Groton -- A dinner napkin with “Closed” scribbled twice in black ink was taped Wednesday afternoon to the glass door leading to the vestibule of Rosie's Diner on Route 184.

Inside the 44-seat restaurant, the lights were off and the condiments normally stored on the counter were gone, as were six tables. The shelves off the back kitchen were empty. The red-framed photograph of the red neon “Eat” sign atop the building with Rosie's name highlighted as “The Name in Lights” was gone, too.

The white board on which the specials were listed was still there, noting that the soups of the day were clam chowder and chicken noodle and that the vegetable selections were baby carrots and spinach.

After 20 years, Rosie's Diner at the corner of Route 184 and King's Highway closed for good Wednesday. The lease for the property will expire Friday, and the owner of the property has plans to build a much larger diner with a 1950s retro theme on the same site.

“It's a loss of a landmark,” David E. Miner, who lives nearby, said of Rosie's after being contacted by telephone.

“To the locals, it has been a staple, not only for the business fare but a societal congregation for a lot of different people,” said Miner, a Representative Town Meeting member who used to frequent the diner. “There have been a myriad of people who have come through there. It's like a travel trunk that never went anywhere but everyone went through.”

Betty A. Prochaska, who also lives around the corner, said it was a place where people could catch up with old friends.

“I think a lot of people are going to miss it,” said Prochaska, an RTM candidate. “It's like home to a lot of people.”

Since 1985, Rosie's was open 24 hours a day virtually every day, closing only for half-days on Thanksgiving and from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. It closed three to four days in 2001, which warranted a news story assuring the public that it would reopen after remodeling.

In the days leading up to the diner's closing, customers, feeling a bit nostalgic, began to take menus and coffee mugs bearing the diner's name as souvenirs.

“We always sold (the mugs) as souvenirs ... We went through hundreds of them in the last five or six days and I'll tell you most of them were not bought,” said Steve Scott, who has been running the diner for his retired mother, Rosella Scott.

It was a cash-only diner where the wait staff knew the regulars by what they ate and the type of customers varied, depending on the time of day. There was the before-work crowd on weekday mornings and the after-the-bars-close patrons in the wee hours.

“It was a cornucopia of people,” Miner said. “The ambience of the diner itself has never lost its touch. It was a greasy spoon.”

The diner was named after Rosella Scott, who got her start as a waitress at the age of 13 in Cincinnati. Rosie's was the first business Scott owned after working 16 years as a waitress at the Royal Diner in New London.

At one time, when she worked the late evening and early morning hours, Scott could sometimes be found napping in her car parked behind the diner. Now retired, she had passed the business onto her son, who also has been running two spin-off restaurants in North Stonington and Preston, both called Rosie's Around the Clock Grill.

Steve Scott said it was bittersweet when he closed the diner for good at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

“I've been there 20 years and I'm 40 years old,” he said. “It got us our start. We're hoping to open a new business in Groton so we don't have to leave the customers hanging.”

Originally published here. http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=5DE01452-FB37-433D-BED9-BF4A5B8F46B8