Howard Johnson's - Last One [1954-2022] (Closed)
Lake George, New York
The restaurant chain, with its iconic teal-and-orange roofs and "28 flavors" of ice cream, was so well-known on the East Coast that when the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, all of its rest stops included a Howard Johnson's. By the early 1970s the chain had over 1,000 restaurants and 500 accompanying "motor lodges" nationwide.
Last Howard Johnson's.
Hot dogs were always served on toasted buttered rolls in little cardboard sleeves. The kids' menu could be converted into a paper baseball cap. Families on vacation would stop, eat, and sleep.
Even at its peak, changing tastes cut into Howard Johnson's profits. Fast food franchises bought all of the best real estate next to freeway exits. Vacationers bought their kids real baseball caps and fed them hamburgers.
By 2015 Howard Johnson's had only three operating restaurants. Dining in one of them was an exercise in visual nostalgia only; the corporation's food supply infrastructure had collapsed years earlier. The HoJo's in Lake Placid, New York, closed first, then the one in Bangor, Maine. The last Howard Johnson's, in Lake George, New York, shut its doors in May 2022.
