Here’s a regular old Wendy’s in Paramus, New Jersey:
Here, on U.S. 22 in Union, New Jersey, is a Jollibee (a Filipino fast-food chain), in the space of a former Boston Market:
And here’s a curious Pizza Hut in South Plainfield, New Jersey:
Well, as you can probably guess from the fact that I’m writing about them here, none of these were constructed by or for the current establishment.
In the same order, let’s take a look at the aerial views. Wendy’s:
Jollibee:
And Pizza Hut:
These are all originally Gino’s fast food restaurants, a fast food chain from 1957, which grew rapidly in the 1970s and went out of business in the 1982. In the mid-Atlantic they held the license for KFC chicken, and sold it in their stores before KFC operated in that territory.
That long peaked roof, originally red, was the Gino’s signature brand-centric building element. Quite a lot seem to have survived, most now wrapped or quasi-rebuilt, and some with the signature roofs removed, making it impossible to determine their origin by sight alone. Some, like the current IHOP I featured a few weeks ago, have been expanded, making the original fast food building just half of the current building.
The Pizza Hut looks a bit like that; however, 1979 aerial imagery from NETR Historic Aerials—before the original Gino’s was even finished getting built—shows the building as a double-wide style. Here, the peaked roof half is the unfinished half:
A 1981 newspaper ad confirms it was originally a Gino’s. By early 1984, it had been converted to a “Horn’s Family Restaurant” or maybe a “Horn’s Home Style Burgers.”
Two of those addresses currently show buildings which are obviously Gino’s structures. There is absolutely nothing on Google for either “Horn’s Family Restaurants” or “Horn’s Home Style Burgers.” My guess is this was either a fizzled Gino’s concept or a breakaway franchise group which quickly failed.
In any case, by late 1986, the address was Central Jersey’s newest Pizza Hut:
The roof looks like it was reshaped to look a bit like a “real” Pizza Hut roof, but it still has the telltale Gino’s length and shape. (It measures almost identically to the known former Gino’s structure which is now that IHOP.)
So that’s fun. It’s kind of like a game of architectural hide and seek. It’s also a little ride through America’s open-air architectural public domain.
Related Reading:
I’m Really Gino’s Underneath It All
Where was that Pizza Hut in Iselin? It doesn't look like a valid address now. Did they renumber the street? Because there is a restaurant at 1507. Maybe it's just a typo.