Kirk To Market
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #277
We are once again taking a look at a property I was made aware of by Greg Gillette, a central New Jersey historian who writes on historic roadside properties.
Here’s the old postcard he shared of the property, in Lebanon, New Jersey, on a Facebook post:
And here’s his note on it:
After four years of experience operating a diner in the Bronx, Victor and Cecile Kirk came to Clinton, NJ, in 1937 and opened Kirk’s Diner in the town [I am not sure of the location]. In 1952 the couple opened a modern stainless steel diner on Route 22 westbound in Lebanon near Cokesbury Road and for some years operated both locations. Mrs. Kirk sold the Route 22 diner to Mr. and Mrs. John Volk in 1967 after the death of her husband. The diner reopened that year as Kirk’s New Modern Diner, but by the early 1980s, they were out of business. I believe the site is now occupied by two medical and professional office buildings.
Confirming that the property today looks nothing like the old diner, and is now the site of something else, here’s an image of the address as it appears today:
It is, however, a rather unusual building, despite the very modern front (which holds a brewery and a seafood market). Take a look at the 3D satellite view:
That doesn’t exactly look like a completely new building, does it?
Now I do occasionally write about a building which is no longer standing in these “What Do You Think You’re Looking At?” pieces, if I find that it has a particularly interesting story. But this is not one of those pieces.
Caveat that I have no idea how much of the original structure remains within the building’s interior—this may be a sort of Ship of Theseus example—but believe it or not, this is in fact the same basic structure as it was all those decades ago.
First, let’s take a look at the front of this building, before the remodel. The area which is now a brick front looked like this (2008 Google Maps capture):
That little tower/sign element in the middle of the roof is interesting; it looks like a remnant of a previous use. But I want you to particularly look at the rounded windows at the corners here:
And then I want you to look at the corner windows on Kirk’s Diner:
I would say there’s basically a zero percent chance that a new building would imitate a design feature like this. It might be done as a nod, occasionally, to an iconic previous building, but not in a low-density roadside context like this.
The modern brick front, in turn, occupies the same footprint and is basically the same structure reskinned. In fact, the roof was not raised; the brick facade is taller than the building itself:
So, there is probably a little bit of diner left in there somewhere!
This is enough to prove the continuity of the structure over the decades, but we can also look at old aerial imagery, from Historic Aerials.
Here is the 1953 imagery, only one year after the diner was opened, according to Gillette (who is correct; here’s a newspaper item about it):
It’s a bit indistinct, but in the middle, right at the intersection, you can see the exact same structure: the diner, with the front facing the highway, and that residential-looking addition on the back, which may have been a motel, facing the smaller intersecting road.
Here’s 1988 imagery; you can see that cement tower in the middle of the roof here, from its shadow:
And here, from the same view, is the structure today:
These hidden diners are wild to me, because they’re basically buildings hidden inside buildings. Obviously work on these buildings still occurs, but it all seems much more incremental and loosey-goosey than architects or planners would prefer today.
The newspaper archives don’t add much more to the building’s history, but there are a couple of funny stories about it over the decades.
December 22, 1950 (this would have been a different property, but the same owners/name): “Dissatisfied with the price of a meal charged her Wednesday night at Kirk’s Diner in Rt. 28, a woman customer took a pie off the counter and threw it on the floor.”
March 25, 1968: “A skinny thief who climbed down through a roof skylight measuring 20 inches by 12 inches entered Kirk’s Diner in Route 22 [the more recent number for Route 28] overnight Saturday or early Sunday morning.”
The things you’ll find out!
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