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Signs point to a new Melrose Diner, as demolition work begins in South Philadelphia

The first step: Signs have come down. They will be part of the new diner, which its owner said could open in "two, three years."

The closed Melrose Diner at 15th Street and West Passyunk Avenue as seen on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. Only a small sign at 15th Street and Snyder Avenue was visible.
The closed Melrose Diner at 15th Street and West Passyunk Avenue as seen on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. Only a small sign at 15th Street and Snyder Avenue was visible.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

One diner, to go.

The Melrose Diner in South Philadelphia will come down, bit by bit, as the owner plans to replace the landmark, one-story restaurant with a six-story apartment building with a new Melrose Diner on the ground floor.

Cranes on Tuesday went up at the newly fenced-in property on West Passyunk Avenue as workers dismantled and hauled off the Melrose’s distinctive outdoor signs, including a white coffee cup.

The Melrose has been closed since a kitchen fire last June.

In his first interview since plans for a new building were filed with the city last week, owner Michael Petrogiannis told The Inquirer on Wednesday that the demolition would be a slow process.

He said he would put the signs, as well as certain memorabilia from inside the diner, into storage. The signs and decorations will be incorporated into the new Melrose.

He had no timeline for either the demolition or the construction of the new building, and thought it could be “two, three years” away.

Playfully, Petrogiannis suggested that he would be glad to sell each sign for $1 million, “but then I’m making a new one, exactly the same thing.”

Petrogiannis, reached during a family trip to Greece, disclosed other aspects of the project, cautioning that all plans were tentative. “If I go to sleep tonight and I don’t get up tomorrow morning, I cannot guarantee you anything,” he said.

  1. An underground garage is planned to serve tenants of the 94 apartments that he intends to build over the diner.

  2. He said he would be working with developers, whom he would not identify, on the project.

  3. While the Melrose is closed, he said intends to keep open his nearby Broad Street Diner. He had obtained a demolition permit for that diner, at Broad and Ellsworth Streets, but now said his plans there were not final. “I can’t close both places,” he said. “I have 30, 40 people over there working. I don’t want these people to lose their jobs.”

  4. The new Melrose’s dining room would be about the same size — accommodating about 100 patrons. But table seating would predominate, since, he said, “people are looking for tables more than [counter] stools. They don’t like to sit at the stools anymore.”

As a 16-year-old in 1973, Petrogiannis was working aboard an oil tanker and jumped ship in Marcus Hook. He found work in the diner business, and now with his brothers owns or operates at least a half-dozen of them, including the Country Club, the Mayfair, and various Michael’s Diners. For two decades, he also owned the posh La Veranda on Penn’s Landing.

Petrogiannis bought the Melrose in 2007 from Richard Kubach, whose father, Dick, opened it on the triangle of West Passyunk Avenue, Snyder Avenue, and 15th Street during the Depression.

» READ MORE: From 2007: The Melrose Diner changes hands

Dick Kubach’s story was also an immigrant’s tale. He was working in the hardware business in Germany, and came to the United States in 1929 to learn English and improve his lot in life, according to a family history. Kubach went to work in a linoleum factory, but after he began to lose his hearing, he quit to work in a diner in North Philadelphia.

In 1935, Kubach took over a 19-stool diner at 1610 W. Passyunk Ave., naming it after a can of Mel’s tomatoes, which had a picture of a rose on the label. The story goes that Kubach asked a sign painter to start with the word Mel and to add a rose. The painter, though, lacked artistic skills and simply wrote the word.

In 1956, Kubach moved it a block away into the stainless-steel structure — built around a Paramount diner, in the parlance of diner lore. The senior Kubach died in 1998, just shy of his 91st birthday.

The Melrose was shut down in July 2019 by fire and reopened six weeks later after a renovation of its dining room. (The fire had started in a vent in an exterior-facing wall.)

In summer 2022, Petrogiannis obtained demolition permits for both the Melrose and Broad Street. But only weeks later, an early morning kitchen fire sent workers scrambling to safety.