Roadside Fans

Farewell, Miss Albany

gwells — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:15:01 +0000

The Miss Albany Diner as we know it is gone.

Yes, there is still a Silk City diner at 893 Broadway in the city, as there has been since 1941. For many years it was Lil’s Diner, serving working people in Albany’s industrial North End in classic diner fashion. But beginning in 1988, the Brown family – Cliff Brown, wife Jane, and later son Bill – turned it into a diner destination, remembered for unique food items such as MAD Irish Toast and Cliff Brown’s diner wisdom, evident in signs hanging around the diner. (“When a child’s behavior draws the attention of other dining patrons, maybe an acting school would provide a better destination than public dining” reads one.)

The diner is now owned by the people who own Wolff’s Biergarten next door, and they are

The Miss Albany Diner

not yet saying what they intend to do with the diner. Matt Baumgartner, one of the new owners, was quoted in Business Review : “I have zero interest in going into the diner business.” That’s not a good sign for those wanting to have breakfast in the diner again, even if it’s a generic Sysco breakfast rather than the Miss Albany’s signature fare.

As a lifelong Capital Region resident, I had always known the diner was there, just down Broadway from the rooftop Nipper, the RCA Dog. But it took me years to realize that this was a diner worth visiting. When I began reading Roadside Magazine and their Roadside Online web site in the mid 1990s, they featured diner reviews and advertising for many appealing diners in New England, Pennsylvania, and other places that would entail a considerable drive – and one diner near me, the Miss Albany.

Even so, it took a phone call from Cliff Brown to get things moving. I had just started the RoadsideFans e-mail group in 2001, and Cliff was perhaps surprised that there was a local diner enthusiast he had not yet met. So I made the first of many visits I would make over the next decade, sometimes not even ordering food but just chatting with Cliff about anything and everything diner-

Cliff Brown in 2002

related. I felt privileged when Cliff invited me through the diner’s swinging kitchen doors and down the narrow stairway leading into the diner’s basement, where he had his “executive suite” in a room barely bigger than a walk-in closet. Cliff also pointed out the place on the diner’s undercarriage where ”4195″ was painted on a beam – the diner’s Silk City serial number, the 95th diner made in 1941.

I enjoyed my visits, including one in 2002 on Cliff’s 75th birthday where a customer at the counter led an impromptu singing of “Happy Birthday.” But as the years went by, I could see age and infirmities take their toll on Cliff Brown, a decline not unlike the one I had seen with my own father. And running a diner is tough on a young man, to say nothing of a man in his 80s. Sometimes health problems kept Cliff away from the diner, so I would chat with Jane or Bill instead. I always regarded Cliff and the Miss Albany as “Great diner, Great diner owner” but amended that to “Great diner family.”

So it wasn’t entirely a surprise when the Browns put the Miss Albany up for sale in 2009. Bill Brown was doing a great job running the place, suggesting that the Miss Albany might be able to go on without Cliff. But when I suggested this to Bill, it was clear he had made up his mind and the Miss Albany Diner was not in his future.

Cliff Brown died November 1, 2010. The Miss Albany Diner served its last meal February 10, 2012. Mother and son Jane and Bill Brown now get to sleep late, travel, and enjoy life in a number of ways big and small that people on the other side of the diner counter have always taken for granted.

Thanks for the memories.

Petersburg Views

gwells — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:02:16 +0000

When I was a child, the road to Grandma’s house was New York Route 2, leading from our home in Troy over Grafton Mountain to the small town of Petersburg. Our family’s many trips there are the earliest road trips I recall.

Petersburg (sometimes spelled Petersburgh) was founded in 1791 and once had railroad service, but the 20th Century and automobile travel brought many changes to the town. Most noteworthy was the construction of the Taconic Trail, a modern highway through Petersburg Pass connecting the town to Williamstown, Massachusetts and the Mohawk Trail.

(Note that the Taconic Trail is unrelated to the Taconic Parkway, a separate north-south highway connecting New York City to the New York Thruway Berkshire Spur near Chatham.)

The road into Petersburg begins with a steep decline and the junction with NY 22, a north-south highway running from New York City to the Canadian border along the state’s eastern edge. This junction is shown in an early postcard:

The road to the right leads to Route 22; the road to the left traverses a stone overpass and leads into the town center. The same highway configuration exists today.

Petersburg once had three general stores, but by my lifetime only one remained in operation. It was built by Fred Nichols in 1892 and this early postcard shows the “Nichols Block.” Later the store was Waters & Sawyer, later operated by Mary Sawyer, then Vern O’Dell and finally Ziggie Krahforst before closing for good in the 1980s.

A nearly identical view of this store published in Petersburgh Then and Now: A Photographic Comparison by Peter R. W. Schaaphok (which I used as a reference) shows a sign in the window “SOUVENIR POSTCARDS – PETERSBURG VIEWS.” Another photo of the nearby Sawyer, Moses, and Hewitt store also had a sign “PETERSBURG VIEWS.”

The other side of the Nichols building (which originally would have been considered the back of the building) faced the highway and was much more visible to automobile travelers through town. This side of the building featured a soda fountain, complete with a counter and stools. As best I can remember its styling, I would estimate it was of 1930s – 1940s vintage. On Sunday mornings I would come here with Grandpa, and while he bought a half gallon of ice cream to have with dinner, I would spin around on the stools and buy a gumball out of the penny gumball machine. Mary Sawyer ran the store then.

