A few times I’ve passed these buildings in Maryland—the first on Maryland 355 in Gaithersburg, and the second on Annapolis Road in Lanham—and I’ve always wondered what they used to be. I know I’ve seen the building type before, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

There’s no hint here; either you know it or you don’t, and I didn’t.

The Domino’s looks like a pretty natural fit, so at first I actually thought that was its original use, i.e. that this had always been a Domino’s. But a little searching determined that was definitely not the case.

I had assumed, even so, that it was some kind of fast food building. It just has that look: small, iconic, very simple and boxy with enough of a design quirk—the rounded windows and the cedar-shingle roof—to be noticed from the road. For some reason I had sub shop chain in my head, which also turned out to be wrong.

I took to Reddit and asked the folks at one of the commercial building history forums what these things were. A few ventured good but wrong guesses, but a lot of people knew it. The two best answers:

“Those are 100% old Pearle Visions”

“Definitely Pearle Vision from late 80s and early 90s.”

And with that, I remembered where I had seen this before. Here’s an original Pearle Vision outside my hometown of Flemington, New Jersey, an outparcel in what was once Flemington’s little indoor mall and is now a strip plaza. It is still operating as Pearle Vision too!

Unrelated, but just next door, is this:

And semi-related, Enterprise Rent-A-Car seems to like locating in existing buildings. Here’s one in Fairfax on U.S. 50 in a heavily remodeled gas station/auto garage (the corner window is likely original; the little door on the left was probably one of two bathrooms; the blank wall on the right was one or two garage bays):

And here was one in Woodbridge, Virginia, in a former Roy Rogers restaurant. It’s gone full circle and is now a burger restaurant.

It’s interesting how some companies insist on a model building or at least on a look, while others will take whatever’s there and cheap—including what was once some other company’s look!

But I bet that Domino’s building will never sell eyeglasses again.

Related Reading:

A Curious Hampton Inn

The Yugo in Yugoslavia

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