After driving through College Park, Maryland and seeing a lot of changes—new buildings, new streetlamps, road work, etc.—I explored the area on Google Maps to see what other little things I might notice.

I found this new-ish restaurant called Little Blue Menu—sort of quasi-fancy fast food—and I couldn’t recognize the building or the stretch or Route 1/Baltimore Avenue that it’s on. And that’s after living here for two years and driving up and down this strip many, many times.

The building is actually barely changed outside of the color scheme. Do you know what it was?

Here’s the same view in 2018 (as you can see, the big new apartment building is pretty recent too):

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reused Applebee’s building! Or rather, I probably have, but haven’t noticed or it’s been too altered to identify it.

It’s interesting how subtle the elements of a brand-centric building can be. Consultants and designers probably have a reason for every detail, and yet how many people are going to choose Applebee’s over a competitor because something about the sign or the roofline calls out to them?

You can see why the Golden Arches are such a valuable logo/trademark. Very few companies have an image that perfect from a branding perspective.

This last weekend my wife and I were in Staunton, Virginia, which has one of the loveliest old downtowns I’ve ever seen, and a perfectly classic American sprawl ring on the edges.

I just want to point this out—notice in the College Park picture, the Applebee’s comes up against the sidewalk, with parking on the side/back. That makes it pleasant to walk past, but also easy to drive to. Look at this strip outside downtown Staunton, which of course is typical of American car-oriented commercial strips:

Notice how the buildings look kind of stranded, some of them kind of fronting the road but not forming any kind of “streetscape” together. This is not good or bad, per se; this is basically just scaling commerce to the speed of the car, rather than the speed of walking. I think you could argue this pattern is “natural” in the sense that it arises when “customer” and “motorist” are synonymous.

Anyway, we ate here, which I think must have originally been some chain restaurant:

It actually sort of resembles an Applebee’s; I was guessing it was probably built as some kind of steakhouse, because it has a vague Old West look. For many years it was a Chinese buffet. I wasn’t able to find out what it was, but in looking for old steakhouse chains in Staunton, this one, just a couple buildings down the strip, came up:

Kline’s Dairy Bar is a local frozen custard chain. When I saw this building, I thought it might have been a Red Barn, and old fast food chain. But here you go:

The original shingles were there years ago, too!

I’m curious about those garage doors, and whether Kline’s added them, or whether they took this building over from an auto shop in between its steak and ice cream days. The doors pull up to make a semi-outdoor seating area.

I can critique the way the buildings fill the lots here, but I’d be more than happy to sit on that patio with a cup of frozen custard, you know.

Related Reading:

Didn’t Used To Be A Pizza Hut

Doomed Restaurants

Suburban Grids

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