Howard's End

We lost our HoJo's about ten days ago. I say "our" HoJo's as it was the last Howard Johnson's restaurant in Connecticut, one of four in the world. Open since 1957, the Waterbury eatery was of the classic mid-1950s style designed by Rufus Nims, but with the later stylized cupola atop a signature orange roof, although it advertised some very un-HoJo-like entertainment.

Howard Deering Johnson ran a small drug store in Wollaston, Massachusetts, south of Boston. He acquired a recipe for high butterfat content ice cream, which proved so popular that he opened a beachfront stand offering 28 flavors. More beachfront stands followed, and in 1929 he opened a sit-down restaurant in Quincy. In 1932 he made franchising history by licensing a friend to open the second HoJo's restaurant in Orleans, on Cape Cod. By 1939 there were more than 100 restaurants; in 1979 when Johnson's son sold out to Imperial Group PLC there were more than 1000 restaurants and 520 motor lodges across the United States.

My region is a hotbed of former HoJo's. Oldest is the New London store, dating from the early 1940s and now an Italian restaurant. Retaining its period curved roof (now painted green), it has been updated by removal of the original dormer windows and cupola and addition of a green-toned stone front that was a 1960s HoJo feature. Original eyebrow dormers on the east wing remain, however.

Across the river in Groton, a building born as a HoJo's, then converted to the companion chain Ground Round, is now a bank. Another few miles east in Mystic, the HoJo's was converted to a Bickford's Grille, but retained the stone front where the anchors for the Simple Simon logo could still be seen. The youngest southeastern Connecticut Howard Johnson's is the most distressed. Standing vacant near the Rhode Island border, it's an example of the late "mansard style" HoJo's. Most recently an independent restaurant, it's been seeking a new owner for years.

There's a cult following for HoJo nostalgia out in cyberland. Fascinating websites include HoJoLand and Under the Orange Roof. The Nahant, Massachusetts, community pages include many historic photos of Howard Johnson stands and restaurants. The only remaining restaurants are in Bangor, Maine, and Lake George and Lake Placid, New York. Howard Johnson Motor Lodges abound, but they were split off from the restaurant business years ago.

Alas, progress keeps passing us by. The Mystic Bickford's is now closed, undergoing renovations that will make it all but unrecognizable. Dennis David stopped by the Waterbury eatery the other day as the new sign was going up. All vestiges of HoJo's, save for the orange roof and base of the cupola, are now gone. He and I went there for dinner in January after a gig at the Golden Age of Trucking Museum in nearby Middlebury. I had fried clams. They were just as I remembered them.