Hall and Oates 2nd album (released by Atlantic in 1973) was a flop... until their 3rd album (by RCA in 1976) was released, and with the success of "Sara Smile" Atlantic promptly reissued the Abandoned Luncheonette single "She's Gone," and this time, it rose all the way to No. 7 in 1976.

The derelict diner on the cover is the Rosedale Diner from Pottstown, PA.

the original photo

In the summer of 1973,  2 young men walked into Bill's restaurant, Toggs, across the road from the abandoned diner with an unusual request.

 Hall and Oates and photographer Barbara Wilson had driven from New York city to the rural spot on the road about 40 miles outside of Philadelphia.

“He said they told him that they wanted to enter some contest, and according to Bill, if they won this contest, they would get to record an album of their music. A photo of the dormant diner across the street would be perfect for the cover.

They thought that the session was incomplete without getting inside, so they snuck in and Barbara started shooting, carefully tip-toeing around broken glass and tile. The guys squeezed then into a booth and the rest is album cover history.

“I told them they could take a picture of it, but not to go inside,” Bill would tell a newspaper reporter, ten years later. “They went inside, anyway.”

After Bill called the local police, the guys along with their college-aged female photographer, abruptly beat it from the diner.

it was the only album cover Wilson ever made. 

the album back cover photo

In a news story that appeared in the Pottstown Mercury on Jan. 27, 1983, Faulk recalled the day in the summer of 1973 when “the two record kids” came to him and asked permission to take a photograph of the diner for the cover of their new album.

“I knew the one boy, he was nice ... poor like me,” Faulk said in the 1983 story, referring to Hall. “I said they could take a picture of it, but not go inside. It’s dangerous in there. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. They went inside anyway.”

Forty years later, Oates confirms that account of the story.

“We basically broke into the diner and took the picture that appears on the back of the album,” said Oates.

Oates added that the photographer, credited as “B. Wilson” on the inside sleeve of the album, was Barbara Wilson, his girlfriend at the time. She was a student then at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Barbara Wilson had originally met John in the late 60s while they were both in college, and over the years became friendly with Daryl as well. She had a great eye, and so Daryl and John told the record company that they want her hired.

As she recalls with a laugh today, “They paid me $1000, and Atlantic Records considered that to be highway robbery.

A teacher of hers at the school worked with the album cover picture and gave it that “hand colored” look, according to Oates.

the Rosedale Diner, operated for years at the corner of High Street and Rosedale Drive in Pottstown. The diner was moved sometime in the late 1960’s to Kenilworth, but was never put back into service.

in 1982 it was still there looking the same:

 It was certainly in sad shape on a subsequent visit April 3, 1983, because after the success of Hall and Oates on MTV, people stopped by to strip the diner of everything.

stripped of most of it's stainless.

The owner had went into the Army in WW2, and met his future wife while on leave back in New Jersey, and she was from Pottsdale PA.  When he got out, they married and moved to her home town, a couple years later, Bill bought a Fodero Dining Car Company 43 seater with air conditioning.

The only trouble in the long term was that he leased the land he put the diner on, and in 1965, after not taking the chance to buy the overvalued property in downtown at a big intersection, the owners sold it to McDonalds, and Bill had to move the diner. But he never went back in business with it, instead he opened a fast food pizza place on land he purchased this time, and let the old diner fall apart. One of the neighbors was Daryl Hall's grandmother.

The neglected diner inspired a song, composed by Daryl, remembering the diner that had transformed from a sparkling childhood memory to a dormant and downtrodden relic. That song went on what would become the most critically acclaimed album they would ever release.

The story of the day they photographed the diner:



http://ultimateclassicrock.com/hall-oates-abandoned-luncheonette-album-released/
https://first-draft.com/2017/05/17/album-cover-art-wednesday-abandoned-luncheonette/
https://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/the-story-of-the-the-abandoned-luncheonette-aka-the-rosedale-diner/
http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/MP/20130217/ENTERTAINMENT04/130219469
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/music-and-magic-by-the-side-of-the-road-how-a-young_us_58b4a053e4b02f3f81e44b5a