Empire Diner

 restaurant, diner, Streamline Moderne (architecture), interesting place, Art Deco (architecture), movie / film / TV location, 1929_construction

Classic 1-story Art-Deco diner completed in 1929 by the Fodero Dining Car Company. The exterior is done in shiny aluminum with panels and strips enamelled in white and black. Below the large plate glass windows, the facade consists of horizontal panels of white enamelled metal with a band of black at the top. It became the Empire Diner in 1943.

The aluminum diner is typical of its era both in design and function. Diners had only recently evolved from the earlier lunch-wagons. The originals of these were actually long, narrow horse-drawn wagons which had a counter and a few stools and made regular stops at certain street corners and other appointed places, to sell sandwiches and coffee. Next came a time when old trolley and railway cars, transferred to permanent foundations, became lunchrooms. The final evolution was the diner. These shiny aluminum structures, often with fine Art-Deco detailing were the last word -- modern, up-to-date, and stylish. They brought eating-out to the middle classes, for the earlier lunch-wagons and lunchrooms had catered chiefly to working men. It is interesting to note that while being "modern," they bore great resemblance to the fancy aluminum coaches of the crack passenger trains of the time. These diners were responsible for a unique type of construction business which flourished for a quarter of a century. A few specialized plants across the country manufactured the component parts for the diners which were then transported to the site and assembled on the spot thus making them a form of prefabricated building. This structure is a well-preserved example of a 1930s Art-Deco "streamlined" diner.

The exterior is done in shiny aluminum with panels and strips enameled in white and black. Below the large plate glass windows, the facade consists of horizontal panels of white enameled metal with a band of black at the top. At the bottom, a wide aluminum water-table strip is above a foundation of oversize yellow bricks in soldier course. Above the window a very wide aluminum fascia with narrow horizontal stripes of aluminum, black, and white stretches the full length of the diner, extending around the corner onto the 22nd Street side.

Exterior alterations were made in 1976 to a design by Carl Laanes. In 1997, it was featured in the movie "Men In Black". The interior was recently restored by Groundswell Design Group. The interior was used in 2021 for S1E9 of the HBO original series "Sex and the City/And Just Like That" where Che Diaz and Miranda Hobbes go for a meal.

empire-diner.com/
6tocelebrate.org/site/empire-diner/
75c7f110-2790-473f-8908-ceeaf7e3e6dc.filesusr.com/ugd/9...
www.groundswelldesigngroup.com/portfolio/empire-diner/
untappedcities.com/2016/09/14/nycs-iconic-empire-diner-...