The former Johnny B’s diner awaits transport Saturday to Cranston High School West, where construction students at the next-door Cranston Area Career and Technical Center are salivating at the prospects of restoring it.
The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers Kathy Borchers
01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 15, 2007
By Barbara Polichetti
CRANSTON — The Cranston High School West campus expanded by one building over the weekend — and this new classroom is more than 80 years old.
On Saturday, the old dining car that had long been the front half the popular eatery Johnny B’s was hoisted from its home on Cranston Street and trundled to the school grounds, where it will be a hands-on laboratory for students in the residential construction program at the Cranston Area Career and Technical Center.
“We thought it would be a wonderful project for the entire school, starting with the construction students who are going to restore it,” Suzanne Coutu, director of the regional vocational school, said yesterday. “They’ll be learning construction, but because this dining car dates back to the 1920s, the process will be very different than building something new and they will be learning many other skills such as historical investigation.”
The old dining car is now sitting in front of the Cranston West auditorium and next to the parking lot for the technical center. The domed structure, which reportedly started out as a horse-pulled lunch wagon serving workers at Cranston Print Works on Cranston Street, had to be moved because the city has acquired the land for a new branch of the Cranston Public Library. The library will be in the historic white clapboard meeting house that stood next to the diner for years.
For the past 17 years the diner, which also included a stone-block addition, was the home of Johnny B’s, a New Wave diner that offered home-cooked food with the substance of traditional diner fare but the added flourish of gourmet creativity. You could start your day there with a stack of traditional pancakes or opt for one of the many griddlecake variations concocted by restaurateurs David Baccari and John Esposito — including chocolate-chip or blueberry-and-banana.
Fans of the restaurant fought the land acquisition and the closing of Johnny B’s. Baccari and Esposito owned the business but not the dining car, which belongs to the American Diner Museum. Neither party owned the land, which was the property of the Cranston Print Works and had long been leased to the diner through a third party.
When the city purchased the property, the agreement carried the caveat that the land had to be clear of all buildings and liabilities.
Since last year, city officials had been looking for ways to rework the library plans so there would be enough space for the diner and parking, but in the end they could find no way to have room for both. Baccari and Esposito closed the restaurant in March.
Coutu said that over the winter she began talking to Daniel Zilka, director of the nonprofit American Diner Museum organization, which is based in Rhode Island, and the idea of having students restore the old structure was broached.
The dining car still belongs to the organization, she said, and it has not been determined if the school might someday be able to take ownership. One possibility is to keep the diner at the technical school to be run by the culinary arts students, Coutu said.
“A lot of things haven’t been decided yet,” she said, “but that’s one possibility that could end up involving the whole school — from our culinary students running the restaurant to our graphics students designing the menus and doing the advertising.”
In any case, the sight of the shabby old brown building perched in front of the brick auditorium gave many students and teachers a start yesterday morning. “A lot of people kept coming into the office and saying what is that?” Coutu said.
It didn’t take teachers long to start using it for instructional purposes, she added.
A few classes have already been scrutinizing the building, she said, and teacher Bill Carcieri, who will head the restoration project, has been happily providing details on 1920s-era construction.
Coutu said the project could not have worked without the support of the community, particularly Local 57 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which donated the time and equipment to move the diner. More help will probably be needed in the form of donated building materials, she said.
“For a long time this looked like it would never happen,” Coutu said. “But now there’s this old diner car on our front lawn.”
“We thought it would be a wonderful project for the entire school, starting
with the construction students who are going to restore it.”
Suzanne Coutu
Director, Cranston Area Career and Technical Center
Cranston
The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers Kathy Borchers
01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 15, 2007
By Barbara Polichetti
CRANSTON — The Cranston High School West campus expanded by one building over the weekend — and this new classroom is more than 80 years old.
On Saturday, the old dining car that had long been the front half the popular eatery Johnny B’s was hoisted from its home on Cranston Street and trundled to the school grounds, where it will be a hands-on laboratory for students in the residential construction program at the Cranston Area Career and Technical Center.
“We thought it would be a wonderful project for the entire school, starting with the construction students who are going to restore it,” Suzanne Coutu, director of the regional vocational school, said yesterday. “They’ll be learning construction, but because this dining car dates back to the 1920s, the process will be very different than building something new and they will be learning many other skills such as historical investigation.”
The old dining car is now sitting in front of the Cranston West auditorium and next to the parking lot for the technical center. The domed structure, which reportedly started out as a horse-pulled lunch wagon serving workers at Cranston Print Works on Cranston Street, had to be moved because the city has acquired the land for a new branch of the Cranston Public Library. The library will be in the historic white clapboard meeting house that stood next to the diner for years.
For the past 17 years the diner, which also included a stone-block addition, was the home of Johnny B’s, a New Wave diner that offered home-cooked food with the substance of traditional diner fare but the added flourish of gourmet creativity. You could start your day there with a stack of traditional pancakes or opt for one of the many griddlecake variations concocted by restaurateurs David Baccari and John Esposito — including chocolate-chip or blueberry-and-banana.
Fans of the restaurant fought the land acquisition and the closing of Johnny B’s. Baccari and Esposito owned the business but not the dining car, which belongs to the American Diner Museum. Neither party owned the land, which was the property of the Cranston Print Works and had long been leased to the diner through a third party.
When the city purchased the property, the agreement carried the caveat that the land had to be clear of all buildings and liabilities.
Since last year, city officials had been looking for ways to rework the library plans so there would be enough space for the diner and parking, but in the end they could find no way to have room for both. Baccari and Esposito closed the restaurant in March.
Coutu said that over the winter she began talking to Daniel Zilka, director of the nonprofit American Diner Museum organization, which is based in Rhode Island, and the idea of having students restore the old structure was broached.
The dining car still belongs to the organization, she said, and it has not been determined if the school might someday be able to take ownership. One possibility is to keep the diner at the technical school to be run by the culinary arts students, Coutu said.
“A lot of things haven’t been decided yet,” she said, “but that’s one possibility that could end up involving the whole school — from our culinary students running the restaurant to our graphics students designing the menus and doing the advertising.”
In any case, the sight of the shabby old brown building perched in front of the brick auditorium gave many students and teachers a start yesterday morning. “A lot of people kept coming into the office and saying what is that?” Coutu said.
It didn’t take teachers long to start using it for instructional purposes, she added.
A few classes have already been scrutinizing the building, she said, and teacher Bill Carcieri, who will head the restoration project, has been happily providing details on 1920s-era construction.
Coutu said the project could not have worked without the support of the community, particularly Local 57 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which donated the time and equipment to move the diner. More help will probably be needed in the form of donated building materials, she said.
“For a long time this looked like it would never happen,” Coutu said. “But now there’s this old diner car on our front lawn.”
“We thought it would be a wonderful project for the entire school, starting
with the construction students who are going to restore it.”
Suzanne Coutu
Director, Cranston Area Career and Technical Center
Cranston
