The Howard Johnson's on Canada Street in Lake George, the last remaining example of what was once the nation's largest restaurant chain, has closed. 

LAKE GEORGE — A Howard Johnson's restaurant open in the village for nearly 70 years, and the last example of a dining spot with that iconic name that still existed in the country, did not open for the unofficial start of summer over Memorial Day weekend and is for lease.

It most recently was open in March, according to a post and photo in a Howard Johnson's fan group.

Once numbering about 1,000 restaurants nationwide in the 1960s, the chain of orange-roofed restaurants, known for fried clams and ice-cream sundaes, was so deeply a part of the identity of a broad middle-class swath of the United States that the iconoclastic filmmaker Stanley Kubrick included it in a scene in “2001: A Space Odyssey” together with the brands Ma Bell/AT&T and Pan Am. No less a culinary luminary than Jacques Pepin developed its recipes. For a time it was America's largest restaurant chain.

But faced with competition from the likes of McDonald's and other fast-growing chains, HoJo's, as both a dining and hotel brand, dwindled and was eventually broken up and sold off. The final three restaurants fell to just one after closures in Lake Placid (2015) and Bangor, Maine (2016). 

A former vending-machine salesman bought the Lake George HoJo's in 2015, with it closing when he was arrested and eventually convicted of harassing at least 15 staffers. It reopened under a new owner, a former manager, who kept it running for the past several years, albeit with pandemic-related pauses along the way.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the failure to open for what is expected to be the vacation destination's busiest summer in three years. The for-lease listing mentions a price of $10 for the 7,500-square-foot property, owned since it was built in 1953 by the DeSantis family. Low lease prices are often used in real estate to generate interest in difficult properties.

The address is 2143 Route 9/Canada St.

The brand for Howard Johnson's hotels, motels and motor lodges, separate from the restaurants for decades, is owned by Wyndham Hotel Group and is said to comprise more than 400 properties, including one on Canada Street in Lake George.

Steve Barnes has worked at the Times Union since 1996, served as arts editor for six years, and since 2005 has been a senior writer. He generally covers restaurants, food and the arts, and is the Times Union's restaurant columnist and theater critic. Steve was also a journalism instructor at the University at Albany for 12 years. You can reach him at sbarnes@timesunion.com or 518-454-5489.