Miss Albany Diner
Encyclopedia
Miss Albany Diner is a historic diner
in Albany, New York
built in 1941 and located at 893 Broadway, one of the oldest streets in Albany. Used as a set for the 1987 film Ironweed
starring Jack Nicholson
and Meryl Streep
, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places
in 2000.
diner built by the Ward & Dickinson Dining Car Company. The current building was erected in 1941 and originally called Lil's Diner. It is a "Silk City Diner" model, manufactured by the Paterson Vehicle Company in Patterson, New Jersey, one of the leading diner manufacturers of the time. The building is typical of the prefabricated diners that were common from the 1920s through the 1940s, built to resemble railroad cars and incorporating elements of Art Deco
design. With its interior of cherry wood and porcelain enamelled
steel and a geometrically tiled floor, it is one of the few pre-World War II diners in the United States in near-original condition. The interior was depicted by the photorealist artist Ralph Goings
in his 1993 painting Miss Albany Diner.
The diner changed hands over the years and was called successively Elaine's, the Firehouse Diner, and the Street Car Diner. Its current name was shared by a chain of several now defunct Miss Albany Diners owned by Stillman Pitts which were popular in Albany during the 1920s, one of which (on Central Avenue) is explicitly mentioned in William Kennedy
's novel Roscoe
. When Kennedy's earlier novel Ironweed
was made into a film in 1986, the diner was restored for use as one of the film's principal locations and given the name "Miss Albany Diner". At the time, a product placement
bidding war ensued between Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola over whose logo would be on the top of the diner.
After the filming ended, the diner was bought by Cliff Brown and his wife Jane. Cliff Brown, a former Albany resident and retired insurance salesman for New York Life, gave it the name used in the film, which it has retained to the present day. At Brown's initiative, the building was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places
on November 6, 2000 and won a Preservation Merit Award in 2002 from the Historic Albany Foundation. In late 2009, Brown was 82 and wanted to retire. The diner was put up for sale, but as of 2010, it had still not been sold and continues to be run by Jane Brown.
service. Its signature dishes include:
The dishes were created by the owners' son Bill Brown, who had been a chef at the diner for many years. Mad Irish Toast was named one of the "Best Bites of 2002" by the Chicago Sun-Times
.
For other historic diners in the same architectural style see:
Diner
A diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...
in Albany, New York
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
built in 1941 and located at 893 Broadway, one of the oldest streets in Albany. Used as a set for the 1987 film Ironweed
Ironweed (film)
Ironweed is a 1987 film directed by Argentine-born Brazilian Héctor Babenco.The picture is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by William Kennedy and concerns the relationship of a homeless couple: Francis, an alcoholic, and Helen, a terminally ill woman during the Great...
starring Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
and Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...
, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 2000.
History
In 1929 the site was occupied by a lunch cart providing hot food to workers in the area. It was succeeded by a prefabricatedPrefabrication
Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located...
diner built by the Ward & Dickinson Dining Car Company. The current building was erected in 1941 and originally called Lil's Diner. It is a "Silk City Diner" model, manufactured by the Paterson Vehicle Company in Patterson, New Jersey, one of the leading diner manufacturers of the time. The building is typical of the prefabricated diners that were common from the 1920s through the 1940s, built to resemble railroad cars and incorporating elements of Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
design. With its interior of cherry wood and porcelain enamelled
Vitreous enamel
Vitreous enamel, also porcelain enamel in U.S. English, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C...
steel and a geometrically tiled floor, it is one of the few pre-World War II diners in the United States in near-original condition. The interior was depicted by the photorealist artist Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings is an American painter closely associated with the Photorealism movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s...
in his 1993 painting Miss Albany Diner.
The diner changed hands over the years and was called successively Elaine's, the Firehouse Diner, and the Street Car Diner. Its current name was shared by a chain of several now defunct Miss Albany Diners owned by Stillman Pitts which were popular in Albany during the 1920s, one of which (on Central Avenue) is explicitly mentioned in William Kennedy
William Kennedy (author)
William Joseph Kennedy is an American writer and journalist born and raised in Albany, New York. Many of his novels feature the interaction of members of the fictional Irish-American Phelan family, and make use of incidents of Albany's history and the supernatural...
