From homefries to Hollywood.
The beloved Wythe Diner in Williamsburg was sold and will be relocated to Steiner Studios, where it will spend the rest of its days starring in motion pictures and film.
For years, the railcar diner on Wythe Avenue in the trendy nabe played a supporting role in movies like “The Good Shepherd” and “Men in Black 3” and will now be forever immortalized in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, The New York Times reported.
“We see it as a standing set, as opposed to a set that’s built for a production and torn down,” Doug Steiner, chairman of Steiner Studios, told the paper.
Steiner’s personal connection to the eatery made him want to preserve its history rather than build a diner set from scratch.
“That diner was one of the few places we would go to have lunch in the early days,” he said, adding, “That was before major gentrification.”
The Wythe Diner first opened in 1968 and operated under that name until the late 1980s. The old-school eatery was purchased by Sandy Stillman’s Blue Sky Diner Inc. in 1997 and was reopened under the name Relish until 2010.
A year later, it became the Mexican joint Cafe De La Esquina, the old-school diner’s final full-service restaurant iteration before it too shuttered in 2018.
In the years since, the 2,800-square-foot prefab has housed a short-lived Blank Street coffee shop and hosted pop-ups, including a Chanel fragrance event during fall fashion week in 2023, while being mostly vacant.
Over the next weeks, the ’50s style diner will be moved piece by piece to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where shows like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Inventing Anna,” and “Only Murders in the Building” have been filmed.
The property the diner sits on was sold by Stillman for $12.5 million to a real estate development company, which plans to build an apartment building on the lot.
Stillman praised the “above and beyond spiritual beauty, talent and desire to help save this shiny diner.”
The Wythe is not the only diner New York City has lost in recent years.
Hector’s Cafe, the iconic Meatpacking District diner featured in the movie “Taxi Driver”, shuttered its doors last month after 76 years of service. One year earlier, Astoria said goodbye to the Neptune Diner after 40 years of service.
Meanwhile, Williamburg’s other iconic — and nearly century-old — diner, Kellogg’s, has been given new life thanks to a buyer who revitalized the 24/7 spot after it went up for bankruptcy sale.
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