Seeing Red
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #263
This one began during my search for Northern Virginia’s forgotten Der Wienerschnitzel restaurant(s). I was trying out Google Gemini, to see if it was able to surface anything on the web that I had missed.
It hallucinated an old Der Wienerschnitzel at 14400 Jefferson Davis Highway in Woodbridge, which it claimed was still standing. I was pretty doubtful about that. That building looks like this:
That’s a pretty typical older Popeyes building. So, obviously not a still-standing Der Wienerschnitzel, which is identifiable by its steep red A-frame roof.
But for the heck of it, I took a look at the satellite view, and would you look at that:
That isn’t quite an A-frame, but it’s a steep red roof concealed inside the Popeyes structure! It’s not a new-construction Popeyes: it’s an exterior rebuild around a pre-existing structure, which happens to look a lot like a Wienerschnitzel building from the air!
Now yes, this was a false lead: it isn’t a former Wienerschnitzel, and it looks as if Gemini’s guess was complete coincidence. I asked it in a separate chat about this building, and it told me that it was a newly-constructed Popeyes. So it didn’t actually “know” there was a hidden red roof in here.
But, of course, I needed to know what this old building actually was.
I’ve recently gotten myself a subscription to the newspapers.com archive, which is a lot of fun and a massive help for these detective-work jobs. There isn’t much of anything I can find about this building/address online, so I dove into a series of newspaper searches, starting with “Popeyes” and focusing on Woodbridge-area papers. I’m going to walk you through what researching something like this looks like.
I want to note some of the trickiness of trying to track these things down definitively. There are a number of reasons why it’s sometimes not that easy, and requires work beyond simply the right search in the right archive. I had my supposition as to what it was, but I wanted to use archival material to prove it.
So, searching “Popeyes” could be helpful because it could surface an article about Popeyes arriving in Woodbridge and converting the old building, which might identify what it had been previously. Then, if that isn’t the original tenant, you search that name, and if every building/business conversion was covered in a local paper, that’s your paper trail back to the beginning.
Unfortunately, since I don’t know when the Popeyes opened—I can tell in NETR’s aerial photography that the old building had been enclosed by 1994, meaning it was (likely, unless someone else first wrapped the building!) a Popeye’s at that time. So I perused the whole 1980s-present range of results.
This returns dozens of results about the cartoon character (television schedules and some chatter about Disney’s live-action Popeye film from 1980), along with a lost dog ad in the classifieds (“answers to ‘Popeye’”) and coupons for the Popeyes restaurant.
This search was not terribly helpful. Lots of ads identify their stores as being “behind Popeyes”: this December 1998 ad for a Geico office, this January 1999 thrift store ad (which also identifies the shopping center as Prince William Plaza II, which we’ll briefly come back to.) There were also 1998 ads hiring for this specific Popeyes location, but that was not for its opening, because it continues to appear in much older ads. Luke this one from January 1996, for a men’s clothing store called Frank’s Custom Tailoring, also “behind Popeyes.” (We’re also going to come back to Frank’s.)
There’s a December 1992 crime story involving the Popeyes, which gives a slightly different address than the current building, for a storefront in the shopping center right behind it (I think this is just address fuzziness, not an indication that the Popeyes moved.)
Here’s a July 1992 garage sale ad for an address “across fr Popeyes,” which indeed it is to this day. In July 1992, another “Behind Popeyes” ad shows up, this time for a mattress store. That ad calls the shopping center “Prince William Plaza”—not “Prince William Plaza II.”
The hits continue on and off—actual Popeyes ads, those “behind Popeyes” ads for other stores, crime stories, and Popeyes hiring announcements. In July 1984, we find a reference to the owners of this particular Popeyes franchise.
Finally, in May 1984, we’re getting close, with an official “now open” ad:
And then, tantalizingly, a February 1984 building-permit roundup that cites a Popeyes going into a remodeled building:
That is definitely our building, but there are no opening announcements or any reference to the previous tenant. So the “Popeyes” route is a dead end.
There are a couple of avenues now. One is to simply search the name of the restaurant I think it was—that happens to be Gino’s, a red-roofed Mid-Atlantic chain which distributed Kentucky Fried Chicken before that company had stores here—and see if I can find a match at the location.
Another avenue, less direct but more fun, is to search for that “Frank’s Custom Tailoring” store, whose ads said “Behind Popeyes,” and see if they had earlier ads that say “Behind [whatever it was before Popeyes].” I’m going to do that, but first the little diversion on the name of the shopping center(s).
Today, one of the two shopping centers in this immediate area appears to still be called Prince William Plaza (but for some reason its sign was taken down a few years ago). The shopping center on the other side of the driveway—the one actually behind the Popeyes—is called Prince William Plaza II in many ads, but also it seems that sometimes the entire complex went by Prince William Plaza. Today, the Prince William Plaza II portion is known as International Center. They are distinct parcels today, based on the property layer on Prince William County’s GIS map.
