White Mana

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The White Mana Diner is a New Jersey fast food restaurant in Jersey City. It was built as the "diner of the future" for the 1939 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, and touted as an "Introduction to Fast Food." The Tonnelle Avenue landmark, as well as the White Manna Diner in Hackensack, was manufactured by Paramount Diners of Oakland, New Jersey, in the late 1930s.

According to the web site "Diner Facts," "Paramount diners featured a distinctive curved roofline, and rounded glass block corners." The exterior of the small, front-rounded diner was originally white enamel with orange/red trim rather than stainless steel. The interior features a distinctive geometric-patterned tiled floor, circular steel counter in white with blue trim and chrome bar stools: "designed so the cook/server wouldn't have to walk more than three steps in any direction to cook a burger, draw a soda and serve a customer."

Louis Bridges owned five "White Manna" Diners in New Jersey. He purchased the diner of World Fair claim and brought it to Jersey City. It opened on June 2, 1946, offering ten-cent hamburgers, but no one can recall how or why the second "n" in the name was later dropped in the 1980s. Carhop service to five a.m., begun in the 1950s, was discontinued in the 1980s. The White Mana Diner, however, still remains open 24 hours a day, reportedly selling 3,000 hamburgers a week. The exterior of the diner was altered with brick construction when a dining room was added to the circular grill area.

The current owner Mario Costa, born in Portugal, bought the diner for $80,000 in 1979 from Bridges’ brother Webster. He had rented the diner to Costa but was going to raze the building. Costa worked at the diner sweeping the floor and cooking burgers to put himself through high school and Jersey State College (now New Jersey City University). In 1996, Costa decided to sell the diner and lot for $500,000, but when he found that the buyer intended to demolish the diner for a fast food franchise, he went to court and negotiated for the repurchase of the business at additional cost.

The Jersey City Historic Preservation Committee declared the diner a local landmark in 1997, which helps secure the preservation of the familiar building and the signage "HAMBURGERS SINCE 1946" and "CURB SERVICE."

[edit] References

"A Tale of Two Mannas." Weird NJ (Roadside Guide) 2003:36-37.
Diner Facts
Genovese, Peter. Jersey Diners. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8135-2350-8.
Genovese, Peter. New Jersey Curiosities. Guilford, CT: The Globe Pequot Press, 2003, ISBN 0-7627-2527-3.
Jim Krane, "White Mana Escapes Demolition by Becoming a Historic Landmark," New Jersey Online: March 21, 1997.