In last week’s “What Do You Think You’re Looking At?”, I pieced together the history of an old diner on U.S. 22 in North Plainfield, New Jersey. There’s nothing really remarkable about it, and it isn’t even standing anymore, but I thought the progression of the restaurant and its ownership was really interesting and told a story about the evolution of the American roadside and the story of Greek-American diner owners.
The history of this little diner is long and a bit convoluted, so I had to divide it into two parts, and this is part 2. In last week’s piece, I jumped around a little bit with regard to the timeline, but I concluded with a mention of the diner’s construction and initial name, which was Golden Dream Diner.
Searching for “Golden Dream” in the newspapers.com archive, we find that it was planned and began construction in 1965, and owned by “Peter Feli.” From the report at the time, it sounds like the property was just a piece of land, so the diner was likely the first time the property was developed.
Later that year the Golden Dream Diner was hiring, calling itself “the most modern and convenient diner in the area.” 1965 is almost a little late for a diner; quite a lot of them predate that. So while, if this place had survived, it would today be just another diner, it was in fact a newer generation of diner even from its inception.1
It opened in July of 1965—that’s pretty fast. And it had a live lobster tank. I didn’t really know New Jersey diners sold lobster, but again, it looks like the menu and concept here, despite undergoing multiple refreshes and elevations over the decades, was always a bit elevated over typical diner fare. That’s interesting; the newspaper articles oversell how dramatic each conversion/refresh is; every iteration of the diner looks pretty similar.
By September of 1965, Golden Dream has become one of the most modern diners in the whole state! It was a nice looking place.
How did all these diners, so many decades ago, manage to make money as 24-hour operations? I live in a county of over a million people, and we don’t have all that many 24-hour, or even late-night, establishments. What was different back then?2
The latest reference I can find to the Golden Dream Diner is from a 1992 review of the Felix No. 9 Diner, where it is mentioned as one of diner magnate Peter Felix’s previous eight diners. (It seems like there was a lot of overlap in this industry.)
Now that’s interesting. The Golden Dream was owned by “Peter Feli.” Turns out that is a minor newspaper error: “Peter Feli” was Peter Felix, and the Golden Dream was his second of nine diners! Here is a 1967 reference to Felix as the owner of Golden Dream.
The final mention of the Golden Dream Diner as a going concern is from 1980, in a reference to a grass fire in the back of the property.
Now in the first installment of this piece last week, I was able to fully trace this North Plainfield diner’s history from its final iteration in the 2000s back to late 1980, when it was converted to the Renaissance Diner. And now we have its first iteration, Golden Dream, from its construction out to 1980. Thus the entire history is Golden Dream < Renaissance3 < Midnight < Carousel < Time to Eat Too < Fin and Claw. (Those names were all covered in last week’s part 1.)
However, a series of newspaper articles from the 1980s appears to confuse this timeline.
A 1985 article on Peter Felix mentions that the Golden Dream is now the Renaissance; that fits with everything else we know. But then we get this article from 1983:
A North Plainfield diner on Route 22 at one time called the Golden Dream, destroyed by a fire. This definitely happened, because in 1989 we learn that the Blue Ridge Diner—again, formerly the Golden Dream—is sitting vacant, with the current owner offering it for free to whoever will haul it off the site. The site is planned for a Grease Monkey auto shop, entailing the removal or demolition of the diner.
We learn that this Blue Ridge Diner was formerly the Highway Diner, Riviera Diner, and Golden Dream Diner; both the 1983 and the 1989 article give these three formee names, and no others. They also give the same rough age for it, which comes out to 1943 or 1944.
Since no address is given, it isn’t obvious where this building was. But since neither the other names, nor the opening date, match with our Golden Dream Diner—and since we have multiple 1980s articles that make it clear our diner was open during those years—this burned-out 1940s one-time-Golden-Dream diner must have been a second Golden Dream Diner on Route 22 in North Plainfield.
That, or these newspaper articles are mistaken in attributing the name Golden Dream to the Blue Ridge.
One way we can find out is to search those other names—Blue Ridge, Highway, Riviera—and see if we can pinpoint where this building stood, and if any other reference exists to it as Golden Dream.
The oldest reference to Blue Ridge Diner is from August 1977, in a hiring ad. A different local paper from the same day includes a grand opening ad. That ad gives an intersection, which we can go map:
And at that intersection sits a former Grease Monkey auto shop (renamed a couple of years ago, but unaltered).
In late 1979 there was some sort of diner equipment sale at the Blue Ridge, which would suggest it had closed, but maybe it upgraded; the hiring ads continue. In late 1982 the Blue Ridge Diner was cited for an exterior maintenance violation.
And then in July 1983, we have an article about the blaze, with a photo of the diner, noting it has been closed for a few months at this point.
Another article specifies that by the time of the fire it had been closed for six months, and was in fact undergoing a remodel. The fire was traced to a former cook at the diner, who was eventually convicted of arson.
That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t answer whether this diner was ever also the Golden Dream. None of the Blue Ridge Diner references talk about a conversion or remodel, so the order in which it was all of these other names isn’t clear.
But trying Riviera Diner as a newspaper search, we find a first reference in 1970, in which…a report was made of (unignited) Molotov cocktails being thrown through the windows. Some very interesting things happened in diners!
The last reference to Riviera, other than in the later articles about the fire, is a hiring ad from April 1977. Recall that the first reference to Blue Ridge is an August 1977 hiring ad; so mid-1977 is when those names changed.
Now we’ll try searching “Highway Diner” and see where the range of those references slots in. However, because of the way the newspapers.com search works—not well—this search brings back thousands of results. To narrow it down, I went ahead and searched for both “Highway Diner” and “Golden Dream” in a single search. This was serendipitous: a February 1969 newspaper happens to have ads for both of these diners!
Golden Dream—the one this two-part piece was originally about—re-opened as West End Diner4 in early 1969, which is why it’s “formerly” here in late 1968. The Highway Diner is this second one we’re looking at.
Because this is 1969, and the first reference to Riviera is 1970, that’s another conversion point: Highway Diner < Riviera Diner < Blue Ridge Diner < fire and demolition.
With a little more precision, adding a street name to the “Highway Diner” search, I was able to find a trade name filing from December 1944, and a new management notice later that month, identifying the new Highway Diner as “formerly Foster’s.”
I’m not going to dive into Foster’s, but this does mean that in its diner form, this establishment goes back to 1944—as those articles about the fire said—and first opened as the Highway Diner. These dates all connect together, so there could not have been a Golden Dream period for this second diner.
That means a couple of newspaper writers mixed up two diners, and their mistake got written into articles, which are now some of the only documentary evidence there is about these old businesses. These newspaper articles are mostly reliable, but they are not always completely accurate; simply summarizing them uncritically would repeat historical errors.
I find these bits of local history interesting in and of themselves, but I also find this exercise of reconstructing them interesting. I hope you do too!
Related Reading:
What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #2
What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #8
What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #12
In 1999, the owner of the then-current iteration of the diner was quoted as saying, “I’m part of the new generation of Greek diner owners.”
The Spinning Wheel Diner, further west in a more rural stretch of U.S. 22, was open 24 hours during hunting season, and shorter but still long hours during the rest of the year.
In between Golden Dream and Renaissance it had one other name, which I mention a little later, but which isn’t important.
The brothers who owned the West End Diner also got involved in another diner, whose former structure still stands heavily altered, and which I also wrote a deep dive about!
Also, the last reference to West End Diner as a going concern is from late 1979, which connects with the late 1980 opening of the Renaissance Diner. So that completes the full progression of that diner, with no missing periods.