1966 is the earliest reference to the Prince William Plaza, in this note about its upcoming construction. Its tenant list, including an A&P and a Drug Fair, identify it as today’s Prince William Plaza (the A&P, which closed in 1979, still has an unaltered roofline. Some of the specific addresses are a little mixed up, which doesn’t mean much.)
The oldest reference to Prince William Plaza II is a May 1974 ad for a store “around the corner in the new section of Prince William Plaza II.” I can’t determine if these were ever the same parcel or not, but basically, it’s a little hiccup/detail that turns out not to be important, though it might have been.
Back to Frank’s Custom Tailoring. Frank’s liked to advertise based on what it was near: “Next to ‘Plus’” (August 1980); “Next to Hartley’s” (October 1980); “Behind Hartley’s Restaurant” (March 1981).
The last “Behind Hartley’s” ad for Frank’s is from February 1983. The last Frank’s ad ever, from January 1996, said “behind Popeyes” (I shared it back up at the top).
And then, in March 1983, they start to say “behind Gino’s.”
That should mean that the building’s progression was Hartley’s, Gino’s, Popeyes. That is what I assumed, so I did a search for “Hartley’s” to see what that was. There’s nothing on Google, but yes, there were newspaper results!
“Hartley’s” brings up a number of coupons/ads, which, frustratingly, only give the highway, but no intersection or address. (Quite a lot of old ads, up into the 1980s, don’t include addresses—I suppose because everyone used maps or landmarks, not addresses per se.)
But then, in the December 4, 1981 Potomac News, there is an actual article about Hartley’s, which notes: “Hartley’s is the newest restaurant concept for Gino’s and the Woodbridge one is the only one of its kind to date in the chain.”
The article also notes that the predecessor concept at the Hartley’s building was not, strictly speaking, a Gino’s, but a Rustler Steakhouse, “also owned by the company,” and that Hartley’s had replaced Rustler “a little more than a year ago.”
This is looking a little bit like another dead end. And, weirdly, a July 1980 hiring ad ahead of the Hartley’s grand opening gives the address not for the Popeyes building, but for another outparcel in that same shopping center.
So: 1) Frank’s tailoring shop did not move; 2) it was “behind Hartley’s” and then “behind Gino’s”; 3) Hartley’s and Gino’s weren’t the same building. And 4), the red roof concealed by the Popeyes is the Gino’s brand-centric design element, so despite all this trouble to prove it, I’m pretty sure that specific building was the Gino’s.
That does not quite make sense, but I was right. Finally, there it is! A little sidenote in a September 1980 article on the Hartley’s opening:
The doors were opened to the first in what Gino’s Restaurants hopes will become a new chain of restaurants known as Hartleys. Hartleys is located in the building at 14330 Jefferson Davis Blvd. (in front of Prince William Plaza) which formerly housed the Rustlers Steak House, also Gino’s owned….
Throughout the east, there are 363 Gino restaurants (including one right next to Hartleys here) and 115 Gino-operated Rustlers.)
My bold. The two outparcels in front of “Prince William Plaza II,” now a Popeyes and a closed-down restaurant that looks like an old-school family restaurant, began life as two Gino’s concepts: an actual Gino’s, with a red roof, which is now a Popeyes, and a steakhouse concept which appears to have fizzled.
And here, if you need further evidence, is a 1979 story which gives the exact address of the present-day Popeyes as Gino’s!
The earliest Gino’s reference I was able to dig up is January 1974, another “behind Gino’s” ad for a store in the strip plaza. 1974 is also the earliest year that “Prince William Plaza II” appears, so I think we can conclude it was built as a Gino’s in 1974, closed around 1983 (the last recorded “behind Gino’s” ad), and then became a Popeyes in early 1984, likely with no in-between tenant.
Here, as we wrap up, is a visual: left strip plaza, Prince William Plaza (intact A&P building on far left). Driveway to immediate left of Popeyes. Old Hartleys on bottom right corner. And Prince William Plaza II strip, well, behind Popeyes and (former) Hartley’s.
There are still more little dead ends and odds and ends that I’ve cut from this—it probably took about eight hours to search, sift, go down rabbit holes to my satisfaction, and then piece together these archival bits into a proper story. It’s a lot of work, but it’s even more fun.
We’re going to end here, and come back to Gino’s, and a local chain which it absorbed, Tops Drive Inn, at a later date!
Related Reading:
This was completely unnecessary and I read every word. I love the detective work.
Truly love this kind of deep dive into the origins of a place, purely for the sake of getting a sense of how it used to be.