16 minute read
Host of the Highways
THE RISE, DEMISE, AND RETURN
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By Rich Ratay
Golden Arches. Green mermaids.
Freckled schoolgirls with pig tails. Our modern highways are lined with memorable icons beckoning motorists to pull over for a quick bite or refreshment. But long before any of them, road-weary families on their way to distant destinations looked for another familiar fixture along
America’s arteries — the bright orange roof of Howard
Johnson’s.
Not long ago, those distinctive roofs were hard to miss — not just because of their unmistakable color, but because they could be seen just about everywhere. At the chain’s peak during the 1970s, more than 1,000 Howard Johnson’s
Restaurants and 500 Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodges awaited travelers across North America.
However, like fake wood-paneled station wagons, the success wouldn’t last. While tired travelers can still check in to a more modest number of Howard Johnson hotels, the chain’s once-beloved restaurants and their signature orange roofs have vanished from the landscape.
Still, the memories remain. Fond recollections of smartlyappointed orange-and-teal dining rooms with sparkling soda fountains, platters of crispy clam strips and creamy mac ‘n’ cheese, and of course, freezer cases filled with 28 tantalizing flavors of ice cream — all conceived by the man with the vision to create the first great chain of the
American highways.
Building an Ice Cream Empire
Many entrepreneurs built empires from very little. Howard Deering Johnson started with considerably less. Born in the Boston neighborhood of Dorcester in 1897, Johnson attended school only through the eighth grade before dropping out to help his father run the family’s thriving business, importing, and selling cigars. In the early 1920s, however, the company ran into trouble. The elder Johnson made a large advance payment for a shipment of Cuban cigars that arrived in port spoiled. The seller denied responsibility. When his father suddenly died not long afterward, Johnson found himself at the head of a floundering company, and $30,000 in debt.
Left with the responsibility of supporting his mother and three sisters, Johnson considered his options. Though dealt a bad hand, the young businessman still had much going for him.
“Despite only having an elementary school education, Johnson had the acumen of a business school graduate,” says Anthony Sammarco, Boston-area historian, and author of the book A History of Howard Johnson’s: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon. “He was smart and charismatic, a real presence in the room. He was also what today we’d call a ‘lifelong learner.’”
One lesson Johnson learned was that the cigar trade wasn’t for him. He liquidated his father’s company and tried his hand at another. In 1925, he purchased a small drug store in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Johnson quickly found that there was little he could do to entice more customers to buy the medicines and sundries for sale in the front of his store. But business was often brisk at the small soda fountain in the back. He realized that his ticket to success might be to offer truly exceptional ice cream — like the kind sold by a local pushcart vendor, an elderly German immigrant.
Learning the man planned to retire, Johnson offered the vendor $300 for his recipe. To Johnson’s delight, the man accepted. The secret to the ice cream’s rich deliciousness, Johnson learned, was doubling the usual amount of butterfat and using only allnatural ingredients.
But for Johnson that wasn’t enough. Toiling away in his basement with a hand-cranked machine, he perfected a vast assortment of distinctive flavors: coconut, macaroon, fruit salad, chocolate pudding, and more. Ultimately, Johnson emerged from his cellar with 28 tasty flavors, a number he believed represented “every flavor in the world.”
Young Howard Johnson had taken his first big step toward becoming THE Howard Johnson.
A Crash and a Jumpstart
Johnson’s decision to go all in on ice cream proved to be a scoop. Soon, the line of customers at his soda fountain stretched out the door. Sensing opportunity, Johnson opened stands at area beaches to sell his ice cream along with hot dogs and soft drinks. Within three years, he was selling 14,000 cones a day and grossing $240,000 a year.
The success of the stands emboldened Johnson to take his next step. In 1929, Johnson opened his first fullfledged sit-down restaurant. In addition to hamburgers, the restaurant’s menu featured “frankforts” (as Johnson called his hot dogs), macaroni and cheese, chicken potpies, and other dishes that today we might call “comfort food.” Johnson also included one more off-beat offering — “clam strips,” a New England favorite. It would become his signature dish.
Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge, Chicago, Illinois.
