Christy's Restaurant

02/09/2026

Can't confirm the provenance of this splendid image ... and I have my reservations about its authenticity, but I will leave it here for others who are familiar with Chadds Ford to offer their opinions.

02/08/2026

https://www.facebook.com/groups/chaddsford/

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04/12/2025

https://chaddsfordlive.com/2025/04/10/new-building-okd-for-painters-crossing/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=rasa_io&utm_campaign=newsletter

After months of working with the Chadds Ford Planning Commission, The Henderson Group received approval for a new building at Painters Crossing shopping center. Township supervisors granted land use and conditional use approval for a 15,000-plus square foot building in the southeast corner of the sh...

11/10/2023

Really? After six years no progress on completing the loop road? Chadds Ford is dying? The only nice place is the Sunoco and no mention of the new Hank's Place?

Scare tactics seldom work, but they get attention and these claims are certainly attention-getting. Change happens slowly in Chadds Ford, but as it should!

Chadds Ford Business Association members and guests heard a lot and said a lot about the loop road that still isn’t completed despite it being approved six years ago. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the members said more about the latest obstruction to completing the last leg of the lo...

04/20/2023

Christy's Restaurant viewed from the south as originally constructed. The flagpole was enormous and always flying the American and the Greek flags. For safety reasons it eventually was shortened and then removed altogether.

The structure of the restaurant was substantial with steel and masonry construction, parapet walls and elaborate colonnades, keystones and other decorative flourishes. Again for safety reasons the parapet wall had to be lowered and eventually demolished.

The structure in the left from this view was the motel, rooms for staff and Theodore Christy's apartment, but the appearance is that of a tenament! Is that a "door to nowhere" facing us?

In the late-1940's Theodore extensively upgraded his apartment, making it architecturally more like a residence and wrapping it with picture windows. The awning on the right side was replaced with a formal vestibule so his apartment had a real front door.

The lawn where the white chairs are arranged was converted to parking, the pedestal at the base of the flagpole was eventually an island and much of the vegetation was removed as the business thrived.

12/06/2022

Theodore Christy had the right idea in 1929 to build his eponymous restaurant at this busy intersection. Almost a century later traffic has reached gridlock levels ... requiring a bypass to allow motorists to avoid the intersection, which only makes sense if they were turning at the intersection ... those continuing through the intersection are out of luck!

In a recent op/ed piece, Brian Coyle, the president and CEO of the Henderson Group, made Henderson’s case for what Coyle said is a needed trade-off, an apartment complex in exchange for a completed loop road system. He wants Chadds Ford Township to approve a text amendment allowing for an age-rest...

05/27/2020

Robert Biddle of Memories in Wilmington provided this aerial view of the intersection of Routes 202 and 1 circa 1949. The view is looking East along Route 1, Christy’s Restaurant is in the lower right corner of the intersection with Route 202, but little development of the intersection had occurred other than the country club in the upper left corner and the gas station in the upper right corner.

How things have changed ... this intersection is routinely gridlocked (pre-pandemic) and plans are in place to complete the ‘loop’ to route local traffic around the intersection.

05/07/2020

When did the intersection of Routes 1 and 202 look like this? The country club across the intersection is still there so this was before State Farm bought the corner and the entrances relocated away from the intersection. When the country club was first built the entrance was diagonal to the intersection!

04/29/2020

This ancient faded photograph is unrecognized, but it could have been Theodore's Christy's "lunch stand" in Marcus Hook early in the last century.

https://www.facebook.com/156648084359609/photos/a.505911699433244/505911716099909/?type=3&theater

04/08/2020

M. L. Gurtizen, Photography took these interior photographs of Christy's Restaurant in January 1960. Christy's Restaurant was extensively remodeled to convert Theodore's apartment on the main floor into the "Terrace Room" which increased seating without any increase in kitchen capacity or parking, resulting in cold meals, impatient patrons and which hastened the restaurant's decline and demise within the decade.

03/03/2019

Theodore Christy gained another claim to fame from the movie Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Their wonderful cross-country road trip was in a Buick Roadmaster ... the same model that Theodore owned!

https://mashable.com/2015/12/18/rain-man-buick-roadmaster/

Automobile aficionados will recognize from the four ports on each fender that the engine had eight cylinders, but in a line rather than a V-8. The transmission may have been a 'DynaFlow' as it was for the vehicle in the movie.

Theodore Christy with a Buick Roadmaster and Omega the Doberman Pinscher behind Christy's Restaurant. None of the renovations of Theodore's apartment are apparent, which dates this photograph prior to my birth in 1949. The Buick appears to be a 4th generation Roadmaster, which was introduced as a 1942 model and was in production through the 1948 model year. Here's a photo of a 1947 Buick Roadmaster that appears to match Theodore's and was presumably produced after the war years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Buick_Roadmaster_Convertible_1947.jpg

Presuming Theodore's was the last of the 1948 model year, it could be no newer than late-1947 ... unless he bought a used one, but we're talking about Theodore Christy!