A shoe house, UFO houses, Automats, Bonanzas, Ponderosas and IHOPs! | Rolando's Roadside Roundup
We begin today with the reopening of the Haines Shoe House in Pennsylvania as a retro getaway!
Not long ago, I told you that the Haines Shoe House outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had closed as a museum and ice cream shop and was reopening as an Airbnb. Well, this was quick! The work is done and it’s up for rent on Vrbo! (Rental info here!)
From the Haines website:
The Shoe house is 48 feet long, 25 feet high and 17 feet wide. It is approximately 1,500 SF and features 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, a living room, kitchen/ dinette and recreation room.
The shoe house opened in 1949 to promote a chain of shoe stores belonging to Mahlon Haines, and once offered overnight stays, so it’s present use is a return to its roots, or well, its soles?
I’m tempted to do this! If you book a stay, let me know!
Goodbye to an old IHOP!
This used to be “my” IHOP, a legacy location that closed in Jackson Heights, Queens, back in 2018. Then it sat shuttered for years, slowly becoming an eyesore and attracting birds that liked to perch on the edge of the iconic roof, as if taking direction from Alfred Hitchcock.
Whatever hope I held out for adaptive reuse was dashed when the building at 73rd Street and Northern Boulevard was recently demolished. I photographed the “after” shot this afternoon.
I was sad to see it go, and just as sad to see what became of it. I was even SADDER to discover how gorgeous it once looked, as captured in this 1980s NYC tax photo that shows what it was in its prime.
Notes From the Road
The LIRR has brought back its M3 train cars from the 1980s, Nostalgia can sometimes smell funky. [Newsday]
The shuttered Lamplighter Restaurant in North Hollywood was destroyed in a fire. It was once a Van de Kamps Restaurant. [Daily News]
On a related note, at the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati last week, I had the good fortune of seeing a smaller Van de Kamp’s Bakery sign in action. What a thing of beauty!
There’s no coming back from this last call at Judge’s Irish Pub in Milwaukee. [Milwaukee Record]
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is working its retro magic on the New York City streetscape again, bringing back a Horn & Hardart Automat in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. (I promise to try to check this out before it’s dismantled, though I hope it isn’t. I mean, I think a proper H&H could work again. What say you?) [Untapped New York]
Since it’s highly doubtful any of us will get to enjoy this ersatz Horn & Hardart, here are two places where you can check out a relic of the real thing.
In New York, you can spot a Horn & Hardart ghost sign on West 38th Street between Seventh Avenue and Broadway. It’s up on an elevated parking deck and can be seen from the sidewalk, but you can easily take the elevator upstairs and get a closeup look like I did recently.
Although Automats are closely tied with classic 20th century New York, the chain actually began in Philadelphia, and the Neon Museum of Philadelphia has a terrific specimen, below. Sadly, that museum will close in December, so get there as soon as you can. I will have a more extensive writeup on their collection soon.
Whither the stunning Parkette Drive-in sign? Here is an update that will stir some hope. The property owners are saying it will stay in place “forever.” [Kentucky.com]
We’ve lost a Futuro house to a blaze in Frisco, North Carolina. If I ever have a big backyard, I hope to have one of these right in the middle of it! What a perfect hut it would make to do my writing! [News & Observer]
I’ve recently visited two of these UFO houses that survive in southern New Jersey, including the one below in Greenwich. [Map]
And below is the other one, in Willingboro! [Map]
A Bonanza Steakhouse is closing in St. Cloud, Minnesota on Friday. I saw a minty example of a related Ponderosa Steakhouse in Wisconsin Dells (below) in the summer, and was tempted to go in for the full experience except I had a lot of miles to go before I slept that night! [Bring Me The News]
Capt’n Nemo’s, a legendary sub shop in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, has closed. [Block Club Chicago]
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The old Swiss A-frame IHOPs are rapidly becoming an endangered species. Some have become other restaurants but IHOP seems to have little interest in preserving them...and I am sure modern "aesthetic" building codes have made them difficult-to-impossible to build as new construction.