On Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at 4:00:26 PM UTC-5, Phil Kane wrote:   
      
   >I certainly remember the Howard Johnson there (late 1940s)...   
      
   In Phla, several former Howard Johnson restaurants are now diners.   
   They're basically the same, although the interiors are now earth   
   tones instead of 1960s pink.   
      
   There was a weird 1960s movie, I think with Tippi Hedren, where she   
   was a con artist thief.  She would gain employment as a bookkepper, then   
   run off with the money.  In this film, her boss catches her, and takes her   
   for a ride.  They stop at a H/J's on the highway.   
      
   Howard Johnson's did not have the same urban penetration as Horn   
   & Hardart's.  But I could see a HoJo as more appropriate as a pier   
   place with its ice cream, burgers, and other dishes.  Indeed, I think   
   one of the very last HoJo's was on the boardwalk at a beach.   
      
   One in Villanova was torn down and replaced by an office complex, I guess   
   the land was valuable.   
      
   IMHO, FWIW, H/J declined in the 1970s after its founder died.  I suspect   
   he ran a one-man show and left poor succession.  However, like H&H, that   
   type of restaurant wasn't competitive with changing consumer tastes of   
   the 1970s.  Fast food became popular.  People on the go no wnated to stop   
   and take a break for a meal, they wanted to eat up, gas up, and go.   
      
   Today, most turnpike rest stops have been converted to fast food courts,   
   little, if any traditional sit down waitress service.   
      
      
      
   > Oh yes!  I posted my reminiscences of that grade crossing a while ago   
   > both here and on the Railway Signaling Yahoo group.  I can dig it out   
   > if desired.   
      
   Thanks, but it's probably in the google archives.   
      
      
   > As the crowded tenements of ENY deteriorated but welcomed new   
   > immigrants, the existing first-generation residents moved into the new   
   > Canarsie housing.  Some were built on open land that was created by   
   > landfill.  Many family friends moved there in the late 1950s and early   
   > 1960s.   
      
   The immigrant migration out of the Lower East Side to less crowded   
   quarters makes for a fascinating history.  Subways played a key role   
   in encouraging development   
      
   A great many apartments were built in the city in the 1920s as the   
   next stop for Lower East Side folks.  To them, those new apartments   
   were paradise--brighter, airier, and roomier than the tenements.   
   But after WW II, the 1920s housing became obsolete and people moved   
   again to postwar housing or even to the suburbs.   
      
   Some of the 1920s housing had themes, such as the PBS special on the   
   communist community in the Bronx; others were co-operatives built   
   by unions for their members.   
      
   Some sections were affluent, such as the Grand Concourse luxury    
   apartments.  I think Gary Marshall and Penny Marshall grew up there.   
      
   In the film, "The Pawnbroker", they show his family living in a nice   
   suburban house.  By 1962 standards, it was very nice, but 50 years   
   later that house looks small and dumpy.  Amazing how things change.   
      
   In Phila, the Logan area was built on landfill.  The transit company made   
   money transporting the fill to the area*.  Unfortunately--as they discovered   
   70 years later--the landfill, basically trash and ash, was unstable.  Block   
   after block in the    
   neighborhood collapsed, and the city had to buy up many houses only to   
   demolish them.  Now it's all empty.   
      
   Ref "Utility Cars of Phladelphia" by Harold E. Cox.   
      
      
   > In San Francisco such illegal conversions were called  "mother-in-law   
   > apartments".  At least there, the trend became to tear down the   
   > post-war single family two-story row house and put up a genuine   
   > three-story three-family "set of flats" to use the local term.  It   
   > became so egregious that an ordinance was passed limiting the number   
   > of such conversions that could be made per year.    
      
   That is a problem in some old towns that have become desirable--a few   
   modest single houses are bought and demolished, replaced by a giant house.   
   It's happening in some old parts of Staten Island.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)