LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
UPDATE: The local newspaper now reports the diner was moved to Pennsylvania.
A vintage diner along the Lincoln Highway in New Brunswick, NJ, has been demolished, reportedly on December 7, 2010. The 1941 Fodero-brand Mack’s Diner stopped serving food in 1968. It became a grocery, then was bought in 1976 for $7,250 and operated as All Ears’ Records until criminal activity closed that business in 2005.
A 2008 article in MyCentralJersey.com noted that owner Tareq Algharaybeh was hoping to find a buyer for the dilapidated diner:
Flanked by a record shop and a mini market on French between Seaman and Suydam streets, the Mack’s turquoise shell glimpsed daylight recently. Last month, the advertising posters that have for years obscured nearly its entire facade were taken down.
For about a week, the words “Mack” and “Diner,” on either side of the brick and aluminum portico tethered to the patina of decades, were again visible.
Inside, what appears to be the diner’s original tile and wood counter teeters against the test of time. But other than the ventilation hoods, stripped of their exhaust fans, little trace remains of the diner’s days and nights as a restaurant.
But Algharaybeh, who bought the diner two years ago, says it is otherwise sturdy…. Algharaybeh, who also owns and runs Sam’s Pizza and Chicken two blocks south on French Street, has little use for this period piece. With three years left on the lease for the pizza establishment, Algharaybeh wants to move that business, which he has operated for 20 years at French and Alexander streets, onto the Mack’s lot.
Tags: building demolition, Diner, highway history, historic highway, Jersey diner, Lincoln Highway, New Brunswick NJ, New Jersey, restaurant, roadside
Lincoln Highway News 
December 9, 2010 at 5:54 pm |
How sad. It looks like it was beautiful at one time. If I had the money (ha ha), I would have loved to have moved it here and refurbished it and used it in some way. Wellsboro is lucky to have an old diner that is alive and well on the corner of Main and East Streets, along Route 6.
December 12, 2010 at 4:16 pm |
Terrible news. In it’s condition it was doubtful anyone would step up to restore it as a diner, but it could have been reused for something.
December 14, 2010 at 10:10 pm |
According to this news story, the diner was moved, not demolished.
http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20101214/NEWS/12140341/Downtown-New-Brunswick-diner-moved-to-Pennsylvania