The Ward Melville Makeover
During the Great Depression, a shoe magnate bought a town and painted it colonial. Was Ward Melville’s Stony Brook Village Center philanthropy or the ultimate real estate flex?
Ordering Your House from a Catalog
Before Amazon Prime, you ordered a house from a catalog. Sears kit homes sold between 1908 and 1940 still stand on Long Island — built by working hands, not consultants.
How a Jersey joint started pulling in numbers that would embarrass a mid-size hotel — without losing the diner moniker.
Tops Diner in East Newark pulls massive volume on weekend mornings. Here’s a financial autopsy of what it actually takes to run those numbers.
The Stainless Steel Cathedrals: How Kullman and DeRaffele Built Long Island’s Roadside Landscape
How two factories — Kullman in New Jersey and DeRaffele in New Rochelle — fabricated the chrome-and-porcelain diners that defined Long Island’s roadside landscape for generations.
The Historical Backdrop of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere: When NASA Finally Opened the Hatch for Women
Long before Joan Goodwin strapped into a shuttle simulator at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, before…
Googie architecture promised us the moon. We got a two a.m. steak-and-eggs special instead.
Norms diner on La Cienega opened in 1957 with a cantilevered roof that promised the future. The guy washing dishes wasn’t invited to that future.
