Howard Johnson’s was once the largest restaurant chain in the United States, with more than 1,000 locations under its bright orange roofs. Today, not one of those restaurants is left. The last Howard Johnson’s restaurant, in Lake George, New York, closed in 2022.
For decades, the roadside chain fed more Americans away from home than almost anyone. Its 28 ice cream flavors and fried clams were fixtures of the family road trip, and the name now survives mainly on hotel signs.
From a Soda Fountain to More Than 1,000 Restaurants
The chain started small. Howard Deering Johnson founded the company in 1925 in Quincy, Massachusetts, after borrowing $2,000 to buy a corner shop in the Wollaston neighborhood whose soda fountain became its busiest corner, according to the Wikipedia entry on Howard Johnson’s. A restaurant followed in Quincy in 1929.
Growth came through franchising, then a new idea. The second restaurant, opened in 1935, was franchised in what Wikipedia describes as one of America’s first franchising agreements, and Johnson later won exclusive rights to serve drivers at turnpike service stops. The Wikipedia entry on Howard Deering Johnson credits him with teaming up with Reginald Sprague that year to create what it calls “the first modern restaurant franchise.” At its height, the chain counted more than 1,000 locations and was the largest restaurant chain in the country through the 1960s and 1970s.
The scale was hard to match. During the 1960s, Howard Johnson’s served more meals outside the home than any other company or organization except the United States Army, according to the Howard Johnson’s entry. Those turnpike stops were as much a part of the road trip as the roadside oddities in this list of 16 of the strangest roadside attractions in America.
The Orange Roofs and the 28 Flavors
Drivers could spot a Howard Johnson’s from the highway. Orange roofs, cupolas and weather vanes identified the restaurants, and the logo of Simple Simon and the Pieman dated to the 1930s, according to Wikipedia.
The ice cream was the draw. Johnson developed 28 flavors, and his license plate, HJ-28, nodded to that number, according to the Howard Deering Johnson entry, which says he bought a recipe from a pushcart vendor for $300 and doubled its butterfat. Johnson, who was born in 1897 and died in 1972, once remarked that he thought he had every flavor in the world.
The menu went well beyond dessert. The chain helped popularize fried clam strips nationwide, and its counters served the kind of diner staples recalled in these 12 breakfast classics that deserve a delicious comeback. Even near the end, the ice cream stayed front and center, with signs advertising “28 flavors,” according to an MPR News NewsCut post titled “The last orange roof” from August 2016.
The chain belongs to the same mid-century America as the family rituals in this look at 8 once-common Thanksgiving traditions from the 1950s that have quietly faded.
How the Orange Roofs Disappeared
The company peaked in 1975, according to Wikipedia, which lists the 1973 oil embargo, competition from fast food and failed new restaurant concepts among the problems that followed. Imperial Group bought the company in 1979, and Marriott acquired it in 1986 and converted or demolished company-owned restaurants.
Mental Floss, looking back on the chain in 2022, pointed to the same competition from fast food along with frequent changes in upper management. The remaining restaurants dwindled until only the Lake George location was left, Mental Floss noted.
Its fate mirrors other once-dominant names, such as the 10 department stores that vanished from American malls, and the household items gathered in this list of 15 things that decorated every ’70s home but are now extinct.
The last holdouts went one by one. The Lake Placid, New York, restaurant closed in March 2015, and the Bangor, Maine, location, which no longer had the distinctive orange roof by 2013, closed in September 2016, according to Wikipedia. When that closing was announced, Bangor owner Sally Patel told the Associated Press, “It’s not worth it to keep it open,” MPR News reported, adding that the last remaining Howard Johnson’s restaurant was in Lake George.
That left Lake George, where the last orange roof in the chain outlasted every other. The property was listed for lease beginning in December 2021, and the last Howard Johnson’s restaurant closed in 2022, according to Mental Floss, which noted that a Howard Johnson’s location had even been recreated for AMC’s “Mad Men.”
What Is Left of the Name
The grocery side is gone as well, ending the last way to buy Howard Johnson’s food in a store. The branded frozen food line was discontinued after supplier plants closed in 2006 and 2008, and the chain’s ice cream is no longer manufactured, according to Wikipedia.
The hotels carry on. Wyndham Hotels and Resorts has owned the brand since 2006, and Howard Johnson by Wyndham counted 304 hotels in about 15 countries as of Dec. 31, 2025, according to Wikipedia. Wyndham’s Howard Johnson page now invites travelers to “Stay with a Smile at Howard Johnson,” with no restaurant counter in the pitch.
For the generation that grew up during the chain’s long decline, the name means a motel sign rather than a plate of fried clams and a scoop from 28 flavors. The orange roofs that once marked more than 1,000 restaurants no longer signal a Howard Johnson’s meal anywhere.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Unknown author – Public domain/Wikimedia Commons
