Bye Bye HoJos: Now Where Will I Get My Cocktails?

The Howard Johnson's at 46th and Broadway in Times Square is finally being torn down.

The land is being sold for over 100 million fried clams! I can't tell you how many times I've walked past that restaurant and smiled at the "cocktails" sign that encouraged you to come in and have "a decanter of Manhattan, Martini or Daiquiri". Of course I never went in because it looked a bit too seedy, a bit too 1970s Times Square for me. And I guess nobody else did either, not even the Broadway actors. Although this article inPlaybill says that the restaurant once employed Lily Tomlin as a Waitress andGene Hackman as a Maitre'd:

Howard Johnson's, one of the last functioning remnants of the rough-and tumble, Runyonesque Times Square of yesteryear, will be torn down sometime this year, the New York Post reported April 19.

The restaurant and the land it sits on, a prime site on the northwest corner of 46th Street and Broadway, was recently sold for "more than $100 million" by longtime owner Kenneth Rubinstein to Jeff Sutton's Wharton Acquisitions. Sutton plans to flatten the four-story edifice and replace it with a gleaming new retail outlet.

The Howard Johnson's was built in 1955 and is the oldest, continually operated business facing directly on Times Square. Its squat dimensions once fit in nicely with the low-scale, slightly down-at-heel architecture that for a long time characterized the area. But the real estate revival of the late 1990s saw it dwarfed by glass towers and glossy stores like Toys 'R' Us and the Virgin Megastore. Increasingly, the venerable old institution looked like an anachronism.

In the years following World War II, Times Square boasted not one, but three Howard Johnson's eateries (including one directly across the way, on Seventh Avenue). The restaurants -- one of the first to be franchised nationwide -- teemed with locals and tourists alike, and matched the homely qualities of other eating destinations of the era, such as Lindy's. In his recent book "The Devil's Playground," James Traub described how people would line up down the street to sample the trademark fried clams and ice cream.

Hey, how about a show about a bunch of old maitre'ds and waitresses coming back to the Howard Johnson's the night before it gets demolished, a la Follies? You could have songs like "Too Many Happy Hours", "Could I Leave You Without A Tip?" and of course, "I'm Still Here Waiting For My Fried Clams!".

A moment of silence, please.