I heard some sad news last week that an old diner located on Bennett Street in Lynn, Massachusetts was reportedly demolished last week. It suffered a very bad fire a little over a year ago. Listed as Worcester Lunch Car Number 833, it was completed and delivered in June of 1952. At 15 feet 6 inches by 54 feet, it was one of the last really large one-piece diners built by the company. Originally operated as the Lynway Diner (just around the corner from the recent Bennett Street location) on the Lynnway, its original owner was James Vellis. It was moved to nearby Bennett Street many years ago. I first patronized it here as the Lynn Diner. It has since had other names including Webbie’s Diner. In the last 20 or so years it has been operated as at least 2 Oriental Restaurants. At the time of the fire, the place was about to reopen as a Latino restaurant called Anafe.
A post card of the Lynway Diner created a number of years ago
for a “Diner” exhibit at the Lynn Museum
A photo of Worcester Lunch Car as the Lynn Diner after it moved
to Bennett Street. Early 1980s photo by Larry Cultrera
A photo from last February showing the fire damage, mostly
to the front right corner. Photo by Larry Cultrera
A photo from last February showing the fire damage, mostly
to the front right corner. Photo by Larry Cultrera
I actually was in Lynn a couple of weeks ago to have lunch at the nearby Capitol Diner and stopped by on the way home to see what was happening to this diner. It looked quite ominous surrounded by a chain-link fence. This past week, some of my photos of this diner surfaced on my Facebook feed as memories so I shared them. Not long after a Facebook friend (Paul Ferrari) left a comment to let me know that the diner had been demolished the week before. I took a ride by this past Sunday afternoon and saw that there was a hole in the ground where the diner had been.
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