Our Little Town

Early History of the Roadside Rest
An Exclusive Interview with Morty Shor (son of its co-founder, Leon Shor)

By Howard B. Levy

On January 4, 2004, I had the distinct pleasure and privilege of interviewing the delightful and vibrant, 81-year old Morty Shor. In 1921, Morty's father, Leon, together with his brother-in-law (and Morty's uncle),  Murray Hadfield, founded the famous Roadside Rest, originally as a fruit and vegetable stand, in Oceanside, N.Y.  But by the late 1920s, Shor and Hadfield had built the huge and beautiful, Spanish-style hot dog and seafood restaurant pictured at left. As all Oceansiders should know (but many today probably do not), the Roadside Rest was renowned and very popular in the 1930s and very early 1940s, for its first class, big band entertainment and dancing, for which people came from miles around.
 
 

Very few people left today know that during the famous Roadside Rest's prime, Leon Shor and Murray Hadfield also owned and operated two branch locations, both of which were opened in the 1930s after the Oceanside original and closed during WWII; one was nearby on Sunrise Highway in Merrick, Long Island, and the other was in Miami Beach, Florida. Below are three views of the Miami Beach branch circa 1937:
   

According to Morty, the most significant and precipitous factor in the decline of the Oceanside Roadside Rest's business in early 1942, shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, was gasoline rationing. He said pleasure driving was virtually banned in the United States and that, as a result, wooden barricades were set up to block beach traffic on Long Beach Road, the lifeline of the business.

Near the time the Oceanside Roadside Rest's business entered its abrupt decline, Leon and his brother-in-law/partner had a falling out and decided to part ways. So sometime in 1942, when Morty was 20 years old, Leon left the business, and Murray Hadfield ended up with the then sinking Roadside Rest. According to Morty, neither he nor Leon ever went back. Debt-ridden and struggling, Hadfield shut the property down briefly in 1956 and sold out to Murray Handwerker.

Morty informed me that his father, Leon, was a second cousin to the very famous New York restaurateur, Toots Shor, and that because of Leon's close friendship with Robert Moses, in addition to the Roadside Rests, he owned and operated all of the concessions at Jones Beach from the inception of that facility until 1943, when he opened the first of four Shor's restaurants in Nassau County (the one in West Hempstead). 

When I talked to him in 2004, Morty spoke of the Oceanside Roadside Rest during its heyday prior to 1942, as follows:

"It was a grand and glorious era, a wondrous time that gave me many, many fond memories. In fact, not a week goes by today when I don't meet someone who speaks fondly of his or her memories of that place."
  

Click here to read what Morty Shor said about our Nathan's/Roadside Rest page.
       
     


Food was served on this china in the 
late 1930s and early '40s.


                                                                                                                            Sample menu cover, circa late 1930s-early 1940s

 

Copyright © 2004, 2007 by Howard B. Levy and 1960 Sailors Association Inc.  All rights reserved.