Tale of the tee: By-Pass Diner
The By-Pass Diner started in a converted Hershey trolley car before moving into a classic stainless steel building.
Consuming too many greasy burgers and fries can be bad for the heart, but the originators of the By-Pass Diner weren’t trying to be funny with their choice of name.
Coronary bypass surgery wasn’t performed until the 1960s.
Rather, when the diner opened in 1939 at 20th and Herr streets in Harrisburg in a converted Hershey Transit No. 8 trolley car, the owners’ point of reference was the nearby Route 22 bypass project.
The new By-Pass Diner Tee is the latest in our series of throwbacks honoring brands and businesses of the past in south-central Pennsylvania.
I’ve been unable to find any newspaper coverage from the diner’s debut. I’d like to learn more about how the trolley-to-eatery conversion came about.
Mostly what I uncovered were help-wanted ads: high school senior for counter work (May 1942); dishwasher “white or colored wanted at once” (September 1942); waitress wanted, “good wages, no Sunday work” (November 1944).
Good help would have been in strong demand as competition heated up before, during and after World War II. Among the new diners opening in the area:
Club Diner, 17th and Derry streets, Harrisburg (May 1939)
Porter’s Diner, 3rd and North streets, Harrisburg (December 1939)
Capitol Diner, 615 N. Cameron St., Harrisburg (October 1940)
Lemoyne Diner, Market Street, Lemoyne (May 1941)
Pike Diner, Route 11 near Carlisle (July 1941)
Palace Diner, 2nd and State streets (November 1943)
Riverview Diner, 4005-07 N. Front St., Harrisburg (April 1946)
In 1953, the By-Pass Diner traded in its original trolley for a classic new factory-manufactured stainless steel DeRaffele building.
The diner remained in the latter for decades, gaining a modicum of celebrity in the process.
Bypass that inspired the By-Pass Diner
A graphic on the front of the Harrisburg Telegraph in November 1933 explains the path of the Route 22 bypass project.
Seen in a soap opera
A New Englander visiting Harrisburg in 1980 happened upon the By-Pass Diner. Larry Cultrera snapped a photo of its exterior and never looked back, cataloging nearly 900 diners since on his Diner Hotline Weblog.
In the mid-1980s, the By-Pass Diner appeared, along with various other Harrisburg landmarks, in the opening to the ABC-TV soap opera, “One Life to Live,” which was set in the fictional Philadelphia suburb of Llanview.
A new owner in 1988 renamed it the American Dream Diner. Eventually the dream faded and by 2021, the diner welcomed Harry’s Bistro, which soon closed.
In 2023, the diner was slated for demolition to make way for a convenience store. A local insurance agent and long-time diner customer bought the building and moved it to a vacant lot across the street, next to the former Pennsylvania State Police headquarters.
It faces an uncertain future, but the new owner envisions the diner building as part of a bigger project.
The By-Pass may have been bypassed itself, but new roads have been known to open for classic diners.
The aforementioned Porter’s Diner later became Seybold’s Diner and then the East Shore Diner. It was forced to close in 2022 to make way for the Interstate 83 widening project.
Its owners moved it to the West Shore and changed its format. The Silver Scoop ice cream shop in Mechanicsburg is expected to open in summer 2024.
Here’s hoping that a similar sweet comeback story can be written about the By-Pass Diner.