Michael T. Regan

The doors to Majestic Diner are locked tight, the parking lot is empty and weeds are growing along cracks in the foundation.

Few people would notice the modest restaurant trimmed in shiny silver with red awnings, set back from Roosevelt Boulevard, if not for a sign informing passing drivers, "This diner can be moved to your site."

But the sign isn't that unusual because diners actually evolved from lunch wagons to railroad dining cars to diners like the modular restaurants we know today. There were once 6,000 diners in the country and the Majestic is one of 2,500 still intact.

"It's pretty common for diners to move because that's how they were originally built," says Brian Butko, author of Diners of Pennsylvania. "They were made in a factory and transferred to a site."

The relocation process is simple, says owner Stephanos Kyriakodis. First you break apart the steel roof and separate the five pieces that make up the diner. Next you jack it up like you would a car with a flat tire, soap up some beams to slide them underneath the sections, put the whole contraption on wheels, attach a winch and away you go.

Traveling north, the diner would make its way along the busy commercial corridor dotted with strip malls and big box retail in the farthest corner of Northeast Philly, passing a Hertz Rent-A-Car, the Kraft Distribution Center, the abandoned Byberry Mental Hospital and into Bensalem, Bucks County.

But no one will get to see a diner chugging up the boulevard until the cash changes hands. Kyriakodis, an insurance salesman who grew up in Northeast Philly, is asking $200,000 for the diner and its contents, including a pizza oven, five stainless steel tables, a large mixer, a chop machine, three pot sinks and a high-capacity dishwasher.

The buyer also gets more kitchen equipment, dining tables, chairs and booths that are less than three years old. He's had offers from people looking to set up shop in Allentown, Windsor and Cinnaminson, N.J., but so far, no sale. "That diner did nothing but business since 1964," he says. "In its heyday, it was a great place." Kyriakodis would be willing to sell the diner and the land as a package deal, or, if he unloads the restaurant separately, he's asking $2 million for the one-acre plot, which was home to the Ritz from 1964 to 1980, and before that the Heritage. He plunked down the Coleman Industries-built modular in 1986.

The diner in one form or another has been in the Kyriakodis family for 40 years, his son Pete says. It finally closed this summer.

Now 24, Pete recalls washing dishes and busing tables when he was 15 years old while his two sisters waited tables. Despite the memories, he's unsentimental. "Life goes on. It's time to move on to bigger and better things," he says, adding, "I hope that somebody who knows how to run a business gets their hands on it and runs it the right way."

That's also the goal of the American Diner Museum in Rhode Island, which has found homes for 25 diners donated or sold to its organization, says director Daniel Zilka. Preserved in their original state, the diners become "locked in time" as cultural artifacts. "They tell a story about what people's values were, what people's decorating tastes were," he says, adding that most modern-day menus don't feature 1950s mainstays like stewed prunes.

Diners are anchors of the community and gathering places for everyone from seniors to teenagers. "What's happening now is everything is becoming a franchise," he says. "We're losing those individual special places."

Butko, the author, notes the paradox of diners being bulwarks of specific communities but housed in mass-produced structures that feature the same classic elements of booths, pie cases, counters and affordable food. "It's familiar if you're visitor," he says. "It looks like your diner back home, but at the same time, there's never been a successful diner chain."

Zilka and others like him want to keep it that way. "Our biggest fear is, if we don't do something or be more proactive, the only places we're going to be able to eat is fast food restaurants," Zilka says. "My fear is that that's all going to disappear."

The diner experts, who have observed similar sales before, say it's likely that Kyriakodis' plot of land will turn into an Applebee's or McDonald's, but they hope the diner will continue elsewhere.