Tomorrow just about marks one year since the Vale-Rio closed. As depicted to the right, the diner currently sits in storage, a short distance from it's previous location at 494 Nutt Road, in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
The diner itself was built by Paramount in 1948. Affixed over an entrance or exit door should be the builder tag "Paramount Dining Cars." In later years they did business as Paramount Modular Concepts. We've even found reference to P M C Diners Inc. From what we can tell, the company is still around, however we are unaware of any recently built diners.
Other diner manufacturers in the mid to late 1940's such as Kullman (K), with their Challenger model, and certain Mountain View (MV) diners used glass blocks in their corners. Two examples are the former Victory Diner (K) pictured here and the Tastee Diner (MV) pictured here.
Although, this model built by Paramount is unique. In addition to the streamline exterior, it incorporates Art Deco elements. Below the windows at regular intervals are circular discs burnished into the stainless panels. A query of our diner database returned other Paramount built diners with the same patterned exterior. We've listed them below and included a link to a flickr picture of the diner.
Similar Paramount diners:
11th St. Diner in Miami Beach, Florida picture;
West Bay diner in Grand Marias, Michigan picture; and
the closed Dishes Restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut picture.
Please let us know if there are other similar diners out there that we've missed.
Development forced the Val-Rio's removal from the site it occupied since 1948. Currently its future is uncertain. As we receive information about the Vale-Rio, we'll post it here.
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We invite you to visit our flickr diner photostream.
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