Donwell's Diner-Worcester Lunch Car Company Diner No. 774 | |
Location | 560 Mineral Springs Ave., Pawtucket, Providence County, Rhode Island |
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Coordinates | 41°52′22″N71°24′23″W / 41.8729°N 71.4064°W |
Area | .02 acres (0.0081 ha) |
Built | 1941 |
Built by | Worcester Lunch Car Company |
NRHP reference No. | 100007075 [1] |
Added to NRHP | October 25, 2021 |
The Donwell's Diner-Worcester Lunch Car Company Diner No. 774 or Miss Lorraine Diner is a historic dining car located at 560 Mineral Springs Avenue (Rhode Island Route 15) in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, although much of the diner's existence has been in Connecticut. Through various new locations and owners, it has also been known as Squeak's Diner, as Drake's Diner, as Donovan's Diner, and as The Hotel Diner. [2]
The diner was originally known as Donwell's Diner in Hartford, Connecticut. This is a Worcester Streamliner dining car built in 1941 by the Worcester Lunch Car Company, and was located at 357 Asylum Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut across from the Hotel Bond. [3] The name was said to be a portmanteau of the owners' names, J. Edward & Edith Donnellan and Chester L. Wells. In the summer of 1949, it was bought by Elliot Drake and John J. Hibben, and renamed as Drake's Diner. Drake was arrested in 1953 for failing to pay his employees, and the diner was renamed as Donovan's Diner. By the mid-1950's it was bought by George Swan, and renamed The Hotel Diner. [2]
In 1956, the diner was auctioned off and moved to Kensington, Connecticut, where it remained inoperative for a decade. In 1969, it was bought in another auction by Ida and Stanley “Squeak” Zawisa, who moved it to 190 East Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut, where it operated as Squeak's Diner until 1997. [2] [4]
The diner was purchased by filmmaker and diner enthusiast Colin Strayer in October 2003, who intended to move it to temporary storage near his home in Syracuse, New York. [5] Discovered in a field in Middletown as part of another failed restoration attempt, it was later sold to another diner enthusiast named Jonathan Savage, who then moved it to Pawtucket at the Lorraine Mills Textile Manufacturing Complex along RI 15, where it remained dormant for more than nine years before opening on January 28, 2020. [6] [7] [8]
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. [1] [9]
Pawtucket is a city in Providence County, Rhode Island. The population was 75,604 at the 2020 census, making the city the fourth-largest in the state. Pawtucket borders Providence and East Providence to the south, Central Falls and Lincoln to the north, and North Providence to the west. The city also borders the Massachusetts municipalities of Seekonk and Attleboro.
A diner is a type of restaurant found across the United States and Canada, as well as parts of Western Europe. Diners offer a wide range of foods, mostly American cuisine, a casual atmosphere, and, characteristically, a combination of booths served by a waitstaff and a long sit-down counter with direct service, in the smallest simply by a cook. Many diners have extended hours, and some along highways and areas with significant shift work stay open for 24 hours.
The Pawtucket Red Sox, known colloquially as the PawSox, were a professional minor league baseball club based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. From 1973 to 2020, the team was a member of the International League and served as the Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. The PawSox played their home games at Pawtucket's McCoy Stadium as the only professional baseball team in Rhode Island, and won four league championships, their last in 2014. Following the 2020 season, the franchise moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, to become the Worcester Red Sox.
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The New York and New England Railroad (NY&NE) was a railroad connecting southern New York State with Hartford, Connecticut; Providence, Rhode Island; and Boston, Massachusetts. It operated under that name from 1873 to 1893. Prior to 1873 it was known as the Boston, Hartford and Erie Railroad, which had been formed from several smaller railroads that dated back to 1846. After a bankruptcy in 1893, the NY&NE was reorganized and briefly operated as the New England Railroad before being leased to the competing New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in 1898.
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The Connecticut Company was the primary electric street railway company in the U.S. state of Connecticut, operating both city and rural trolleys and freight service. It was controlled by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, which also controlled most steam railroads in the state. After 1936, when one of its major leases was dissolved, it continued operating streetcars and, increasingly, buses in certain Connecticut cities until 1976, when its assets were purchased by the state government.
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O'Rourke's Diner is a diner located in the Main Street Historic District in Middletown, Connecticut.
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William R. Walker was an American architect from Providence, Rhode Island, who was later the senior partner of William R. Walker & Son.
Northup Avenue Yard is a rail yard located in Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in the United States. The location has been the site of a rail yard since at least 1899. It was significantly expanded by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad between 1918 and 1921 and made into a hump yard. The hump was removed around 1970, after Penn Central Transportation Company took over the New Haven in 1969. Under Penn Central, the yard was downsized and the hump removed. Conrail superseded Penn Central in 1976 and sold off the yard to the Providence and Worcester Railroad in 1982.
Rhode Island FC is an upcoming American professional soccer club located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The club will debut in the USL Championship on March 16, 2024 against New Mexico United.