Some History of the Diner, All-American Icon
by GailWordz (my mom)
Did you know there is a diner museum? It is in Providence, Rhode Island, where diners got their start, and it is at Johnson & Wales University. The exhibition is called The Culinary Archives and Museum.
Guest curator Richard J. S. Gutman, a Massachusetts architect, along with his wife Kellie O. Gutman, put together a collection of images and artifacts called “Diners: Still Cookin' in the 21st Century.” In the process they tried out most of the major diners and saved some from demolition. Gutman has spent decades talking about diners, eating in them, and becoming the “important architectural historian of the diner.” His family's own kitchen in Boston is designed diner-style, with an authentic marble countertop, three stools and a menu board all salvaged from a 1940s Michigan diner, along with a 1930s neon “LUNCH” sign purchased from a local antique store.
Most historians credit the origin of the diner to Walter Scott, a young man who worked in the newspaper business in Providence. When he was only about 17 years old, noticing the need for food service for night workers he began to supplement his income by selling sandwiches and coffee from a basket to newspapermen and patrons of men's club rooms. By 1872 this business was so lucrative that he quit his printing work and began to sell food at night from a horse-drawn covered wagon parked outside the Providence Journal newspaper office.
Night lunch wagons began to appear in many New England towns and cities during the late 1800's, becoming a lucrative business. The stereotype diner waitress was not in this picture. At that time the customers were rather rough, mostly male night workers; therefore, women were not welcome.
About that time, streetcars powered by electricity were replacing obsolete horse drawn streetcars. Many of the displaced cars were purchased and converted into food venues for a fraction of the cost of a new dining car. Operating on meager budgets, most owners were more concerned with making a living than maintaining their car. Dining cars took on the reputation of the "greasy spoon" and gathering places for the unsavory elements of the community.
In order to increase business, particularly from women, diner owners cleaned up their image, offering booth service and repainting their diners. Many dining car owners included the word "Miss" in their names to help feminize and soften their image. Folks soon started referring to them as “lunch cars,” which then became the more genteel-sounding “dining cars,” which was then, around 1924, shortened to “diner.”
Soon, improved lunch wagons were being manufactured, allowing customers to stand inside or sit on stools at counters, and they became very popular.
A true diner is traditionally factory-built and transported to its location, rather than constructed on-site. The first stationary lunch car was built about 1913 by one of the first of a dozen factories in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts that manufactured and shipped all the diners in the United States. At their peak in the 1950s, there were 6,000 across the country, as far-flung as Lakewood, Colorado and San Diego, though the highest concentration remained in the Northeast. Today, there are only about 2,000, with New Jersey holding the title for most “diner-supplied” state.
Diners are still rolling on, delivering good food to a hungry nation. And that is something that will never go out of style.