From the beginning, Johnson was a stickler about the quality and presentation of the food. As with his ice cream, he insisted meals were prepared fresh using only natural ingredients. “Howard Johnson’s offered good food at sensible prices,” says Sammarco. “But it wasn’t just the price, it was the quality. The meals were attractive on the plate and delicious.”
Word of Howard Johnson’s Restaurant spread fast, and the restaurant was a sensation. But just as Johnson laid plans to expand, he was dealt another major setback. The stock market crashed, initiating the Great Depression. Cash for financing dried up instantly. Rather than allowing the crisis to stunt his ambitions, Johnson was inspired to conceive perhaps his greatest idea — franchising.
While Johnson didn’t have the necessary funds to open another restaurant, a longtime family friend, Reginald Sprague, did. Johnson and Sprague reached an agreement. The wealthy Sprague would put up the capital to finance a new restaurant to be run by his son. Johnson would provide the food and supplies and, most importantly, allow the restaurant to use his increasingly famous name and logo — for a considerable fee, of course. Howard Johnson had created America’s first franchise agreement.
Located at the busy intersection of Route 28 and Route 6A in the popular tourist destination of Cape Cod, the new Howard Johnson’s became as successful as the original. Soon other eager investors were clamoring to reach similar agreements with him.
By 1935, the chain had grown to 25 locations.
Rise of an Icon
Johnson never made much money working for his father. But the experience of driving around America’s Northeast delivering cigars provided valuable insights that he would apply later. First, he learned how hard it was for travelers to find restaurants that could be relied upon to serve good food at inexpensive prices. The observation would strongly influence where his restaurants would be located.
“Johnson told prospective franchisees that if they couldn’t be on a major road or busy intersection, they shouldn’t bother,” says Sammarco.
Acting on his own advice, Johnson partnered with the Esso and Gulf Oil Companies in the early 1930s to purchase the exclusive rights to build restaurants in service plazas along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Ohio Turnpike, and New Jersey Turnpike.
Johnson’s sales experience also taught him the value of differentiation and branding. He designed the exteriors of his restaurants to resemble inviting colonial-style homes with dormers and central cupolas with clocks. Each cupola was topped with a weathervane conceived by artist John Alcott featuring Simple Simon and the Pieman from the popular nursery rhyme. The design would become the Howard Johnson’s logomark. Most importantly, Johnson demanded that the shingled roofs of his buildings were painted a vibrant orange, which he deemed “the best shade for attracting a motorist’s attention.”
Howard B. Johnson, the founder’s son and eventual head of the Howard Johnson Company would later say, “The orange roof saves us a lot of advertising bills. The orange roof is symbolic. People know exactly what they can count on when they see it.”
Travelers noticed the restaurants, all right. They also stopped. By 1940, more than 100 Howard Johnson’s lined the highways of the East Coast from Maine to Florida.
But like a decade earlier, just as the chain was stepping on the gas, it would encounter another roadblock. America’s entrance into World War II hit Howard Johnson’s like a bombshell. Leisure travel nearly ceased overnight. Gas and food became rationed. Diners stopped eating out. By 1944, all but 12 Howard Johnson’s Restaurants had closed. Johnson kept his company alive — barely — by providing food to military installations, defense plants, and schools near his remaining restaurants.
Also like a decade earlier, when the war was over, the adversity Johnson experienced helped him rebuild his company even stronger.
All Highways Lead to Howard Johnson’s
By the war’s end, Americans were eager to put hard times in the rear view. Blessed with a booming economy, paid vacations, and a bounty of shiny new steel-bodied station wagons, excited families hit the highways to explore the many attractions and boundless beauty of their great nation. Howard Johnson made it his mission to help them on their way.
In making a fresh start, Johnson believed his chain should have a fresh look. He hired Miami architect Rufus Nims to provide it. Nims’ style was sleek and modernist. He replaced the staid dormers and traditional clapboard siding of the original restaurants with sparkling floor-to-ceiling glass windows and chic white stucco walls. He transformed the colonial-style cupolas into teal space age pyramids set on low roofs of beaming orange porcelain. But the Simple Simon weathervanes remained, as did Howard Johnson’s appeal to travelers. By 1954, the chain boasted more than four hundred locations along America’s highways.
