Photo: Diane Bondareff Photography/Diane Bondareff
The Wythe Diner, which has had many lives since it first opened in 1968, has gone to diner heaven. On Saturday, the railcar on the corner of Wythe and North Third was lifted like a baby by a giant crane, dropped onto a flatbed truck, and driven to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it will live out the rest of its days as a movie and TV set for Steiner Studios.
The diner is prepared for liftoff.
Photo: Diane Bondareff Photography
The diner is lifted.
Photo: Diane Bondareff Photography
Onlookers on Wythe Avenue.
Photo: Diane Bondareff Photography
Off the diner goes.
Photo: Diane Bondareff Photography
Sandy Stillman, who bought the Wythe Diner in 1997, sold the lot this summer to a developer for $12.5 million — an apartment complex is going up on the land. (According to the New York Post, the LLC that bought the lot is associated with Williamsburg-based developer Yoel Schwimmer.) But Stillman wanted the diner, which has been everything from a regular diner to the first wave of fancy-ish restaurants in Williamsburg to a La Esquina outpost to a Chanel pop-up, preserved somehow. “The diner is my stainless steel or inanimate child in a way,” Stillman said.
The solution, it seems, was to move the entire 50-ton diner to the film studio. The whole thing was a spectacle, obviously — people lined up to watch it go. (“Have you ever seen a floating diner?” a child can be heard saying in one of the videos shared of the move.)
The diner arrives at its new home.
Photo: Diane Bondareff/AP Content Services for Steiner Studios
Life as a film set isn’t entirely new to the diner — it had previously been used as a location in movies like Men in Black 3. “I wasn’t in the market for a diner,” said Doug Steiner, new guardian of the historic diner. “But it just seemed like a great thing to preserve it.”