I made the drive down from Maryland to Midlothian VA today to pick this up.
This neon sign was previously mounted on Richmond White Tower No. 1, which was located at 223 East Grace Street. It was originally built in 1939, and remodeled in 1960, which is probably when this sign was installed. The building is still there. It’s been de-towered, and painted, but it’s still recognizable.
I just got this (probably) 1950s slide of New York City’s Penn Diner. It replaced an older barrel roof model, but the neon transferred. The caption on the slide is in Japanese.
The Forest Diner closed on May 28th, 2012. Here’s a full post on its closing, with pics of its final days. To refresh your memory- here’s the way the diner looked a little less than a month ago. The old Silk City diner was entirely encased in a larger restaurant, with about four feet between the diner’s facade and that of the surrounding building.
In these past couple weeks, the surrounding building has been razed, leaving nothing but the diner itself. Word on the street was conflicting- one person at the site saying that it had already been sold and was going to be moved to Virginia, the other that it had not been sold, but was moving to temporary storage off-site until plans can be made for it. Once I hear back from people who know for sure, I’ll post it on the blog. Either way, the diner is being saved, but removed from Rt. 40.
Haussner’s opened in 1926 and served its last meal in 1999. My matchbook from it advertises its Bavarian Rathskeller and Haussner’s Bavarian Orchestra. The restaurant was famous for its art collection, which sold at auction after the restaurant closed for ten million dollars. As luck would have it, I spent the day a block down from Haussner’s at the Maryland Traditions Folklife Festival, so I took some pictures of the building.
Some info about a recreation of Haussner’s which appeared in Mad Men
This was a later location- post Duncan, and I believe post Wedren.
What it looked like in LT livery.
3515 Eastern Ave Baltimore, MD 21224
This matchbook is from the Baltimore chain of White Coffee Pot restaurants. They operated in the Baltimore area from 1932 through to 1993. At one time, they had 33 locations. They’re all gone now, but at one time, they were all over Baltimore. They’ve come up a fair bit in my Little Tavern research, but I haven’t done any dedicated research into them directly as to their full history or locations.
Another recent addition to the collection- a medium format negative from the 1930s of Hartford CT’s Quaker Diner. It’s still there, and still looks just about the same. 
Some recent additions to my collection. These photos were taken in 1965. There used to be quite a few trolley conversions in the mid atlantic (and elsewhere), but they just didn’t hold up as well as factory built diners. By the time they came into service as diners, most had served a full lifetime of service on the roads, so the condition was obviously not as good as a factory built diner. It took work, money and some jerry-rigging to change them over from transportation to food service. But they could be picked up and converted on the cheap, so they were a good way to get into the business. It seems most owners traded up to a proper factory built diner, or to a on-site construction once they had earned enough money to do so, so the trolleys didn’t survive very well.
Maryland
Maryland
Virginia
Virginia
17 E. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD
306 North Howard Street, Baltimore, MD
11 East North Avenue, Baltimore, MD
Charles and Oliver St., Baltimore, MD. Opposite Penn Station. Owned by George Contis.
Diner Hunter 