Still, Johnson wasn’t satisfied. While on his own trip to Florida, he stopped at his restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. During his meal, Johnson observed several families walk from the restaurant to retire to their rooms at the motel next door. He immediately realized his next step.
In 1954, Johnson opened the first Howard Johnson Motor Lodge — right where the idea had occurred to him, in Savannah. Like Kemmons Wilson’s Holiday Inns, launched a year earlier, Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodges offered travelers — especially budget conscious families — spacious, clean guestrooms boasting full bathrooms, air conditioning, televisions, and other amenities. Soon, Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodges became nearly as common along the nation’s highways as the chain’s restaurants.
When construction of America’s Interstate System began two years later, in 1956, Howard Johnson’s was poised to explode. Unlike with the turnpikes, the legislation creating the Interstate highways specifically prohibited service plazas. Instead, Johnson shrewdly purchased land near exit ramps on which to build his restaurants and motor lodges.
“Throughout the 1960s and 70s, the success of Howard Johnson’s was directly attached to the construction of the Interstates,” says Rich Kummerlowe, who runs “Under the Orange Roof,” a website dedicated to the history and legacy of Howard Johnson’s. “The chain appealed to people primarily because of standardization. You knew what you were going to get from Howard Johnson’s wherever you traveled.”
To ensure such consistency, Howard Johnson innovated a commissary system in which meals were created in central locations, then flash-frozen and distributed to restaurants for final preparation. In 1960, Johnson famously hired acclaimed chefs Pierre Franey and Jacques Pépin from New York’s ritzy Le Pavillon restaurant to oversee his kitchens. The duo introduced new menu items like chicken croquettes, while prepping and cooking vast quantities of food each day.
Throughout the 1960s, the growth of Howard Johnson’s was nothing short of meteoric. In 1961, when the company went public, the chain already included 605 restaurants and 88 motor lodges. Soon, the company was opening a new restaurant every nine days. By 1965, sales at Howard Johnson’s Restaurants exceeded those of McDonald’s, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken combined.
The orange roofs of Howard Johnson’s became a familiar sight across the country. During the period, the company opened several notable properties in Los Angeles and along Route 66. The Howard Johnson’s in Springfield, Missouri, was considered the crown jewel of its region. Now known as the Oasis Hotel & Convention Center, the property remains a popular hot spot for aficionados of the Mother Road.
“Howard Johnson’s became part of the fabric of American life just like baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet,” says Kummerlowe. “Everyone went to Howard Johnson’s.”
That is, until they didn’t.
The Orange Begins to Fade
In 1968, Howard Deering Johnson retired from the company he founded. A decade earlier, he’d already turned the reins over to his son, Howard Brennan Johnson. Despite overseeing a period of tremendous growth, the younger Johnson encountered major headwinds as he guided his father’s company into the 1970s.
The OPEC Oil Embargo of 1974 led to gas shortages and recession at a time when the company depended on road travel for 85% of its revenue. The company also faced intensifying competition from economy motel chains, and multiple fast-food players offering speedy drive-thru service. But the company’s greatest challenge may simply have been changing perceptions. A new generation saw Howard Johnson’s as the place where their parents went, with many joking that the chain offered “fast food served slow.”
After attempts to diversify and modernize failed, Howard B. Johnson sold the company to the British-based Imperial Group in 1980. Similarly unable to reverse the chain’s fortunes, Imperial sold the motor lodges to Marriott who in turn passed them on to Wyndham Worldwide.
Left essentially orphaned in the series of transactions, Howard Johnson’s Restaurant franchisees tried to soldier on. As the years passed, however, one location after another shuttered. Today, just one original Howard Johnson’s Restaurant remains open, in Lake George, New York.
