Don Draper's New York City Blog: A Complete History of Howard Johnson's Restaurant and Lodge, Howard Johnson's by Don Draper

Present-day corporate logo of Howard Johnson's motor lodges.

Howard Johnson's is a U.S. chain of restaurants and hotels (now separate companies) which was founded in 1925 by Howard Deering Johnson when he borrowed $2,000 to buy a small corner drugstore in Wollaston, Massachusetts. It sold candy, newspapers and patent medicine.

History

After noticing that his soda fountain was the busiest part of his drugstore, Johnson decided to come up with a new ice cream. He eventually came up with 28 flavors and opened a beachfront ice cream stand. According to Johnson, "I thought I had every flavor in the world. The 28 flavors became my trademark."

Over the next few summers he added more beachfront stands, and decided to add hot dogs. His success was beginning to be noticed by others, and thus he was able to convince some bankers to lend him enough money to open a restaurant in Quincy, Massachusetts. This first Howard Johnson's restaurant featured fried clams, baked beans, chicken pies, frankfurters, and, of course, ice cream.

In 1929 the restaurant's popularity received a huge boost from an unusual set of circumstances. Boston's Mayor Nichols prohibited the planned Boston production of Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude. Rather than fight, the Theatre Guild moved the production to Quincy. The five-hour-long play was presented in two parts with a dinner break. Howard Johnson's was the best option available to hungry theatregoers, and hundreds of influential Bostonians flocked to the restaurant.

Johnson wanted to expand—but the stock market crashed in 1929.

In 1935, he persuaded an acquaintance to open another "Howard Johnson's" restaurant in Orleans on Cape Cod under one of the nation's first franchises.

Soon there were 17 Howard Johnson's restaurants and by the end of 1936 there were 39 more franchised restaurants.

By 1939 there were 107 Howard Johnson's restaurants along East Coast highways generating revenues of $10.5 million.

In less than 14 years, Howard Johnson directed a franchise network of over 10,000 employees, with 170 restaurants, many serving a million and a half people a year.

When the Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey turnpikes were built, Howard Johnson bid on and won exclusive rights to serve the hungry turnpike multitudes. There were 200 Howard Johnson's restaurants by the time of the United State's entry into World War II.

Howard Johnson's restaurant in Afton, Virginia.

Due to war rationing, by the summer of 1944 only 12 remained in business. Mr. Johnson managed to stay barely afloat by serving commissary food to war workers and army recruits.

By 1947, construction was under way or about to begin on 200 new Howard Johnson's restaurants that would stretch across the Southeast and Midwest. These were slightly smaller buildings than the prewar originals, but Howard Johnson still provided over 700 items, including fried clams, saltwater taffy and 28 flavors of ice cream. By 1951 Howard Johnson's sales totaled $115 million.

By 1954 there were 400 Howard Johnson's restaurants in 32 states. About 10% were company-owned turnpike restaurants that were extremely profitable.

Also in the 1950s, Howard Johnson's opened their first motel.

By 1961, the year the Howard Johnson Co. went public, there were 88 franchised Howard Johnson's Motor Lodges in 33 states and the Bahamas. That year there were also 605 restaurants, 265 of them company operated and 340 franchisee-operated. Johnson hired famed New York chefs Pierre Franey and Jacques Pepin to oversee food development at the company's main commissary in Queens, New York. Franey and Pepin developed recipes for Howard Johnson's signature dishes that could be flash-frozen and delivered across the country, guaranteeing a consistent product.

In 1959, the company founder, who still made his headquarters in Wollaston, Massachusetts, turned the reins over to his son, twenty-six year old Howard Brennan Johnson, who succeeded him as president.

Howard Deering Johnson died in 1972 at the age of 76.

In 1969 Howard Johnson opened the first Ground Round restaurant. Although Howard Johnson's kept expanding, reaching over 1,000 restaurants and over 500 motor lodges in 42 states and Canada by 1975, the 1970s marked the beginning of the end of the original Howard Johnson's concept. Over 85% of the company's revenues depended on automobile travel, and when the oil embargo of 1974 created nationwide gas shortages and inflated gas prices, more and more Americans kept their cars in the garage. The Howard Johnson model of serving pre-made food with high quality ingredients in traditional dining rooms was also costly compared to the innovations introduced by new fast food outlets like McDonald's, which designed its products and restaurants to appeal to families with young children in particular. Under Howard B. Johnson, the company attempted to streamline its operations and cut costs, but serving cheaper food with fewer employees eventually eroded the brand's reputation.

In September of 1979, Howard Johnson's accepted an acquisition bid from Imperial Group PLC of Britain. Imperial obtained 1,040 restaurants (75% company owned) and 520 motor lodges (75% franchised). In 1980 the restaurant chain was sold to the Marriott Corporation and all company-owned restaurants were changed to other brands. The lodging chain was sold to Prime Motor Inns.

