Watertown & Ogdensburg, NY

Alvin Jerge bought Ward & Dickinson Car #69 and it was shipped
7/7/1926 - This information was in the Ward & Dickinson ledger for diners #1-100

As you read at the bottom of this page, a few things seem a little weird. The diner did not come from East Aurora and the black marble counter does not ft in well with a Ward & Dickinson. Also, a similar restaurant for 3 years would not have been a Ward & Dickinson, so it must be
the J.J. Sharpe built diner that was in East Aurora.

The ledger also says the diner was worth $6500, not $8000.

A few more significant pieces of information. Jerge bought another Ward & Dickinson Diner, and that location had a restaurant until 1988. no clue if the diner stayed that long, but by the 1960s, the location became known as a restaurant and not a diner. The "new" diner was #51, which spent a year in Cleveland, as part of a failed chain.
Jerge sold diner #69 to an Ogdensburg party, Louis Bakery(Baking) who called the diner the Crescent Diner. Louis was assisted by Miss Mary Wert and Hoyt Mitchell.

Bakery was in the news in the following year with plans to go to Silver Creek to buy a new diner if he could get a lease on new land. As the diner never materialized, it is believed that the news was premature.

Lastly, back in Watertown, the location where Jerge had this diner originally, would see another Ward & Dickinson known as the S&B Diner. This was run by Lloyd W. Blanding & Clark L. Sherman from appx 1935 to 1962, and would only last 4 more years before being demolished for urban renewal. Lloyd came from Salamanca where he ran another diner, probably a Richardson, since 1924.

July 15, 1926 - Watertown, NY

PULLMAN DINER TO BE
OPENED AS RESTAURANT


A Pullman diner will be Installed
as a restaurant at 231 Court street
Saturday. It was announced today by
Alvin J. Jerge. proprietor of the car.
The diner arrived here this morning
from East Aurora. coming to this city
by rail.
The restaurant will be equipped
with the latest fixtures and will have
a black marble counter for service.
The car is equipped with an electric
refrigerator and other modern equipment
The value of the car is estimated
at $8,000. A similar restaurant
has been successfully operated
in East Aurora for the past 3 years.

Pearl River, NY 1958

November History

Way too busy with everything else.

Some small tidbits. The Cities Service Diner that spent a year in Dansville, NY around 1939, was moved to Geneseo and the paper reports that it was an old trolley car. It looks like a Richardson dining car came to Warsaw in 1924. Hopefully I can get a better grasp on the history of this diner. Good year for locating former Richardsons as I have located three of them.
A blurb from a DeRuyter newspaper dated 11/12/1903 "Howard and Gross Swan of Linckalen own a lunch car in Cortland and recently had receipts of $100. Howard has half interest in a lunch car in Dunkirk." Also 9/27/1934 " Gold Dome Diner on Erie Blvd West and Thompson in Syracuse, burned down and was destroyed. The diner was valued at $7,500"

Ward & Dickinson News - All I could find on the Modern Diner in Wellsville coming to town is that the diner came from Le Roy in 1933, and there was just a grand opening advertisement. No article, not even a blurb announcing any information.
The W&D in Butler, PA seems to have been called the Blue Ribbon Diner. About 98% confident on this one, as two diners/lunch wagons popped up in the city directory during the time period the ledger places the diner at. The original owner(who bought the diner) was never listed as owning the diner in the it directory, and his address disappeared in the following year, and he disappeared at the same time.

Diners of the Capital Distrcit

No history this month except for one bit of info I just recently learned. We will save that for last.

"Diners of the Capital District" should be out and for sale within a month of this writing, if all goes well. It has been completely written, and just needs a very small bit of editing and writing. The book will take a more in depth look at all of the diners in the Capital Region and will include a trip down the Taconic Parkway and along the New York/Vermont/Massachusetts/Connecticut border.
For the Capital Region, I have extended over to Gloversville to include the trio of diners in the Central Leatherstocking region. for the most part, I did not go south into Columbia and Greene County, except for the Taconic Parkway and a mention of the diner in Hudson.
The diner will also include a bit of history. There is a lot I do not know about many Capital District diners, so I tried to mention them all in hopes someone out there has more information.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy, send me a message, and I will have another post when the book does officially come out.

now for a quick hit of history. I recently found out that the O'Mahony(c.a. 1939) down in Columbus, Georgia was the former diner at the current location of the Farmer Boy Diner in Colonie. It spent a few years in between Amsterdam and Scotia until it was sold and moved to Georgia. Unfortunately, the diner is now the office of a used car dealership.

Dansville

There were at least tow diners in Dansville. There may have been a third, Cities Service Diner, that was there for less than a year, but that can not be verified.

One of the diners in Dansville was built by Richardson. This diner became known as Mike's Diner, moving just once to make way for a Post Office. In a photograph that included the diner, it looks like someone put two Richardson diners perpendicular, or built the addition to mimic the original diner, just set perpendicular. I really can not tell which one is the original diner, it's that good at the distance the photograph is from.

The other diner was opened by Mr. Arthur Nelson of Gowanda around 1927. Arthur Nelson was running a home made diner in Gowanda from 1921, that was built by his father-in-law Peter Schneider. Sometime around 1927/1928??? that diner was replaced by a Liberty dining car(Charles Ward of Ward & Dickinson fame went off on his own) So maybe this Dansville diner was the original Schneider built diner? I won't know until I see a photograph.

July's Post

Staying with the western most Finger Lakes region, I was considering either Dansville or Le Roy for my focus. To tie in to last month's post, I will go with more Le Roy info.
When newspapers mention diners, or "lunch cars" out in the middle of nowhere, and don't go in depth, it has you wondering if they are authentic diners or not. You know there had to be a few diners out at isolated country locations, sometimes near a gas station and sometimes not. So many "diner" names need not be mentioned because there is absolutely no evidence to them being authentic diners.
One of these that has me go back and forth is this May 1940 blurb, "Ralph Zingaro will soon have his new lunch car at Buck Run Gully ready for business." Every other mention of this business calls it a diner. With this diner, it is going to take a photograph to tell whether or not this is an authentic diner or not.
Mr. Bertha Stoner got mentioned in both the Dansville Breeze and the Caledonia Advertiser with her "Grove Diner" The diner was located on the highway to Batavia at a truck stop, tourist camp, cabis, showers and a bunkhouse for truck drivers, and was a honest to goodness Rochester Grills! Later the diner became known as the Bertha Stoner Diner "At the Grove."
The last advertisement I have found for this diner is 1938. Who knows how long it lasted, but one would have to imagine that the Interstate in the 1950s was probably the beginning of the end, if it was still around.
With a postcard shown to me by Art Goody, this makes two Rochester Grills I have been able to identify this past year. Art Goody, postcard collector, showed me a postcard of Lane's Diner in Rochester, NY.

addendum to June's post

Estelle Howard's diner at the Junction of Rt 36 and US Rt 20 was known as the Trolley Diner by 1956. Mr. & Mrs. Robert Nelson purchased the diner from Mr. & Mrs. Dell Nichols in December of 1953. The Trolley Diner was for sale in 1965 also.