Everything Old is New Again
While little more than memories remain of Howard Johnson’s once omnipresent restaurants, travelers can still
Howard Johnson’s restaurant entrance with its trademark weather vane. make their way to a hotel that bears the famous founder’s name. Now owned by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Howard Johnson Hotels (the ‘s’ was officially dropped from the name in the 1980s) boasts more than 300 locations around the world, including properties in China, Saudi Arabia, and even Cambodia. In 2012, the chain received an unexpected boost when it was featured on the HBO series Mad Men. In the episode, 1960’s ad executive Don Draper and his wife Megan head off to Howard Johnson’s flagship property in Plattsburgh, New York, on a “fact-finding boondoggle” as research for a pitch. Draper comes away impressed. Apparently, so did many viewers. Hoping to capitalize on the renewed interest, Howard Johnson Hotels and its individual hotel owners recently embarked on a $40 million effort to update and redesign guest rooms in the classic mid-century modern style. “The new look and feel seeks to celebrate our storied past, while looking to the future with modern amenities, playful design, and a re-imagined aesthetic that is distinctly Howard Johnson,” explains Clement Bence, Brand Vice President, Howard Johnson by Wyndham. “It’s fun, memorable and makes people smile.” Somewhere, Howard D. Johnson is no doubt among them.
AN AMERICAN STORY
Before Henry Ford standardized car manufacturing, it was difficult for the average person to afford a motor vehicle. Long distance road travel was not yet common, and America seemed a much larger country. However, the mass production of cars and the emergence of roads such as Route 66 created a breeding ground for much of what is familiar to us along the interstates we now use. In 1926, the same year that Route 66 was commissioned, four brothers — Arthur, Earnest, Eddie, and Ralph Whiting — noticed the rising demand for gasoline. With nothing more than a small car dealership, a few gas pumps, and some signs built of wood from their father’s lumberyard, the Whiting Brothers began their empire. They opened the first Whiting Bros. Service Station in St. Johns, Arizona, and soon had over 100 stations spanning across the west from Texas to California.
“The story of the Whiting Brothers is really tied to the evolution of the interstate system,” said Johnnie Meier, the Preservation Officer at the New Mexico Route 66 Association. “They were an integral part of the route. Every 50 to 60 miles you would see one of their stations.” The distinctive red-on-yellow signs were a famous trademark of the chain and easy to spot along the road. These signs soon became synonymous not only with the gas stations, but with gift shops, motels, and truck stops. The brothers reinvested what they earned to continue expanding their stations, and throughout the next few decades would venture into other business fields that helped support them through the Great Depression and World War II.
For many people, the Whiting Bros. signs are a reminder of the glory days of the Route. However, their rise tracks with the movement of people across America who were leaving behind Dustbowl ridden farms in the Midwest and searching for survival in California. The main goal of the brothers, as well as the slogan for their station, was to provide the best quality of gasoline for the cheapest price. Thanks to their access to cheap building materials and their early use of local oil refineries, they could keep their prices lower and would often provide discounts to their customers coming across the country. “They aggressively went after the Route 66 tourists and travelers,” Meier said, “But they always treated their customers like friends or family. That evokes a lot of memories.”
The brothers built a reputation around their stations where they cared about the well-being of their customer. They would lend out tools to fix vehicles and give away their old, used oil to families who may not have had the money to buy oil to keep their cars running. All of these efforts created a legacy that lasts to this day. When the Interstate Highway Act was enacted in 1956, Route 66 and, by proxy, the Whiting Bros. stations, began to decline. The interstates were much faster and more direct than the meandering Route, and they sadly bypassed many of the Whiting Bros. stations. In the 1990s the company officially closed or sold its remaining stations, but the Whiting name, and their propensity for business, has not gone away. Today, members of the Whiting family still run Kaibab Industries, a logging company that goes back to their roots. In 2021, only one station remains operating under the original Whiting Bros. signage along Route 66, located in tiny Moriarty, New Mexico. Sal Lucero started working for the Whiting Brothers in 1965 and moved to Moriarty in 1969 to run the station. He bought the property in 1985 and still provides car repair services, although he no longer sells gas. Lucero has spent much of his life working to preserve the station. In conjunction with the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program and local fundraising, the original Whiting Bros. signs outside Lucero’s shop were refurbished with new neon lights and relit on December 10th, 2014.
“As you drive through New Mexico, you still see the remnants, the big pole signs with the yellow paint,” Meier said. “Stopping at those stations is an important memory for many people. There’s a lot of emotion attached to it.” It’s hard to ignore the impact that the Whiting Brothers had on many of their customers. Their contributions to road travel will never be forgotten.
