Windmill falls from Denny's [aka, Tiny Naylor's, aka, Van de Kamp's] Arcadia tower.
Originally a Van de Kamp’s Holland Dutch Bakery’s coffee shop, the Denny’s is the last surviving windmill-topped restaurant in Southern California, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. The windmill had only recently begun to spin again; it was turned on 18 months ago after sitting still since 1989.
The Orange County Register covered the story as well. Looks like it fell yesterday, Friday, December 29, 2017 at 7:30am.
The historic windmill atop the Arcadia Denny’s detached and fell into the restaurant Friday morning.
Representatives from Denny’s were not immediately available to comment Friday, but Arcadia police were notified the windmill had fallen at 7:28 a.m., said Sgt. Dan Crowther.
Signs around the restaurant at noon said it was closed for maintenance.
Exactly a year and a half ago, on June 29, 2016, Denny’s officially reactivated the windmill, and it had been spinning all day, every day since then.
The windmill is the last remnant of the Van de Kamp’s Holland Dutch Bakery’s coffee shop franchise, which built 15 locations bearing the same design. The Arcadia location, the first of the 15 built, opened in 1967.
Denny’s purchased the location in 1989. The diner-chain spent about $100,000 refurbishing the windmill — replacing the motor, reinforcing the blades and adding new LED lighting — according to President and CEO John Miller.
“It’s a bigger bill than we initially thought,” Miller said in 2016. “But we figured when the windmill is still spinning in 100 years, the cost won’t matter.”The LA Times adds that
The restaurant and windmilll were built in 1967 as the first of 15 coffee shops in the Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakery chain.But no word on what caused the windmill to drop. I guess I could call Denny's and find out.
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