We were asked the question whether the Hamburger Inn Inn in Delaware was the oldest diner in Ohio.

And when I first got the question, I thought, probably not the oldest diner.

It's got to be something older than that, right?

I started looking into it just to see if it was, in fact, was true.

My first research led me to the oldest restaurant in Ohio, which is the Golden Lamb, which is in Lebanon, Ohio.

It's still there at South Broadway street, and it's been there since 18.

Three.

And it's one of the oldest restaurants in the whole United States.

Then that got me thinking about the concept of diners.

What was interesting about the first diners in Ohio were that they were, in fact, just dining cars from old trains, and those lasted basically until the dining car rusted out.

So what you then have a change in is you start seeing brick and mortar diners start existing, and this is where places like the Hamburger Inn come in.

So researching not only maybe dining cars that survived that were placed in city blocks, but also brick and mortar diners, where were they, and how long did they last?

The main thing I was interested in is trying to figure out if the diner was in the same location for its entirety of its run.

And that's what my research was based on.

Just searching the Hamburger Inn wasn't that easy, because there are, in fact, twelve hamburger inns in Ohio throughout the years.

The puckets Hamburger Inn, which was later renamed to the original Hamburger Inn in Circleville, was founded in 1930, but it moved sometime before 1986 to another address.

So that left the Hamburger Inn in Delaware to be a little bit older.

The original Hamburger Inn had a quadruple cheeseburger that people would challenge.

They would try to eat it.

There was a hamburger inn in plain City that was built in 1940.

And these other hamburger inns built in Columbus, Urbana, Belfaston, these were all 1940s diners, and then some others in the 1950s in southern Ohio.

The other spots that are significantly older diners are the Coney Island Diner in Mansfield, which was built in 1919, but it did move in 1936.

There was an old restaurant called the cupy, which is considered sort of a diner, and that was in Lima, Ohio.

And they actually did have an older building, but it did burn down, and they actually had to rebuild.

This is the original QP that would have predated the hamburger in, but it was untorn down for a newer building.

So this is the 1928 building, and this is the 1936 building for QP.

Definitely a little bit newer than the Hamburger Inn in Delaware, which opened in 1932.

And then just a couple of other diners that I saw in Columbus through the years.

There was a place called the Dinnebell Diner in Columbus, which was built in 1927 at 2020 North High street.

Again, that closed a long, long time ago.

It only existed for a few years, so we had the campus diner, which makes sense.

Diner food is popular in college towns.

So in 1928, there was a campus diner at 1842 North High around the campus area, and again, that closed within a few years.

Other early ones that I saw were in Marion, Hamilton Diner in Cleveland, and shady lawn diner in Mansfield.

So some of these early diners just didn't last very long.

Right down the street from the hamburger in was Buns restaurant, which was built in 1864, way older than the Hamburger Inn, which was built in 1932.

And they were pretty much right next to each other.

But unfortunately, buns burned down in 2002, and ultimately what I found was that Hamburger Inn, they may in fact be the oldest diner in Ohio.

I can't say 100% that is true, but it's definitely plausible.

And if I were to hedge my bets, I would say it probably is the oldest diner in Ohio that was in the same location and the same building since its inception.