Last Days of Market Diner

This summer I reported that the Market Diner would be closing. Later reports gave the place six months to a year to live. Turns out, it was only four months. We now hear the diner's final day will be this Sunday, November 1.


photo: Karen Gehres

Reader Karen Gehres sends in a photo of a notice put up in her building at Manhattan Plaza. "Enjoy it while you can and say goodbye," reads the sign. "Yet another excellent and reasonably priced neighborhood restaurant bites the dust."

I called the diner and was told they will go through the weekend. Their last day will be Sunday, November 1.

Yet again, it's not biting the dust because business is bad, or because it's not a viable business, as the folks in City Hall might want us to believe. Anytime I've gone by the Market Diner, the place was packed. People love it.

It's dying because of development. It's dying because of the Hudson Yards Effect. It's dying because Joseph Moinian’s Moinian Group bought the property and evicted the diner so they can put up a luxury tower. It's dying because small businesses in this city are completely unprotected and utterly vulnerable to the whims of landlords.



Karen adds that the Garden Center next door will also be destroyed. She says they're already "moving everything off the premises today."

The Market Diner has been on this site since 1962. It's a beautiful, unique piece of mid-century Googie architecture in a city filling up with banal, carbon-copy glass buildings. Another great loss--when we're losing too many diners as it is.

If you're sick and tired of the vanishing, write to the mayor and council speaker. It's easy, just visit #SaveNYC and click a few buttons. You'll feel better about yourself if you do.