News
Happy Birthday, Broadway Diner!
By John Burton
RED BANK - This year will mark the 50th year that the train car-style diner building has been sitting at its Monmouth Street location. That's a lot of omelets and late night coffee, fries and milkshakes.
The Broadway Diner, 45 Monmouth Street, has been operating at that location since 1996. But as Linda Wamsley, who helps oversee this and her family's other locations, "13 years for a diner, you sound like you're the new guy."
On August 18 the train car-style diner building that is home to the Broadway and its earlier incarnations will mark its golden anniversary. To mark the milestone Wamsley and her family, with the help of some of diner's 40 employees are working to put together a photo book, scheduling the publication with the 50th anniversary.
Wamsley said she has accumulated a considerable collection of photos of the diner in the years gone by, some provided by the former Dorn's photography shop, that had been on Wallace Avenue for many years. But she would like to get more and is asking anyone with any photos of the diner, especially photos of the exterior when it served as a Chinese restaurant and when it was closed, to help round out the history.
The location had been a diner even before 1959, according to Wamsley. It was first established by James Wilson, who went on to sell the business, only to have his son, Walt, buy it back and operate it.
Walt and his wife, Joanie, purchased the iconic train car building in 1959. The portable building, which is probably everyone's idea of a diner, was manufactured in New Jersey, but, Wamsley explained, took hours to travel to Red Bank, because the drivers needed to find a route that didn't require them to take it through any underpasses.
These types of trailer-style structures which became synonymous with the quick meal, first made their appearance in Rhode Island, where there is even a museum dedicated to diners.
The car was initially used as sort of a meals-on-wheels of its day, with the owners and their staffs, traveling to construction and other work sites offering their menu to primarily men.
Wamsley mentioned, that in the original of those coaches, the booths and tables were stationary, making it easier when rolling down the highways - and easier when cleaning, as food and other debris couldn't get stuck underneath.
In the 1950s, diners became stationary, as owners found locations and took the wheels off. They also started to move to appealing to women customers. "And that's when you started seeing more of the pinks and purples," in the décor, as well as such amenities as air conditioning, Wamsley explained.
Those developments were about comfort, another word that comes up when talking about diners.
Diners aren't solely about getting that quick, filling, inexpensive meal. "What we really sell is comfort," Wamsley said.
That comfort takes the form of chicken potpies and macaroni and cheese, and when the waitress remembers you, where you like to sit and what you drink.
"It's more than a restaurant," she noted. "It's part of the community."
Wamsley's family operates this site, as well as another diner in Summit, and the original Broadway Diner, in Bayonne. They opened their first restaurant in Summit in 1969, opening the Bayonne eatery in 1980.
After the Wilsons closed their Monmouth Street diner, the location became a Chinese restaurant under a couple of different owners and was eventually closed and forsaken for years, Wamsley said.
But about 15 years ago, her brother's business partner had been in Red Bank on business and saw the deteriorating diner building. But what stood out to him, she said, was that someone had put a note on the door asking to "bring back the diner."
Since 1996 Wamsley and her family have been dispensing their brand of comfort, whether it be knowing your name or a pork roll egg and cheese sandwich, a true Jersey diner staple (in north Jersey it's Taylor ham and pork roll in the southern part of the state, she noted.), for 24-hours-a-day and for almost every day of the year (they close on Christmas). And with the publication of the planned book it will be another way for the employees who have worked there over the years, and the customers who have been coming and going, to again relate to the location that has been a part of their community and lives.
"It'll be another way for people to connect," she said.
