New Hampshire Diners: Classic Granite State Eateries

By Larry Cultrera

New Hampshire loves its classic diners. Porcelain-enameled and stainless steel facades dot the highways and collective memories of the state. They are the unofficial town halls where news great and small is discussed over a steaming cup of coffee. New Hampshire has lost many diners over the last five decades, but there are still plenty of vintage or retro-inspired eateries that serve up homey meals and local stories. Visit Roger's Redliner in Portsmouth and dig into a plate of hash browns, or stop in at the Red Arrow in Manchester and reminisce over the loss of the local Rainbow Vet's Diner. Diner historian Larry Cultrera brings more than thirty-three years of research and his own flavor of storytelling to this classic slice of Granite State cuisine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Oct 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781625849328

Book preview

diners.

1

Lunch Wagons in New Hampshire

From the first appearance of the horse-drawn lunch wagons in the late nineteenth century through the turn of the twentieth century, it seemed they could be found anywhere in the New Hampshire. Although maybe not in huge numbers as seen in southern New England, there certainly were quite a few showing up usually in places like in-town business districts as well as recreational areas in cities and towns throughout the Granite State. Even as the predecessors to the modern diners, lunch wagons were a little different stylistically than their later counterparts. Factory-built lunch wagons varied in size but were generally eight feet wide by eighteen feet in length. They had two high rear wheels with two smaller front wheels for steering. The kitchen compartment was across the rear separated by a serving counter from the eating area. There were usually stools around the interior perimeter with a narrow shelf-type counter under the windowsills. As in other large cities, these roving lunch wagons may have started interfering with traffic from other horse-drawn vehicles as well as trolley cars and automobiles. This certainly became a factor as they continued in popularity into the 1910s, mostly in cities like Manchester and Concord as opposed to the more rural areas of the state. Citing traffic and curfew laws, the larger cities especially started to curtail the hours of operation of these lunch wagons to the overnight hours. This action severely limited the amount of money the lunch wagon proprietors could make. In the thirty-four or so years that I have collected diner memorabilia and ephemera, I have managed to gather a decent amount of old postcards. This collection includes not only examples that advertised individual diners but also street scenes that included diners and, more importantly, lunch wagons within the streetscape. The images on this page and page 18 are examples from my collection.

A postcard showing an early lunch wagon (left) plying its trade on the north side of Central Street in the Woodsville section of Haverhill, New Hampshire. The date of January 20, 1914, is clearly marked on the front, showing a scene that was commonplace in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Although the lunch cart is long gone, most of the buildings on the far side of the street still exist today. Collection of the author.

An even earlier postcard dated 1905 showing a lunch wagon situated across School Street from the Opera House in Lisbon, New Hampshire, hard by the bridge over the Ammonoosuc River. This looks to be an economy model, not as fancy as some wagons of the period. Collection of the author.

Some of these enterprising lunch wagon operators saw that they could circumvent the traffic laws in the larger cities by setting their wagon onto a sliver of land off the street and continue to operate at all hours. This image from a postcard with a 1916 postmark is a great example of a lunch wagon putting down semipermanent roots. This wagon is more than likely providing food service for the townsfolk as well as the patrons of the Broadway Theater in downtown Derry, New Hampshire. Collection of the author.

Eventually, the lunch wagon manufacturers saw that the need for transporting these early lunch wagons nightly was starting to change, so they took the opportunity to start building them longer and wider. This new, larger configuration added more seating and kitchen space to the wagons. Also at this point in time, eating in a railroad dining car was considered the height of luxury, and the longer lunch wagons were being designed with a strong resemblance to their railroad counterparts. So by the mid-1920s, the term lunch wagon was supplanted by the term dining car or to the shortened version—diner. From this point on, diners started to become full-service restaurants serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. The following two examples in this chapter are of the last surviving old-time lunch wagon and what I like to call its second cousin—a home-built popcorn wagon—still operating in New