THE ARCHIVE / Themes
Restaurants.
Roadside restaurants sell an anticipated experience before they serve a meal. An enormous fish, a familiar domestic shape or a carefully lettered name can give a passerby something to remember. Look for the relationship between the promise outside and the practical entrance below it. These photographs bring together restaurants of many scales, from buildings that become their own advertisements to places whose personality rests in a single sign.
756 photographs
1–24 / 756
Adobe Diner, Route 64 & 285, Tres Piedras, New Mexico

Old gas station (Tower-Lite Restaurant and Tavern), St. Joseph Avenue, Evansville, Indiana

Leaning Tower of Pizza, Quincy, Massachusetts

Tower of Pizza, vertical view, Route 22, Green Brook, New Jersey

Mickey's Diner (1937-39), 36 W. 9th Street, St. Paul, Minnesota

Diner (American and Korean food), Route 27, Columbus, Georgia

Miss Bellows Falls Diner, side view, Bellows Falls, Vermont

Stork Cafe, 3rd Street, Route 66, Winslow, Arizona

Highway Diner, Route 66, Winslow, Arizona

Diner, Pleasant Street, Fall River, Massachusetts

Wellsboro Diner, by dusk, Route 6, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania

Wellsboro Diner at day with neon, Route 6, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania

Scotty's Diner (1942), side view, Route 30, Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania

Modern Diner, diagonal front detail, Dexter Avenue, Pawtucket, Rhode Island

The Lunch Box, Cimarron Avenue, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Royal Diner, side view, Route 28, north of Kingston, New York
![Central Diner, Bank Street, Poughkeepsie [i.e. Peekskill], New York](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/mrg/00100/00112r.jpg)
Central Diner, Bank Street, Poughkeepsie [i.e. Peekskill], New York

Elm Diner, Route 32, Kingston, New York

K & J Dairy, 11600 Livernois, Detroit, Michigan

Gary's ice cream, N. Main Street, Jacksonville, Florida

Walt's Dairy Bar, Route 10, Saint Regis, Montana

Daisy Queen ice cream, N. Main Street, Greenville, South Carolina

Wheeler's Coney Island, drive-in, Route 10, Deposit, New York
