The Secret Second Lives of Pizza Huts

The first Pizza Hut opened in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas, the brainchild of hometown boys Dan and Frank Carney. It got its name, according to lore, from Dan Carney's wife, who thought the small building that housed it looked like a hut. (I learned this and many other details from an exhaustive post on the wonderfully arcane website Dairy River.)

But the Carneys' project could not long be contained. As they expanded, they commissioned an architect named Richard D. Burke to design a building that they could call their own -- a hut in name only, recognizable to all comers. These "Red Roof" locations multiplied rapidly, eventually numbering in the thousands. The company has discontinued the design and changed its business model to emphasize delivery and other types of outlets. But the distinctive silhouettes of those buildings remain one of the most reliable and recognizable features of the suburban landscape, even if a lot of them are no longer Pizza Huts.