The Shore Diner Hall

The Shore Dinner Hall as it looked from 1955 on. Photo by WikiMedia Commons

Felicia Castiglioni Gardella, president of the Warwick Historical Society, with an old clam cake “rake” used at the Shore Dinner Hall. Gardella’s great uncles, Alfred and Paul Castiglioni, ran the park from 1919–1938. Photo by Wolf Matthewson

The Shore Dinner Hall went through several successions, each larger than the last, before becoming the brick-fronted behemoth most Rhode Islanders remember. More than 3,500 could fit inside the so-called world’s largest shore dinner hall, which had a wall of windows facing the bay and takeout counters outside on the lower level. The 30,000-square-foot space held long, communal-style tables where everyone packed in for family-style feasts of silver tureens filled with red chowder, clam cakes, lobster, corn on the cob and watermelon slices for dessert. 

During Captain Winslow’s ownership, the famous clambakes took place under tents and later in a “bake-house” that served up clams, sausage, steamers, mussels, fish, potatoes and corn on the cob cooked on layers of hot stones and seaweed. The bake-house morphed into the park’s first shore dinner hall by the early 1900s before succumbing to the 1938 Hurricane. 

An early version of the hall. Photo by WikiMedia Commons

It was rebuilt again after 1947 under owners Vincent Ferla, Frederick Hilton and Joseph Trillo, partly on pilings that extended into the sea. Another hurricane — this time Carol in 1954 — swept the hall into the ocean. The last structure was unveiled in 1955, set back from the water, and able to withstand 200-mile-per-hour winds. It lasted until the park closed in 1995 and was demolished in 2014.