Opened in 1948 and located at 515 Park Street in Clearwater, Florida, the Owl Diner was one of the distinctive, trendy prefabricated diners built in New Jersey by the Jerry O’Mahony Diner Company. Diners are pure Americana and have their own unique history within the restaurant ecosystem, so to understand the Owl Diner you’d have to first understand diners in general.
The origin of the traditional American diner can be traced back to Walter Scott, a part-time printer who, in 1872, decided to supplement his income by selling food out of a horse-pulled wagon to employees of the Providence Journal, a newspaper out of Providence, Rhode Island. Scott is often credited with the first “diner” given the lack of a traditional building, serving customers at late hours (which would become a distinctive diner characteristic) and due to the fact that his wagon had windows. He was so successful with this wagon sales method that he eventually went into the food business full time.
And he wasn’t the only one, as other wagons soon followed always becoming more ornate & decorative as well as featuring greater seating capacities. And in the spirit of the Owl Diner, these pioneering late-night wagons were affectionately called night owls!
As the evolution continued, some entrepreneurs began using decommissioned railroad cars and trolleys as their diners, but it was the wagon manufacturers that truly sparked the diner’s next stage of growth. They started using their manufacturing resources to create prefabricated buildings, which were easy to set up & establish using pre-assembled parts. This formalized “business in a box” approach was very popular with entrepreneurs, and this leads us back to Jerry O’Mahoney. He and his brother Daniel built on Walter Scott’s idea and in 1912 constructed and sold their first lunch wagon to a restaurant entrepreneur for $800 in Hudson County, New Jersey. This wagon initiated a diner revolution in New Jersey that eventually spread throughout the East Coast and Midwest. It’s estimated that over 2,000 of these diners were built between 1917 and 1952. Naturally, the quality and style of the diners continued to improve and evolve and soon the wagons began to more resemble modern stainless steel rail cars.
O’Mahony’s diners (as well as those of others) eventually adopted Streamline Moderne architecture, a style emphasizing sleek lines and aerodynamic forms which, over time, would become the distinctive representation of an American diner. Florida is especially well known for this style of architecture anyway, so the Owl Diner’s look would have fit in extremely well.
By the 1950s, diners were booming. Customers loved them because they were inexpensive, informal, often featured quality food (with a large menu) and were open late or always. Entrepreneurs loved them because they could purchase these stainless-steel constructions, have them delivered and practically open up instant restaurants! Like modern trailer homes, these diners came with built in air conditioning & heating and could be connected to electricity & gas on site. These businesses were demonstratively easy to open, but if many others were doing the same thing, then how would one stand out from the crowd of other diners? That’s where memorable names and mascots come in and the Owl Diner is certainly epic in both regards!
First, who could say ‘no’ to a smiling owl dressed in a tuxedo who wants to serve you soup?
And given that the diner was advertised as being open 24 hours a day, the slogan, “The Owl Never Sleeps,” is definitely some fun-loving, coffee-selling marketing brilliance! The winking owl is featured on both the matchbook and the exterior sign outside of the diner (it must have lit up!). As much as I loved this owl, I especially loved the cartoon-like illustration of the owl waiter, which was taken off of the menu and ultimately the design I used for the Owl Diner shirt.
Walking into the Owl Diner in 1948
you’d see a very typical diner set up and you can actually take a look back in time with the one interior Owl Diner photo that I was able to find. You have a beautiful, curved countertop facing the kitchen and pastry case along with the floor mounted orange leather seats. This area was for the solo or small party customers who were coming in for a quick bite or cup of coffee. For the families or larger parties, you had the booths, which lined up along the perimeter windows. This is your classic American diner! Simple and cookie cutter, but also welcoming and familiar.
I’m imagining that the Owl Diner must have had a little sand on its floors and served its share of sun burned people. I’ve been to different parts of Florida, but never Clearwater. Looking at a map, the Owl Diner was only one mile away from the original Memorial Causeway Bridge (built in 1920), which connected downtown Clearwater to Clearwater Beach. The beach itself was only three miles away from the diner and featured (and still features) resorts, shopping, jet skiing, fishing, and dolphin viewings. During the 1950s (the Owl Diner’s heyday), the bridge was replaced by a six-lane bascule bridge which meant that even more people could come and go for some local fun in the sun.
