Pa. Diner Restoration Begins
By Elizabeth McNamara | Online Only | June 26, 2009
Serro's Diner will become part of the Lincoln Highway Experience Visitor Center
Credit: Lincoln Highway Experience Visitor Center
When Lou Serro, Jr. started working at his father's 1938 diner at the age of nine, customers came from miles away just to try the gravy.
"One thing about a diner that was nice is you had millionaires and you had bums, and they'd all be sitting at the counter, talking together, and nobody was better than anybody else," says Serro, now 81 years old. "You don't see that in the restaurants now. Nothing is like a diner."
Serro's Diner was stationed on the Lincoln Highway in Irwin, Penn., about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh. until 1957, when it moved south of Greenburg to serve as the Willow Diner until 1992. For years the diner sat in storage, but this summer it will undergo a museum-quality restoration.
"When the automobile was in its heyday, people were suddenly not restricted to train schedules; they were able to scoot around freely and be a pioneer all over again," says Olga Herbert, executive director of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor.
"The museum will hit the main things affiliated with highway travel: food, lodging and gas," says Herbert. "It's basically a recreation of what things were like in the 1930s."
When Serro's Diner is restored, in 2010, it will become a part of the Lincoln Highway Experience Visitors Center—a 15,000-square-foot building that will recreate the roadside culture of the early highways.
"These places were community centers; people came there to hang out," says James Kolker, a principal at Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, the architectural firm designing the visitors center. "[It was] an interesting time because it was the time between two great wars, the time that fell between the Victorian and Modern eras."
The 44-foot-long diner was decorated with four-inch, orange and black square tiles. The interior had a black-and-red checkerboard floor, an art deco backsplash, and 16 chrome stools that lined a 30-foot black and white marble countertop. Everything will be restored to its 1938 state.
This month the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor started a capital campaign to raise money for the museum's design and development. Serro's fabled gravy won't be available when the museum opens, but pie and coffee will be served.
"We thought to really experience a diner," Herbert says, "you need to be able to sit at the counter and be allowed to eat and drink something."
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Comments
Submitted by Rick M at: September 17, 2009
My Grandfather had a Clover Farm Store in Midway, just behind the Willow Crossing from 1913 to 1953. When that diner was opened up at Willow Crossing in the early 1960's some of my Grandfather's store equipment; a store scale and a slicing machine were used there. Question; has any of this equipment survived with the diner?? It would be great to know. Thankyou, Rick Myers
Submitted by Margaret Foster at: July 2, 2009
The 15,000-square-foot Lincoln Highway Experience Visitor Center is being built in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. It will also include a restored filling station and tourist cabins--and it is going for LEED certification.
Submitted by Jennifer at: July 1, 2009
Where is the Lincoln Highway Visitors Center? Or where is it planned to be built?
Submitted by Jayfar at: June 30, 2009
correction: the town is Irwin (not Erwin.)
Submitted by sunnybunny at: June 29, 2009
born in 1942 in west mifflin near kennywood......driving out route 30 to ligonier was our weekly sunday drive lots of wonderful memories of a different time.....our two children have inherited thier parents love of the sunday drive and thusly have been to 48/50 states...mostly as a road trip
Submitted by yalc.com at: June 26, 2009
The Dr. Pepper Museum has a recreated soda fountain where you can sit at the bar and drink old fashioned drinks.