Tanpopo Ramen and Sake Bar occupies the 1941 diner at 893 Broadway that you may know as Miss Albany Diner or Lil's Diner. This building was erected in 1941 as a Silk City Diner model manufactured by the Paterson Vehicle Company in Paterson, New Jersey, one of the leading diner manufacturers of the time. Its form follows the prefabricated-diner tradition of the 1920s through the 1940s, built to resemble railroad cars and carrying Art Deco touches.
Before this structure, the site hosted a lunch cart in 1929 and then a prefabricated diner by the Ward & Dickinson Dining Car Company — you are literally standing on layered history. In 1987 the diner served as a set for the film Ironweed, which starred Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. In 2000 this building was recognized on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Step closer and you'll find an interior of cherry wood, porcelain enamelled steel, and a geometrically tiled floor — one of the few pre-World War II diners in the United States to remain in near-original condition. Notice the cherry wood, the porcelain enamelled steel, and the geometrically tiled floor inside.