's novel Roscoe
Roscoe (novel)
Roscoe is a novel by William Kennedy which was published in 2002, and depicts an aging politician who is a key behind-the-scenes player in Albany, New York's Democratic Party machine...
. When Kennedy's earlier novel Ironweed
Ironweed
Ironweed is a 1983 novel by William Kennedy. It received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is the third book in Kennedy's Albany Cycle...
was made into a film in 1986, the diner was restored for use as one of the film's principal locations and given the name "Miss Albany Diner". At the time, a product placement
Product placement
Product placement, or embedded marketing, is a form of advertisement, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, music videos, the story line of television shows, or news programs. The product placement is often not disclosed at the time that the...
bidding war ensued between Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola over whose logo would be on the top of the diner.
After the filming ended, the diner was bought by Cliff Brown and his wife Jane. Cliff Brown, a former Albany resident and retired insurance salesman for New York Life, gave it the name used in the film, which it has retained to the present day. At Brown's initiative, the building was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
on November 6, 2000 and won a Preservation Merit Award in 2002 from the Historic Albany Foundation. In late 2009, Brown was 82 and wanted to retire. The diner was put up for sale, but as of 2010, it had still not been sold and continues to be run by Jane Brown.
Restaurant
As of 2010, The Miss Albany Diner serves breakfast, lunch and coffee on a "cash only" basis and is open Tuesday through Sunday until 2:15 pm. It has both waiter and take-outTake-out
Take-out or takeout , carry-out , take-away , parcel , or tapau , is food purchased at a...
service. Its signature dishes include:
- Georgian Eggs (eggs any style over sweet potatoSweet potatoThe sweet potato is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the family Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting, tuberous roots are an important root vegetable. The young leaves and shoots are sometimes eaten as greens. Of the approximately 50 genera and more than 1,000 species of...
es and scallionScallionScallions , are the edible plants of various Allium species, all of which are "onion-like", having hollow green leaves and lacking a fully developed root bulb.-Etymology:The words...
s and topped with peanut saucePeanut saucePeanut sauce, satay sauce, bumbu kacang, or sambal kacang is a sauce widely used in the cuisines of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, China and Africa. It is also used, to a lesser extent, in European and Middle Eastern cuisine.-Ingredients:The main ingredient is ground roasted peanuts, for...
) - Mad Eggs (a toasted English muffinEnglish muffinA muffin or English muffin is a small, round, flat type of yeast-leavened bread almost always dusted with cornmeal, which is commonly served split horizontally, toasted, and buttered. Muffins are eaten either as a snack alone or as part of a meal.- History :An old English nursery rhyme, "The...
, topped with eggs, scallions and curryCurryCurry is a generic description used throughout Western culture to describe a variety of dishes from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Thai or other Southeast Asian cuisines...
sauce) - Calamity Jane (omeletteOmeletteIn cuisine, an omelette or omelet is a dish made from beaten eggs quickly cooked with butter or oil in a frying pan, sometimes folded around a filling such as cheese, vegetables, meat , or some combination of the above...
with tomatoes, onions, peppers, swiss cheeseSwiss cheeseSwiss cheese is a generic name in North America for several related varieties of cheese which resemble the Swiss Emmental. Some types of Swiss cheese have a distinctive appearance, as the blocks of the cheese are riddled with holes known as "eyes". Swiss cheese has a piquant, but not very sharp,...
, sausage and Tabasco sauceTabasco sauceTabasco sauce is the brand name for a hot sauce produced by US-based McIlhenny Company of Avery Island, Louisiana. Tabasco sauce is made from tabasco peppers , vinegar, and salt, and aged in white oak barrels for three years. It has a hot, spicy flavor...
) - Mad Irish Toast (two thick slices of French toastFrench toastFrench toast or Eggy Bread, is a food made with bread and eggs. It is a Christmas time dessert in Portugal and Brazil.Where French toast is served as a sweet dish, milk, sugar, or cinnamon are also commonly added before frying, and it may be then topped with sugar, butter, fruit, syrup, or other...
made from challah breadChallahChallah also khale ,, berches , barkis , bergis , chałka , vánočka , zopf and kitke , is a special braided bread eaten on...
