Town Diner
- Year
- 1947
- Style
- Art Deco
- City
- Boston, MA
The Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown was built in 1947 by George Contos and his father around their earlier Worcester Lunch Car Company diner, which they kept on as the new building's kitchen. Rather than being prefabricated and shipped whole, as most diners of the era were, this one was assembled on site — a rarer way of building a classic American diner.
the building
Two manufacturers in one. The diner's two-tone porcelain siding and round glass-block corners combine architectural features borrowed from two different diner manufacturers, the Worcester Lunch Car Company and the Paramount Diner Company, fused into a single building rather than shipped as one prefabricated unit.
the style
Built in the Art Deco idiom common to the golden age of the American diner, the Town Diner's porcelain siding and glass-block corners are the style's signature details, applied here to a diner built rather than delivered fully formed.
More on Art Decosignificance
The diner was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 under the name 'Town Diner.' New owners in 2000 reinstalled its original counter and booths and stripped later paneling to restore the original walls, and the diner appeared in a 2011 Blue Man Group music video.
nearby
- Coolidge School
- Old Watertown High School
- Anna Day House
- Mount Auburn Cemetery Reception House
- The Larches
- First Baptist Church