PORTLAND, Maine — Heavy equipment began biting into the former Denny’s restaurant on Congress Street early Monday morning, bringing the 40-something-year-old building down.
The demolition will make way for a roundabout which will eventually return two-way traffic to Congress Street and Park Avenue. Officials hope the new traffic pattern will make the sliver of Libbytown tucked between the now one-way thoroughfares, St. John Street and Interstate 295 feel a little less isolated.
While the loss of a chain restaurant is not something generally mourned in a foodie town like Portland, many locals are feeling nostalgic for the familiar, all-night eatery, with its pancakes, generous parking lot and memories made there well after dark.
“It was a standard last stop for any evening out,” said Anna Nelson, now of Brunswick. “I have vivid memories of dancing in the parking lot with my girlfriends before piling back in the car for the drive home.”
Portland’s first Denny’s opened on Brighton Avenue, a few yards from the Westbrook line, in 1973. That location closed in 2018. The Congress Street location began as a similar all-night diner, with a racial slur for a name, in 1978. By late summer 1984, it became a Denny’s and operated 24 hours a day, until the 2020 pandemic. It closed for good in November 2022.
Over the roughly 50 years of operation, both Portland spots saw more than their share of high-spirited hijinks and besotted romance, as well as a bit of tragedy.
Denny’s was a perfect location for Old Port drinkers to sober up before heading home when the bars closed at 1 a.m. Its salty comfort food soothed alcohol-nauseated stomachs and consoled lovelorn singles going home solo.
“I was once proposed to at Denny’s by a sweet-but-overserved guy who had just turned 21,” said Cassandra Tilley of South Portland. “He was very appreciative of the fact that I wished him a very happy birthday.”
Tilley let him down easy and suspects the young man forgot all about her when his Grand Slam breakfast arrived.
Portlander Caroline Allam Paras remembers going on Denny’s dates during the wee hours in the early 2000s with her future husband.
“We usually just ordered dessert,” Paras said. “Then there was some making out in the parking lot.”
Denny’s was also a popular hangout for those not old enough to drink. Casts from countless high school plays headed there after performing under stage lights.
“We used to blow in like an obnoxious typhoon after a drama club show at South Portland High,” popular Portland drag performer Cherry Lemonade said. “That poor server would have to put up with our sampler platter substitutions and loud singing. I have since been in the service industry for years and want to give that poor server a hug.”
Charity Carlson Hirst remembers going to the Brighton Avenue Denny’s after Westbrook High School marching band events. Hirst is bummed that her son didn’t get the chance to do the same.
The Portland locations of Denny’s hold other personal memories for locals, besides love and laughter.
Zuba Bridget Gehrling remembers going to the Congress Street location with her siblings the night their father died at a nearby hospital in November 2004. By grim coincidence, it was three years — to the day — since their mother died. They were all hungry, stunned and stricken with grief.
When it was time to pay the bill, the restaurant manager told them he’d “taken care of it.”
“We left a tip roughly equal to what we remembered from the menu prices and asked that it be shared with the whole staff,” Gehrling said.
Musicians Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee had stopped at the Congress Street Denny’s on their way south for a gig when someone broke into their van. The criminal took only a briefcase full of printed setlists, leaving thousands of dollars in musical instruments behind.
Musician Toby McAllister is still trying to recover a prized guitar he sold to a fan for cigarette money in the Congress Street parking lot in 2013.
On April 4, 1998, tragedy struck the same Denny’s parking lot when 18-year-old Gorham High School student Robert Joyal was stabbed to death during a group scuffle. Fellow teenager Seiha Srey was arrested for the killing and spent two years in jail before charges were dropped.
Srey was later shot and killed at the age of 25 in Saco. No one else has ever been charged with Joyal’s death.
Despite the tragedy, both of the Portland restaurants remained popular hangouts for years to come. Nelson remembers the people and the parking lot as much as the food inside.
“Some playing hacky sack or with devil sticks,” she said, “and some dancing around to top 40 music. It was a melting pot.”
Indeed, many remember Denny’s as an unlikely safe space for the LGBTQ+ community, as well as self-proclaimed nerds.
Tim Shiffer said the manager there used to let him and his friends stage lengthy, past-midnight Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.
“We were allowed to put a couple tables together in that back dining area to play, as long as we didn’t get too loud and we ordered stuff,” Shiffer said. “The food was never that great, but the company always made up for it.”
Nelson worries there are no longer any all-ages, after-hours safe spaces like Denny’s where her daughter might hang out when she gets old enough.
“It was a really important place when we were not yet 21, and so many of us still lived at home or in dorms,” Nelson said. “Is there anywhere like that now? I hope so. I hope I’m just too old to know where it is.”
