Whatever happened to the Shawmut Diner?

A crane several stories tall rolled to the highest point at the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction campus in North Dartmouth early this month, lowered a hook and started a big lift. The old Shawmut Diner, 30 tons of it, was on to its next chapter — in Connecticut. 

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But not without a struggle.

As it turned out, the diner that held forth in New Bedford’s North End from 1954 to 2014 was 10 tons over the estimated weight, beyond the crane’s lifting capacity. So the crew took it one end at a time, spending a work day loading the 54-foot-long structure onto a trailer.

What’s another eight or 10 hours in such a journey?

It began a decade ago, when the shuttered diner was lifted off its blocks and carted from Shawmut Avenue to the jail on Faunce Corner Road. It’s been sitting there all this time, awaiting developments. 

The voices that filled the Shawmut for decades were gone, but conversation outside continued — about what would become of the diner that was accepted onto the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

There was a story that the owners had donated the diner to the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office in 2014 for a possible occupational training program for inmates. When that didn’t happen, there was talk about how maybe some local buyer would breathe new life into a sentimental favorite. 

Built in New Jersey in 1953, opened in New Bedford in 1954, the Shawmut could accommodate 76 patrons. Here was the sort of place where local politicians would stop in to meet voters during campaign season. Where the community in any season could drink coffee and hear itself. Where cops paid half price and no clergy member’s money was any good. 

It was a business, sure, but that was only part of it, as Phil Paleologos, former Shawmut owner and former talk-show host on WBSM Radio, said.  From 1981 to 2014, he and his wife, Celeste, ran the place for a couple years, then owned it. 

He was sitting in a booth at Jake’s Diner in Fairhaven — another chrome-skin eatery from the Fifties — as the old Shawmut was poised to open its next life. 

“You know when you’re part of the community when people come in and start sharing what’s happening in their family,” said Paleologos, recalling conversations with regular customers. “You’re part of that golden thread.”

He’s hoping now that a thread can continue to unspool, albeit in another community, perhaps about 80 miles down the interstate. 

As Paelologos spoke, the diner was still sitting on the flatbed trailer in North Dartmouth. Chris Horta, the Sheriff’s Office director of support services, said there was a delay in getting the diner on the road, as permits for its travel in three states had to be updated to reflect the greater weight.

Days later, the diner was on its way, arriving in Norwich on Aug. 22, according to a published report.

This followed considerable delay in getting the diner lifted onto the trailer on August 5. It had been more than a year since the Shawmut sold at an online auction for $22,200. 

The sale came months after the new Bristol County sheriff, Paul Heroux, had decided that it was time to move the diner, which was owned by the state. It was clear by then that the restaurant was never going to be part of an inmate training program. 

Paleologos said the plan, which he said he discussed with former Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson, would have been consistent with his idea of the diner as a community benefit. 

Fund-raisers for various causes were held there over the years, he said. It was a place to see familiar faces and catch up. The owners’ policy was to charge police officers half-price. In honor of Paleologos’ father, a Greek Orthodox priest, no clergy member ever saw a bill, he said.

Many of the regulars were there when they served the last meals on March 31, 2014. Some told a Standard-Times reporter that they’d been eating there since the 1950s. The place was part of their lives. One longtime customer said if the Shawmut was moved and reopened elsewhere, she’d follow. 

Feelings for the place were strong, but the best years for the business had gone by. Paleologos said the Great Recession took its toll on trade, which was probably strongest in the 1980s. 

If customer traffic flagged, demand was robust for the property: about an acre on a busy crossroads at Hathaway Road. In 2014, the owners sold the land to a company looking for a spot to build a Cumberland Farms. 

Now what? 

Evan Blum, who owns an architectural salvage operation with a showroom in upper Manhattan and a warehouse in Connecticut, has a plan. 

The winning bidder last year, Blum declined to return a call seeking comment. The Norwich Bulletin reported that the diner would be part of a larger redevelopment of a former factory that Blum bought in 2017.

Last fall, in an interview with a Rhode Island TV station, he said he wanted to restore the place as a working restaurant. 

Asked by WPRI about possible changes, Blum reportedly answered with two words: “Better cuisine.”

The place was always about more than the food, said Paleologos. He was glad to hear that somehow, somewhere, the Shawmut would have a new life as a gathering place. 

“It’s very important that the operation of the Shawmut Diner continues, whether in New Bedford or Norwich,” he said. “It should serve as a symbol of connection.”

Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.

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