Tag Archives: Auburn

Old-Time Diners (and Where to Find Some) — Part 2!

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Over the past three weeks we’ve looked at some quirky, even goofy, forms of American architecture, and where we can drive to see some locally – octagon houses (2/8), Quonset huts and geodesic domes (2/15), and manufactured diners (2/22). This week, we find a few more diners!

As we mentioned last week, anyplace can call itself a diner. But we’re looking here specifically at long, low historic diners, built in a factory and delivered on wheels, and still showing enough of their original construction for us to spot them.

In Rochester you can double-dip for diners, starting with the Skyliner, which is actually an attraction AND an eating place at the Strong National Museum of Play. And why not? If a diner isn’t exactly play, it certainly falls under the category of fun! This is perhaps the largest historic “artifact” in the museum collection, and it was built in 1956 by Fodero, which emphasized modernistic chrome and stainless steel. By the way, it used to be that you could walk in, eat at the diner, and walk out. Nowadays you need to pay museum admission to get a seat.

A few miles away is the Highland Park Diner (960 South Clinton), still on its original 1948 spot but formerly called Dauphin’s Superior Diner. It’s the only survivor of a handful of diners made by the Orleans Company of Albion. Given its location, Highland Park Diner is proud of serving customers “from college students to mature couples.”

Hunter (or Hunter’s) Dinerant in Auburn was closed for a few months last year, but as far as I can tell it’s open again. It’s a 1951 chrome-and-steel diner and it was installed at 18 Genesee Street that same year, on a platform built out over the Owasco River. In addition to traditional diner fare, they’ve recently added the French Canadian poutine (french fries, gravy, and cheese curds).

Back in 1989 Connie Cartolozzo, a chef at Hobart, was having a coffee at Chick’s Diner in Waterloo and decided to make an offer for the place. Before long the 1960s diner hands and became Connie’s Diner. Patrons speak highly of the milkshakes!

Smokin’ Little Diner in DePew is a 1950s chrome-and-steel model, proud of its barbecue sauce. It’s not very big, but it’s DARNED popular.

We mentioned last week that this series is an architecture feature, so we can’t really make recommendations, let alone guarantees, about the food or menus at any given place. Also, of course, the pandemic has wreaked havoc with hours, menus, seating, and ambience. Still, if you’re touring around you might think about getting something “to go,” even if it’s only a cup of coffee (or a milkshake)… or, you could buy a bottle of barbecue sauce. The owners and workers will surely appreciate it.


As we wrap up our diner dive, let’s bare our heads for several local eateries that have passed from the scene. Avoca Diner, as we mentioned last week, fulfilled its destiny by being put on wheels and hauled away to Washington, D.C. The Post Diner in Painted Post was a diner of the spaceship, chrome-and-steel persuasion, plus a substantial expansion. It was ENTIRELY under water in the 1972 flood, and I imagine that that’s why we have it no more.

Randy’s Stanton Diner, on Bridge Street in Corning’s Northside, was in the “railway car” style. It too would have been flooded in 1972, which may be why it’s gone. In either case, the Post and the Stanton are each fondly remembered. Take a drive. Make some of your own memories.

Riding (and Strolling) Routes 5 and 20

A couple of days after Christmas, feeling the need for a getaway, we took an overnight in Geneva, stretching our visit in both directions along Routes 5 and 20.

*Our family has a long history with the long road that has two numbers. In 1939, during the Great Depression, my father-in-law and his cousin drove down 5 and 20, heading from Vermont to Oklahoma, trying without success to find work in the oil fields. At each diner or gas station where they stopped, people were huddled around the radio, listening to news of the German invasion of Poland. It was the first week of the Second World War.

*Little did he know that he would one day have a daughter, and that 53 years after that trip she would be living within sight of 5 and 20, along with her husbnad and their two sons.

*We lived back then in “The Bloomfields,” and as part of our trip we took a drive through Holcomb/East Bloomfield, to find that not much has changed. The green, the church, and the cemetery still welcome visitors. But the Wireless Museum has now moved out to newer facilities on the edge of town, and the historical society is in the old place next to the church.

*One of the reasons we like Canandaigua is because Main Street has a needlework store (Expressions in Needleart) AND a comic book store (Pulp Nouveau). This, we find, is a perfect arrangement for domestic harmony! The Chamber of Commerce has a visitor’s center on Main Street, in case you want directions and information (or a public rest room).

*There’s a new and used bookstore, and the Ontario County Historical Society museum. You can see the lovely courthouse where Susan B. Anthony was tried for daring to vote. (“I will never pay one penny of your unjust fine,” she told the judge, and she didn’t, either.) The business district is busy. There are fine churches, interesting downtown commercial architecture, and a great view of the lake (though in January, you may feel the wind). We had lunch at The Villager, which is where we usually wind up when we’re in Canandaigua, because we like it so much.

*Sonnenberg Mansion and Gardens is closed this time of year, and so is Granger Homestead (historic mansions and carriage collection). But the library is open, with armchairs to sit and read, and rest rooms open to the public. If you have a card in the Pioneer Library System (as I do), you can borrow books.

*In Geneva we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express, and in the mroning explored around the visitors center on the edge of the village, at the foot of Seneca Lake. Even with rain and snow lightly in the air, and wind whipping up whitecaps, we wandered the waterfront (where we once watched a mink dart around, but not that day). Our courage in the face of the weather was as nothing compared to that of the two parasurfers sailing along, zooming across the surface, occasionally losing their progress to sink completely below the waves, then rise again to full height and even higher, lifted high by the hydrofoil.

*The Finger Lakes Welcome Center wasn’t open yet, but we enjoyed the outside, with its benches and playground, and plaques set into the sidewalks recognizing inductees of the Finger Lakes Walk of Fame. Why isn’t Glenn Curtiss there? I must find out how to put in a nomination.

*Waterloo prides itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. We strolled Main Street, enjoying the turn-of-the-century commercial architecture as far as the Presbyterian church and back, then turned down North Virginia Street to see a church that we’d spotted. This led us to the breathtaking 19th-century library, looking for all the world like an English manor house, replete with high stacks and warm lovely woodwork, and worth a visit all by itself.

*The Christmas decorations were still nice, and a hotel had a countdown set up for New Year’s Eve.

*In Seneca Falls the national sites were closed by the government shutdown, but the Christmas windows still brought smiles as we strolled Main Street. Christmas in senecal Falls means celebrating the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” said by some to have been filmed locally (it wasn’t), or to have insored the setting of Bedford Falls (possible.)

*We walked as far as Van Vleet Lake and the stone Gothic Episcopal church, where our friend Brad Benson has recently transferred from Bath to become the rector, then spent some time in the museum and visitors center, and got a good overview of the village’s development, the canal and industrial history, and changes in the watercourse. But I have to confess that I only saw one staff person, and she was just hurrying through to get to the office area.

*We drove past Montezuma National Wildlife refuge (also shut down, we suppose) to the edge of Auburn, where we finally visited Bass Pro Shops… I get numerous e-mails from them every week, but have no idea why. We enjoyed the visit, then turned back to Seneca Falss for pizza. We had headed up to Bloomfield through Prattsburgh and Naples, and now headed hime by way of Geneva, Pre-Emption Road, Bellona, Penn Yan, the East Shore of Keuka Lake, and finally back to Bath.

*Routes 5 and 20 run from Auburn to Avon, following Indian paths. Later the same corridor would carry the Erie Canal, the New York central railroad, and the New York State Thruway. It’s the Route 66 of western New York. We like to drive it. We like to visit.