The Road Island Diner, now located in Oakley, Utah, closed in the summer of 2021 due to staff shortages. Its future is unknown.
In 1939, the nation’s leading diner manufacturer, the Jerry O’Mahony Co. of Elizabeth, New Jersey, rolled out of its factory diner number #1107 which was touted as its largest deluxe model.
It was complete with chrome glass, green Italian marble countertops, Tiffany glass clerestory windows in a monitor style roof and hand laid quarry tiled flooring.
The company showed its creation in the 1939 New York World’s fair.
After the fair, diner aficionado Al McDermott purchased the streamlined-styled Art-Deco diner and had it towed to Fall River, Mass., where it operated with great success for 14 years. His moniker was “Justly Famous since 1939.”
In May, 2007, the diner was transported across the country weaving its way through designated back roads complete with state police escorts and pilot cars. It arrived in Oakley, Utah in mid-July and began its complete restoration.
Unlike the few remaining diners still operating on the east coast, thankfully little structural and cosmetic changes had occurred over the diner’s 80 plus year history.
Those that did were replicated from old photos. What you see now is what you would have seen in 1939 as this depression era pre-war diner was wheeled out of the factory.
Somebody buy and reopen this dinner!