There are still remnant items of the Owl Diner that can tell us who they were (in their own words). First is a vintage postcard which describes the diner as, “A modern, clean & ideal restaurant serving the best in food. Fine service. Daily lunches. Dinners. Suppers. A la Carte. Albert H. Martin Jr., Manager.” Oh, and from what I found, Albert H. Martin Sr. was the owner, so it looks as if he was keeping it in the family by having his son manage the joint.
Continuing, this is the restaurant’s messaging at the back of the menu: “There is an aggregate of more than 150 years here, in the preparation and serving of food. We have learned how to do quantity entertaining and have fun doing it, and are looking forward to your visit whenever you care to come.” I thought that this was a very unique and specific statement to make. I waited on tables at my father’s restaurant through high school and college. You learn that restaurants have different aspects that must work well in order to be successful. For example, you can have great food, but if your wait staff isn’t capable or you over burden them then the customer experience suffers. To me “quantity entertaining” means that the Owl Diner must have regularly been a packed place, but that their staff (front and back of the house) was capable of handling it and customers were kept happy.
So, if the Owl Diner could serve food well, then, naturally, the next question to ask is, how was the food? Hey, just going off the menu it looks incredible! If I end up in Clearwater 1948 for some reason (Florida Marty McFly style), then I’m definitely ordering the Owl’s #4 special which is a broiled filet mignon with “bacon curl long branch Idaho potatoes” for the sensible price of $1.50. It looks like this diner doesn’t serve alcohol, so I’d order the iced tea for $0.10 and hopefully they offer free refills since it’s most likely hot and humid outside (although I don’t think they offered free refills in those days).
Looking at the desert options, I honestly didn’t know what a “cruller” was so I’d order that just to surprise myself. For $0.05 I suppose I could take that risk! That’s part of the fun of going through these old menus, you often encounter words that are in lesser or even no longer in common usage anymore. I discovered that a cruller is a European twisty looking donut. Did anyone else know this? I’m not much of a donut guy (donuts are way too sweet), but when I do indulge, I usually just point at what I want through the glass window case!
Alas, donuts or not, tastes change. In the decades after the 1950s, the diner business began a slow but steady journey into eventual splumpage. The Northeast market (where O’Mahoney was based) was saturated and in the Midwest customers gravitated towards drive-ins and the upstart fast-food restaurants. Diners never fully expanded into the West Coast in the way that they did on the East Coast or Midwest, but, regardless, fast-food chains like McDonald’s began aggressively growing and taking up choice locations, a trend that, ultimately, went nation-wide and never stopped.
Under assault, diners responded in different ways during the 1960s and 70s. Some opted for bigger structures, more akin to formal restaurants in existing buildings. Examples of this would be restaurants like Denny’s which have characteristics of a diner but are more restaurant-like. Other places became like fast-food/diner hybrids, similar to, say, a Johnny Rocket’s. Either way the days of the factory-built diner were numbered both because of the growth of fast-food chains and because, rightly or wrongly, city municipalities objected to the “truck stop” stereotype that was eventually associated with them. I somewhat
understand this point as the scene in Superman 2 in which Superman/Clark Kent takes a beating at the hands of a bully truck driver in a diner truly traumatized me as a kid.
The final nail in the coffin was the reality of the increasing value of the land in these growing cities. In researching for this blog, time after time I would read articles of classic diners closing for good because the hosting land was sold for redevelopment.
I wasn’t able to find the year in which the Owl Diner closed, but it’s fate was a typical one. Ironically, the Owl Diner advertised that it featured free parking and, in the end, that’s what it was turned into. A parking lot.
There doesn’t seem to be a formal listing anywhere of the prefabricated diners that remain in the United States, but according to Wikipedia there are “around 20” left. That’s less than even one per state, so if you still have one of these historical eateries in your neighborhood give them a visit!
Special thanks to Spencer Stewert for the wonderful photos from his collection.
If you know more about this long-lost diner or simply enjoyed reading this, definitely let me know on social media! I’d love to hear from you.
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