, filled with pecanPecanThe pecan , Carya illinoinensis, is a species of hickory, native to south-central North America, in Mexico from Coahuila south to Jalisco and Veracruz, in the United States from southern Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana east to western Kentucky, southwestern Ohio, North Carolina, South...
s and cream cheeseCream cheeseCream cheese is a soft, mild-tasting, white cheese with a high fat content. Traditionally, it is made from unskimmed milk enriched with additional cream....
and covered in a sauce made from Irish whiskeyIrish whiskeyIrish whiskey is whiskey made in Ireland.Key regulations defining Irish whiskey and its production are established by the Irish Whiskey Act of 1980, and are relatively simple...
and butterscotchButterscotchButterscotch is a type of confectionery whose primary ingredients are brown sugar and butter, although other ingredients such as corn syrup, cream, vanilla, and salt are part of some recipes...
).
The dishes were created by the owners' son Bill Brown, who had been a chef at the diner for many years. Mad Irish Toast was named one of the "Best Bites of 2002" by the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
.
See also
- North Albany, Albany, New YorkNorth Albany, Albany, New YorkNorth Albany is a neighborhood in the city of Albany, New York, originally a hamlet in the town of Watervliet. First settled in the mid-1600s by the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck and his tenants. Due to the Erie Canal being constructed through here in 1825 North Albany saw immense growth with the...
- Architecture of Albany, New YorkArchitecture of Albany, New YorkThe architecture of Albany, New York is a cornucopia of building design ranging from the early 18th century to the present. Its history dates back to the first building built in Albany, a French fort built in 1540. This was destroyed by the annual Hudson River freshet and was rebuilt as Fort Nassau...
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Albany, New YorkNational Register of Historic Places listings in Albany, New YorkThe National Register of Historic Places listings in Albany, New York represent the history of Albany from the Dutch colonial era, through the British colonial era, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and World War II, in addition to various periods of immigration into New York's...
For other historic diners in the same architectural style see:
- Mickey's DinerMickey's DinerMickey's Diner is a 50' x 10' classic Art Deco diner car restaurant in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It was prefabricated in New Jersey by the Jerry O'Mahony Diner Company of Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1937 serial # 1067, shipped to Saint Paul by rail, and installed downtown just before World War II...
in St. Paul, Minnesota - Road Island DinerRoad Island DinerThe Road Island Diner is a rare classic Streamline Moderne 60' x 16' Art Deco diner car restaurant located in the remote mountain city of Oakley, Utah in the United States. It was prefabricated as diner # 1107 in 1939 at the Elizabeth, New Jersey factory of the Jerry O'Mahony Diner Company.After...
in Oakley, UtahOakley, UtahOakley is a city in Summit County, Utah, United States. It is part of the Salt Lake City, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 948 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Oakley is located at ....
(previously sited in Middletown, Rhode IslandMiddletown, Rhode IslandMiddletown is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 16,150 at the 2010 census. It lies to the south of Portsmouth and to the north of Newport on Aquidneck Island, hence the name "Middletown."-Geography:...
and transported to Utah in 2007) - Village DinerVillage DinerThe Village Diner, sometimes called the Halfway Diner or the Historic Village Diner, is located at 39 North Broadway a block north of NY 199 in Red Hook, New York, United States...
in Red Hook, New YorkRed Hook (village), New YorkRed Hook is a village in Dutchess County, New York, USA. The population was 1,961 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical Area...
External links
Accompanying 5 photos, exterior and interior, from 2000- Mad Eggs from Miss Albany Diner, brief video by Albany filmmaker Mike Camoin on the website of the Albany Times Union
- Miss Albany Diner, brief documentary video on the official YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
channel of Hudson River Valley Profiles (Shenise Productions) - Recipe for Miss Albany Diner's Mad Irish Toast on the website of the Chicago Sun-TimesChicago Sun-TimesThe Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...