Eastern Shore – Delaware and Maryland

These pics were sent to me by my friend, Susan Hormuth from a trip she took on the Eastern Shore in April of 1980. I’ll get text up later today.

Tom’s Diner. Route 50?- Easton, MD. Here are some more pictures, taken by Larry Cultrera, of Tom’s, taken about a year after these. Larry’s pictures are the only reference I can find to this one. I assume it must have closed a while ago for that to be the case.
I’ve tried locating the site by looking for the radio towers shown in the background. Rt 50 splits- 50 goes to the East of Easton, 322 (the Easton Parkway) goes to the west. The WEMD radio towers off the Easton parkway seem to look about the same, but the area has grown- all suburban houses and big box stores. If this is the right area, there’s no trace.
Photobucket

How about that groovy plastic sign over the vestibule? And the freestanding neon’s pretty spectacular.
Green flexglas, stacked roof. Double-wide with factory kitchen and dining room.
Photobucket

We think this Mountain View was somewhere between Salisbury and Assateague Island. The newspaper box is for a Delaware newspaper, but that would fit that location.
Photobucket

Diner in Bridgeville, DE. It’s still there and looks to be in about the same shape as it was then. Here’s a picture taken two days ago by Randy Garbin. Here’s a post, with interior pictures, from when it was still operating back in 2005. It’s currently for sale. Call 302-628-8467.
Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket
English’s Diner- Salisbury, Maryland
Here’s a shot of what it looked like when it closed.

I’m not positive which diner these interior shots go with. Anyone recognize it? Want to hazard a guess based on manufacturer and size?
Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Rex Cole Inc.

Built in 1929. Designed by architects Hood and Fouilhoux. Located at 2392 Grand Concourse, the Bronx, NY.
Photobucket
This one’s still there and still recognizable.
Photobucket
Photobucket

Bult in 1931. Designed by architects Hood and Fouilhoux. Located at 137-155 Northern Boulevard, Flushing, Queens, NY. By 1940, the monitor top had been removed from the building.
Photobucket

I’m not 100% sure about this one, but the address matches, as does a description on the building in its post-Rex Cole days. Despite the houses visible in the background having been demolished, the block behind matches the style of what’s visible.

Photobucket

Built in 1932. Designed by architects Hood and Fouilhoux. Located at 6528-6530 Fourth Ave, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Photobucket

Photobucket

Barely recognizable these days, but still there.
Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

More info.

Childs Restaurant and Bar- New York, NY

This restaurant, built in 1938 by Sweet and Shaw was located at 7th Ave and W. 49th St. I can’t find much information on Sweet & Shaw, other than a reference in a 1939 magazine currently on ebay, called “Pencil Points- modern restaurant design”.
Another location was also designed by Sweet and Shaw located at 1485 Broadway, near 42nd st.

“After passing a red and gold bar with a horizontally curved surface, on entered a red, black and gold dining room in which one side and one end of the room were “striving for a greater repose and quietness of of effect, to compensate for the garish liveliness elsewhere”. – Hamlin, “Some Restaurants and Recent Shops”: 485

Photobucket

Some more information on Childs

Town House Motor Hotel, New Orleans, LA.

Highways 51 and 61. A googlemap search looks like it’s not there any more.
Photobucket
Another View
And Another View

From postcard no. 1
Eighty-eight air conditioned rooms, steam heat, tile baths, room telephones, Simmons beauty-rest mattresses, kitchenette apartments, living room suites, coffee shop and complete hotel service. AAA approved

From postcard no. 2
9419 (Tulane) Airline Highway U.S. Highways 51, 60, and 65 New Orleans, Louisiana Eighty-eight air conditioned rooms, suites, and kitchenettes; steam heat, tiled baths, room telephones, Simmons Beautyrest mattresses; coffee shop; bus tours; complete hotel service. AAA, Duncan Hines, and Louisiana Hotel Association approval

Harold’s Restaurant – Mercer Island- Seattle, Washington

1954-

Featuring innovations in dining not formerly available in Seattle and catering to the carriage and expense account trade, this restaurant also shrewdly eyes nearby Sunset highway and provides a coffee shop for the faster moving tourist potential. The two part plan extends out into the parking area, likewise dual. The highway trade has proved profitable enough that the retail pastry counter shown in the plan has recently been converted into more coffee shop seating space.

Architecturally, the design follows the Northwest tradition, using materials and methods indigenous to the region. The regularly spaced beams are stained very dark with ceilings and walls of natural boards- cedar or fir. Certain interior walls are brick.
Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Frank Lloyd Wright designed Motor Hotel

Another gem from an early 1960s book on the design of restaurants, bars and motels, this time from architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Not many mentions of this project on the internet, and I can’t find any other pictures. The only additional information I was able to find is that it was designed for Bramlett Enterprises- Memphis, TN – in 1956.

Although designed as a stopover for motorists who have temporarily tired of the open road, this conception has none of the characteristics of motels anywhere. It seems destined to remain a project if only because it is so luxurious in some respects, so severe in others. The scheme is built around three separate elevator groups of three elevators each. A single cluster of elevators serves seven floors in addition to a terrace restaurant under the roof of each unit. the restaurant is interconnected by the bridges shown in the perspective. One elevator functions for two rooms per floor giving a grand total of fourteen rooms per elevator. The rooms attained by means of this generous outlay of mechanical equipment are small.

This building shares a principle in common with Wright’s other towers, the “interior” system of structure in which the floors are cantilevered from a steel and lightweight concrete core, tripod shaped for stability.
Photobucket

Photobucket