Over its nearly sixty years of life, Williamsburg’s Wythe Diner achieved the remarkable feat of consolidating the imaginary —indeed, the very image — of a nostalgic, distant America made of steaming cups of coffee, meals eaten at the counter, and sleepless nights spent gazing wistfully through windows lit by neon lamps. Its chrome façade and its 1950s railcar-style silhouette part road movie, part film noir, which since 1968 have anchored the corner of Wythe Avenue and North Third Street, have become an integral part of the neighborhood’s urban history, as well as the perfect backdrop for several high-profile film productions that helped shape American cinema.

So when the Wythe was gently lifted by a crane onto a trailer and carried a few miles to the Steiner Studios complex inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard—its new home—it felt to many like watching the last remnant of a vanishing city disappear into the distance.

Yet the diner had long ceased to function as a restaurant. After its last owner and operator, Sandy Stillman, closed it in 2018, it became a setting for pop-ups, events, photo shoots, and even a Chanel temporary shop in 2023. But when the land on which it stood was sold in the summer of 2025 for 12.5 million dollars to a group of developers planning a mixed-use residential complex, the risk of its demolition became very real.

It was the intervention of Doug Steiner of Steiner Studios—as reported by the New York Post—that saved the diner from the wave of gentrification that has swept the neighborhood over the past decades. Steiner decided to move the entire structure in order to preserve it intact and transform it into a permanent film set.:“I wasn’t looking for a diner”, he said, “but it felt like a great act of preservation”.

Opening image: Wyther Diner, Williamsburg