Main Diner – Westfield, NY

The main diner is an old one, a mid ’20s model, very small, more a stationary lunch wagon than anything else. Inside, the wheelwells are still visible. It’s all stools inside the diner, but seating has been supplemented with an addition, at an angle to the diner, off to the right. There’s a great neon sign out front.
This 1926 Ward and Dickinson located at 40 E. Main St.
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And then there’s this building, also in Westfield, NY. It’s very reminiscent of a small lunch wagon, both in size, and in the barrel roof. Closson was based out of Westfield from 1912-1917, but it doesn’t have the monitor roof that they did. Whatever it is, it’s an interesting building.
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3 thoughts on “Main Diner – Westfield, NY

  1. Pingback: Kuppy’s Diner – Middletown, PA « Diner Hunter

  2. The “interesting building” at 15 North Portage, Westfield NY, was for a number of years in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s the site of The Fair Store run by Delbert Lawson… it was a sort of antiques/junque store… Delbert collected and played the hurdy-gurdy.
    As Westfield Historian, I’ve been attempting to determine the source of the odd building, and when it appeared on that lot. Prior to it being destroyed by fire in 1931, the previous building was a Tin Shop, and to the left, at 17 North Portage, was Luigi DiFrancesco’s grocery and pool hall… 15 and 17 were wood-structure houses that were simulated to be a combined storefront with a facade and straight roofline covering the peaked roofs behind. Luigi rebuilt immediately the brick building that you see in the photo above. But as of 1936, when Brooker’s Market was at 13 North Portage, we have a photo showing that the lot at 15 North Portage was still vacant.
    It appears that during and immediately after World War II, Quonset Huts were sold to farmers and others in this area as inexpensive, and quickly assembled bars and buildings… The Westfield Republican Newspaper had advertisments for these Quonset Huts, and the pictures in the ads are essentially identical to the structure at 15 North Portage. Sometime in the mid 1940s is when Delbert Lawson opened the Fair Store in the Quonset structure. I’m still researching Westfield Republicans to determine the date when the structure was placed there, but it definitely is NOT a diner structure, sorry to say. I’ve discussed the structure at length with its present owner, and he verifies this point.

  3. sorry, there is a typo in the comment I just wrote… at the end of the second line of the last paragraph, “bars” should be “barns”…
    Marybelle

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