MELROSE DINER COLLECTION, 1938-1988, #489

History

The Melrose Diner (the second structure by that name) was built by the Jerry O'Mahony Company of Bayonne, New Jersey and placed in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at 1610 W. Passyunk Street. Constructed to the plans of owner Richard Kubach, a 33-year old German immigrant, the diner opened for business March 18, 1940. Kubach had been the owner of the predecessor diner at the same address which he had bought five years earlier and had quickly developed into a successful business.

The new diner with 54 seats had more than twice the capacity of its predecessor, cost $15,000 (less a 10% discount to Kubach for his planning) and was supplemented by a kitchen, bakery and storeroom. Under Kubach's skilled and enlightened management, the new diner rapidly acquired a reputation for excellent food and good service. It became a community fixture, open 24 hours a day and attracting industrial workers and merchants from the area as well as families and young people in the evenings.

In 1956, Kubach opened a third diner a few blocks from the original site and closed the older building. It remained vacant until 1959, when Jim D'Andrea, a construction foreman, bought the structure and moved it across the Delaware River to a site in Washington Township, Mercer County in New Jersey. This location on Route 130, a main highway between Philadelphia and New York, proved to be a good one for truckers as customers for the diner. D'Andrea and his son Gene leased the diner successively to more than a dozen different individuals in less than 20 years. Under this variety of managers and different names (although long-term patrons continued to call it the Melrose) the diner physically deteriorated; a fire in 1979 finally ended its serviceable life. D'Andrea boarded it up in the early 1980s. Click here to go to scope and content.

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