In 1990, the Howard Johnson name and lodging system were sold to HJ Acquisition Corp., later to become known as Howard Johnson International, Inc. This new company was a subsidiary of Hospitality Franchise Systems Inc., or "HFS", which is now known as Cendant. The franchises, that were all that remained of the restaurant chain were acquired by Franchise Associates, Inc. In September of 2005, Cendant acquired the rights to Howard Johnson Restaurants from Franchise Associates. In March 2006, Cendant licensed the food and beverage rights to the Howard Johnson name to La Mancha Group, LLC.

According to HoJoland.com, only 5 Howard Johnson's restaurants remain in business as of late 2005. These restaurants are located in

Lake George, NY;

Lake Placid, NY;

Bangor, ME;

Asbury Park, NJ

(operates on a limited basis)

Waterbury, CT.

The landmark Times Square Howard Johnson's restaurant in New York City closed its doors on July 9, 2005.

Corporate logo of Howard Johnson's circa World War II, showing "orange roof" building, characteristic typeface, and "Simple Simon and the Pieman" logo.

Icon of popular culture

Throughout the 1940s, '50s and '60s, Howard Johnson's was an icon of popular culture. The orange-roofed buildings were as identifiable as McDonald's arches today, the slogan "28 flavors" as familiar as Baskin-Robbins' 31.

Howard Johnson's typified the best as well as the worst features of the national, uniform, standardized chain restaurant. A family on a trip looking for a place to eat in an unfamiliar area could always find a Howard Johnson's, it would always be acceptable, and if you happened to like fried clam strips you could be sure they would have them; but it represented boring uniformity as much as dependable familiarity.

Howard Johnson's lived up to its longtime slogans, "Host of the Highways" and "Landmark for Hungry Americans." In fact, its domination of turnpike locations and service plazas was so complete that people began to think of it as a place where they ate while on road trips because they had to, not a place that they went to at home because they wanted to. The nickname "HoJo," eventually officially adopted by the company, was as disparaging as it was affectionate.

The use of the Howard Johnson's name in the 1974 satirical western movie Blazing Saddles indicates the pervasiveness of the restaurant chain at the time. The movie, set in 1874 in the fictional city of "Rock Ridge", features a bogus "original" Howard Johnson's Restaurant, which offers "1 Flavor." Reference is made to "the orange roof on Howard Johnson's outhouse", and the joke is furthered as every citizen in town is surnamed "Johnson".

Howard Johnson's name also appeared in the Stanley Kubrick's classic science fiction movie '2001: Space Oddessy' and was depicted as 'Howard Johnson's Earthlight Room'.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. sends up the pervasiveness of the orange-roofed restaurants in the title story of his 1968 anthology Welcome To The Monkey House, in which he suggests "ethical suicide parlors" located next to every Howard Johnson's in an overpopulated future.

Building designs

The Howard Johnson's company had about 5 distinct building designs for its restaurants and 3 different designs for the gate lodge lobbies over the course of the company's existence. These were:

Restaurants

Colonial House design - This pre-and-post-World War II design was modeled after the company's home state of Massachusetts and the design of the state's many residential homes of the time. The only difference was the adding of the orange roof.
Nims design - This design was introduced in the late 1950's to modernize the company's image, and to reflect the changing times in America. It was designed by architect Rufus Nims.
Concept 65 - This was one of the more discreet building designs. It was only used at a handful of locations. It was also the largest of the restaurant concepts.
T Shaped design - It is hard to tell if this was the actual terms used for this design, but it is pretty self explanatory. They were basically smaller versions of the Concept 65 design, with a shorter pitched roof.
Mansard - The 1970's brought on the last of the original company's building of Howard Johnson's restaurants. By this time, the company was more focused on its motor lodges and other restaurant concepts. This was also the least popular style of HJ Restaurants, because it didn't have the same charm and familiar feeling as the older restaurants did.

Motor Lodges

Ranch gate lodge - This ranch style house design on the motor lodges lobbies were designed by HJ restaurant architect Rufus Nims and Karl Koch. This design was eventually dropped in favor of the A Frame design.
A Frame gate lodge - This was the most popular and most recognized design of the motor lodge lobbies. It was used for at least 20 some years, and came in many different forms, including drive under canopies, and other motor lodges had only one of the A frames gables sticking out of the building.
Mansard - This was the last of the motor lodge lobby designs for the HJ Company. This was to tie in with the mansard restaurants.

Howard Johnson's was featured in Mad Men when @DonDraper took Megan Draper to Plattsburgh, NY. and Here.

"Far Away Places" is the 6th episode of the 5th season of the American television drama series Mad Men and the 58th episode of the series overall.

Shortly after they were met by Dale Vanderwort, Don tried to get Megan to eat some orange sherbet and it went straight to hell from there. Rod's Diner in Los Angeles was used as the setting for this scene.