Then, one sad day in 1962, things changed forever. An asphalt truck went out of control on the steep decline leading into the town center. Unable to negotiate the curve in the road, the truck went straight into the store, demolishing its corner. The soda fountain and counter were a total loss.

Grandpa went out with his camera and took this picture:

Sawyer's Store, Petersburg, NY. Kodachrome slide by Ralph Babcock, 1962

The corner of the store was rebuilt, but the soda fountain never was. In its place were some ordinary shelves for ordinary store merchandise. But the disappointment I felt then, at age 7, over the loss of the soda fountain seemed to predict the roadside enthusiast I would become.

A little farther to the east, the highway crosses the Little Hoosick River. The crossing was once a covered bridge, and later two concrete bridges (called “Upper bridge” and “Lower bridge” by the locals) were built in town. But when the Taconic Trail was built, the upper bridge was replaced with an especially ornate concrete bridge:

This bridge was rebuilt in recent years, retaining the original look as much as possible.

Along the right edge of the above postcard, you will notice a white building with roof protruding toward the road, with a gray concrete block building adjacent. These buildings were part of Hillcrest, a “Gas Food Lodging” complex for automobile travelers.

Here’s a postcard view of Hillcrest Cabins:

And here’s the white building in the bridge postcard, featuring a small restaurant with gas pumps out front. The concrete block building, with automobile service bays, came later. At some point (I’m guessing in the 1950s) they switched to selling Mobil instead of Shell gasoline. I remember the concrete block building painted white with “Mobilgas Mobiloil Mobilubrication” lettering and Mobil’s trademark red Pegasus.

You will notice this postcard states “Route 96,” which was the earlier route designation of the Taconic Trail. In order to create a more logical east-west routing from the Mohawk Trail to the Taconic Trail, the route number was changed to Route 2, the number used on the Mohawk Trail in Massachusetts. New York did this by swapping Routes 2 and 96, with the previous Route 2, from Rochester to Owego, becoming Route 96.

If a cabin at Hillcrest was too modest for your taste, there were billboards enticing travelers to travel a few more miles to Williamstown for their night’s stay. Petersburg once had billboards for the 1896 House, Berkshire Hills Motel, and the Williams Inn, the first lodging in the Treadway Inns chain. And all three of these remain in business today (although the Williams Inn is no longer a Treadway. The only remaining Treadway Inn using that name is in Owego, NY, by coincidence an end point on the present Route 96.)

Traveling further east, the Taconic Trail winds and climbs a few more miles to the top, directly on the New York – Massachusetts state line. There once was a summit house and observation tower, much like similar ones along the Mohawk Trail:

In 1962, Petersburg Pass Ski Area was opened and the summit house became a base lodge. The observation tower was still there, but was allowed to deteriorate and was no longer open to the public (another childhood disappointment.)

You can read more about Petersburg Pass Ski Area here.

The base lodge (original summit house) was destroyed by fire in the early 1970s. A new base lodge was built further from the highway and the ski area was reopened as Taconic Trails Ski Area, later Mount Raimer (after the owner.) The new lodge was also destroyed by fire and by 1980 the mountain’s days as a ski area were over.

Today, there’s ample parking at the summit, although there are no facilities. You can stop and enjoy the view or access several hiking trails. The Taconic Trail then continues down the other side of the mountain in Massachusetts, ending at US Route 7. Route 2 then follows Route 7 to the Williamstown town green a couple of miles to the north before heading east to North Adams and the Mohawk Trail.

It all started with a Christmas present

gwells — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:45:31 +0000

Welcome to the newly revamped RoadsideFans.com! The great new design is a Christmas present from my stepson, Ray Milstrey.

But the fact that RoadsideFans exists at all traces to another Christmas present, 17 years earlier.

The year was 1994, and my wife, Susan, noticed my fascination with Pennsylvania Diners and Other Roadside Restaurants, which we watched on PBS that summer. For Christmas, she wanted to give me a book about diners.

Fortunately, a clerk in the Colonie Barnes & Noble recommended THE book about diners – American Diner Then and Now by Richard J. S. Gutman.

Reading that book re-awakened my interest in the American roadside. One thing led to another, culminating in the founding of the RoadsideFans Yahoo Group in 2001. You can read the entire story here.

The new RoadsideFans.com is a WordPress blog, and if that seems familiar, it’s because several other roadside-related web sites already use WordPress – Diner Hotline, Retro Roadmap, Diner Hunter, and Lincoln Highway News among them. As with the others, visitors to RoadsideFans will now have a chance to leave comments – simply click the arrow at the top right and scroll down to the bottom of the posting. There will probably be more new features yet to come as I become more familiar with WordPress.

You will find several features from the old web site on the new RoadsideFans.com. By clicking FEATURES on the bar above, you can access the Howard Johnson’s, barbecue chicken, and Taconic Parkway features from the old web site. However, the Online Diner Tours and some other photo features from the old site have been retired. Most of these were a decade or more old, and many of the places no longer exist or have changed names. I am considering uploading the pictures to a Flickr account to maintain the historical record.

Going forward, I plan to post my original content here – for example, accounts of my road trips, book reviews, and original photographs. The RoadsideFans Yahoo Group will continue unchanged, and will remain the place to visit for the latest roadside news.

So, welcome to our new home! There’s a world of roadside yet to explore.