Roadside Attraction: Empire Diner in NYC, New Year's Eve, 1980

It's New Year's Eve in New York City in 1980, and you haven't been here in half a dozen years. The last time you were here there was still a war in Viet Nam.  There was, of course, a presidential election last month, but Ronald Reagan won't be sworn in for another 3 weeks. There are a few people in the crowds milling around Times Square with cameras similar to the Leica you carry, but nobody is talking on a phone, and nobody has yet thought of taking a picture with one.  It's cold and rainy.  The last time you took a cab ride your New Yorker friends said you got ripped off, but that's not your reason for walking. You want to mingle with the crowds and have an experience. You have several.  Somehow, you and your architect friend Mike wind up at a party that is a compressed version of the United Nations, given by some people who work there.  It's crowded and noisy and you're glad you can tell anyone who asks that you're an architect because people think they know what architects do, while the work assignments of data systems analysts, for example, are a deep mystery, at least to you. You plunge back into the crowds down on the streets and keep walking and taking pictures. Eventually the crowds thin, and you find yourself at a corner in front of the Empire Diner on 10th Avenue.  You've heard about it but never seen it.  The street empties and you're suddenly alone with it.  It's a refugee from one of your favorite periods in design, that Streamline Moderne period that brought bright metal surfaces and aerodynamic curves to buildings, cars and household objects like radios and refrigerators, an optimistic visual style you associate with the New York World's Fair of 1939 and 1940*...

The Empire Diner was built by Fodero Dining Car Company in 1946, thrived throughout the Fifties and later was vacant for an unspecified while. It was renovated in 1976 and became part of the Chelsea Renaissance which saw galleries, hotels and upscale eateries move into a neighborhood up until then full of repair shops, cleaning establishments and gas stations. A stainless steel replica of the Empire State Building was added in that 1976 renovation. 

The Empire was the subject of a painting by John Baeder, who brought attention to the American diner as a building type just as it was disappearing from our cityscapes. It became a trendy hangout for artists and actors for awhile, and was identified with the revival of this part of the city after a period of neglect, a period associated with graffiti and crime, but also with artistic and literary ferment. It was featured in movies, some memorable, and eventually a Tom Waits album cover.

The Empire has gone in and out of style since that first renovation, and has gone through several ownerships as well.  Its interior and menu were restyled in recent years, and now it waits on its temporarily-empty corner to serve up optimism when the crowds return again, in the post-contagion time when people gather in cities, and mingle in restaurants, to argue about their different visions of a better future...

*Footnotes:

This escapist fare is provided as a distraction for those wisely sheltering in place during the current pandemic.  Organizations providing aid to those in need during the crisis, in New York and around the USA, include the following:

Center for Disaster Philanthropy (disasterphilanthropy.org)

CDC Foundation. (cdcfoundation.org)

Feeding America. (feedingamerica.org)

Meals on Wheels. (mealsonwheelsamerica.org)

For international medical aid during the crisis, there's Médecins Sans Frontieres:

www.msf.org

"Shadows Over Tomorrowland", in these blog archives for July 17, 2016, recounts a story from the 1940 New York World's Fair.

Photo credits:
Photos are by the author.