Richard Gutman
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The Mayfair Diner , another O’Mahony - build establishment , is still go strong in its original Northeast Philadelphia location . The Melrose , on the other hand , was demolished in 2023 , a year after a kitchen fire accidentally forced it to keep out down . Michael Petrogiannis , who owns both establishments , saidhe plans to open a pocket-sized replica of the latter on the first floor of the six - tale flat construction being developed where the diner ’s original structure suffer — a reality , while tragic to some , is not terribly surprising to Philadelphians who have been find out the metropolis ’s prop value and real estate growth explode over the last decennary .
And the Melrose is n’t the only classical Philly buffet car being promised a second life inside a newly - developed residential building , either . Northeast Philadelphia ’s Oak Lane Diner , whose original 1940s Paramount - work up dining railway car structure was damage by a fire in 2015 , is nowslated to reopeninside the 65 - whole building that will finally replace it . Thesame thing is reportedly happeningwith the recently - shutter Tastee Diner in Silver Springs , Maryland , suggesting a trend of zombified restaurants that may or may not suggest at the time to come of the diner as we get laid it — something that does n’t sit right with Gutman .
“ When you just recreate it with turn and pieces of the original — and who knows what pass off with the menu — it ’s a unlike place , ” he says .
Bob’s Diner as it once was, in the late ’40s.|Photo courtesy of Richard Gutman
Different , sure . But is it still a diner ? As the concept itself continues to acquire , it ’s often a matter of view .
When most people move to a new place , their first move might be to nail the nearest position spot , grocery store , or perchance even the best spot to get a stiff drinking . For Randy Garbin , the diner purist , it ’s the neighbourhood greasy spoon . In Philly , spots like The Trolley Car , Daddypops , the Melrose and Bob ’s apace became deary of his . It ’s what he considers the centrepiece of any neighborhood worth its Strategic Arms Limitation Talks , because it allow something he call “ public closeness . ”
An example : When Garbin move to Worcester , Massachusetts , years earlier , he honed in on the Parkway Diner , an original 1930s luncheon cart diner that was acquired in 1956 by a former US Army cook . It was there , sitting on one of the Parkway ’s red vinyl radical - topped diner stools that Garbin would chat with this new proprietor — who still dutifully man the grill well into his 70s — and also get to know many of his neighbors . “ I learned more about the city and its neighborhoods and pretty much everything else in one night over a stuffed pepper than I would have with a six - calendar month subscription to the local newspaper , ” Garbin tell .
I got my own taste of what Garbin anticipate public involvement myself on a recent misstep to Bob ’s . Thirty long time ago , after some initial hesitancy , a man namedJim Evansdecided to buy Bob ’s Diner from its original owner . He ’s still behind the grill today at 71 years erstwhile . When I shew up to question him for this story one late Sunday afternoon , Evans was so busy flipping pancakes and running around the restaurant that we both realized the conversation would be better saved for later on on .
Sundays are often hectic at Bob ’s , but this one came with an extra , unexpected responsibility . One of the guest , Evans announce clamorously as he emerged from the kitchen with a turgid muffin , was there celebrating her 93rd birthday . After conduce the packed diner in singing “ Happy Birthday , ” Evans stood up on the nearest unoccupied kiosk to snap a radical photo of the woman and her menage — a gather of about two dozen people symbolise three multiplication of Bob ’s Diner customers .
“ She plausibly comes into the diner maybe every three or four weeks and her grandkids and neat - grandkids have breakfast with her , ” Evans says . “ We actually celebrated a adult female ’s 98th natal day here a couple week before . She goes to the diner every Sunday after church at St. John ’s and fundraises . That madam has been coming here forever . ”
It ’s not just older genesis who constellate to Bob ’s . The dining car has maintained a cross - generational appeal , thanks in part to the dining compartment ’s propinquity to multiple colleges and universities . Evans says that the custom of going to Bob ’s is often passed on by upperclassmen , who inform freshmen that the diner is “ the place to be ” for breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays . “ We have a good deal of new people who derive in here , ” Evans says . “ That just tell me that it ’ll be a continuing institution . ” That sort of word - of - mouthpiece tradition is on the nose why Evans took over , too . He be intimate sit down there at breakfast and overhearing people say “ meet me at Bob ’s ” over the phone . It was never Bob ’s Diner . Or the diner on Ridge Avenue . Just Bob ’s .
Running the joint has n’t always been easy . Covid force Bob ’s to close down its indoor dining service in favor of a take-away - only operation , and eggs do n’t travel well . Four old age after the pandemic , the job continues to endure the rising costs of food for thought , labor , and hangout to the dining compartment ’s aging construction . As much as Evans say he still make out running the dining compartment , the allurement of retirement is get harder to push aside . “ I do n’t desire to see it go under , ” he says . “ But I ca n’t see myself doing it for another 20 eld , either . ”
Meanwhile , real acres developers keep calling . Evans say he has heard from “ eight or nine ” developer who have expressed interest in buying the property in the past year alone . Evan is n’t sure he gets why . The property itself is only about a fourth of an acre and is surrounded by a massive ocean of gravestones . Oh , and Evans says he ’s understand ghost in the diner ’s basement . But rather than be discourage by the spookiness , one of the developers even suggested the now - voguish idea of leveling Bob ’s to build a new apartment building and then revive a zombi version of the restaurant indoors . It ’s an idea Evans is n’t sure he can stomach .
“ It might sound stupid but I ca n’t wake up up in the dawning and look in the mirror and say , ‘ I ’m the guy wire that bulldozed Bob ’s Diner after 78 year , ” he admits . “ I ’m hop that it ’s gon na remain . ”
