The 'Mad Men' Howard Johnson's: Upstate New York by way of Southern California

On “Mad Men,” this is August 1966 in Plattsburgh, N.Y. …

… but in real life, it’s Baldwin Park, Calif., a city in Los Angeles County!  (Image via the excellent HighwayHost.org.)

It’s almost time to ask for the check on my week of Howard Johnson’s posts on The Retrologist. But first, let’s go back to where we all began, and revisit that wonderful upstate New York HoJo’s that appeared in Sundays’s Mad Men.

As I shared with you earlier, the HoJo’s the Drapers visited is long gone, but upstate New York happens to be home to two of the three remaining HoJo’s restaurants, which are essential road-trip material. [Read my whole series, complete with my rare photos, HERE]

But, dear Mad Men and HoJo’s fans, you can’t truly complete your “Mad Men”-inspired pilgrimage without crossing 2,894 miles – that’s the distance between Plattsburgh, N.Y.  and Baldwin Park, Calif.,  where the exteriors for the episode were actually shot, Zap2It reports.

The top shows the Baldwin Park building digitally restored to its HoJo’s glory, and the photo right beneath presents the building more recently, after its life as a HoJo’s ended and before the Drapers stopped in for Orange Sherbet. As Zap2It explains, a little CGI helped erase the hotel building behind it and turn a strip of Southern California today into upstate New York in August 1966.

See cool vintage photos of the Baldwin Park Hojo’s at HighwayHost HERE. And Zap2It makes an interesting point: The Baldwin Park HoJo’s opened in 1967, the year AFTER the Drapers visited the Plattsburgh restaurant. It remained a HoJo’s until 1995, and lost its signature paint job. The shoot, by the way, occured back in October, as LAist and the Pasadena Star-News reported.

Wonderful LA blog Franklin Avenue reveals another treat: The interiors were shot at Rod’s Diner in Arcadia, just north of Los Angeles. And this is too cool: A commenter on Franklin Avenue actually photographed the “Man Men” crew filming at Rod’s – he didn’t spot Draper but he did see the trooper! (Great pics HERE) 

(photos via Google Maps’ Street View)

Finally, here’s something subtle but significant about the former Hojo’s in Baldwin Park.

Obviously, it retains its awesome space-age frame, and its HoJo’s signature pinnacle. But look at the very top of the pinnacle: The building still has its Howard Johnson’s weathervane, featuring the Pieman, Simple Simon and the pooch.                          

A photo of the weathervane at the still-open Lake George HoJo’s is part of The Retrologist’s current logo, so I was so amazed to see it survive in Baldwin Park, more than 15 years after the building was last a Howard Johnson’s.

Well, that is, until the Drapers arrived.