There was a restaurant (a.k.a. diner) that was a personal favorite of mine. It had a mix of booths and table and chair seating. There were glass partitions on the booth seats as well as a few structural partitions at the entry of the table seating area. The tables and chairs were the traditional, somewhat colonial style, wooden furniture. The entire dining area was carpeted. It had a nice atmosphere because you could easily carry on a conversation without being mindful of how many other customers were there.

I can only guess that the carpeting was the original incentive for the remodeling. It had become darkened over time and, if you really looked at it, was a bit of an eyesore. How the owner came to his decisions on the remodeling I don’t know, but there has been a critical functional deterioration. The major problem results from replacing all the carpeting with hard tile flooring. A second factor is that the newer updated booths have no apparent partition panels. The dining tables and chairs were replaced with more contemporary, less dense materials that do not have the elegance or sound absorption quality of their predecessors. The entire interior was repainted and this makes the appearance cleaner, crisper and more spacious looking. The dining areas are now essentially one large area with full visibility of sight and sound from the front door all the way to the last seats in the back.

The result of the remodeling has yielded a diner that has a contemporary crisp look with all the dining charm of a major airport or train terminal. It is no longer possible to have a quiet personal conversation. It is wearisome to have to repeat everything (including your order) several times to be heard above the collective roar of the entire dining room.

The point of all this is simply that aesthetics should NEVER be given priority over the functional considerations of the facility.