Posts Tagged driving america
1907 White Model G Steam Touring Car. THF91139
Millionaire industrialist John D. Rockefeller bought a White steamer. So did “Wild West” showman Buffalo Bill Cody. President William H. Taft included one in the first presidential car fleet. These men, born before the Civil War, might have felt more comfortable with steam than with newer technologies such as internal combustion. But buyers were moving to gasoline-powered cars. White followed, making its last steamer in 1911.
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This 1908 advertisement never mentions that the White was powered by steam.
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Starting a steam car was complex—just try to follow these instructions. It took at least 10 minutes to get up a “head of steam.” Many owners had chauffeurs to handle the task.
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Famous Western showman Buffalo Bill parades beside a White. Buyers of the expensive steamers tended to be older and wealthier than the average American.
Henry Ford Museum, Driving America, alternative fuel vehicles, cars
1865 Roper Steam Carriage: The Oldest Surviving American Automobile
1865 Roper Steam Carriage. THF91158
Smoke-belching steam locomotives were familiar sights to Americans in the 1860s. But a small steam carriage running under its own power—without horses!—was so startling that people paid to see it driven around a track. It was a curiosity, not transportation. By the time its inventor, Sylvester Roper, died in 1896, the next generation of innovators was trying to transform horseless carriages from curiosities into practical vehicles.
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A handbill promoting an 1865 steam buggy exhibition proclaimed steamers “the most wonderful invention of modern times.”
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Massachusetts machinist Sylvester Roper built at least seven steam carriages and two steam motorcycles. They weren’t considered practical vehicles but became popular attractions at circuses and fairs. The driver is probably W.W. Austin, who exhibited Ropers.
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Print of a Roper steam carriage exhibited at a circus, about 1863.
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Roper’s death was front-page news in Boston, where he lived and worked. He had a heart attack at age 73 while riding one of his steam motorcycles.
alternative fuel vehicles, cars, Henry Ford Museum, Driving America
The bicycle boom of the 1890s had liberated riders from the limited routes and schedules of trains and trolleys—and people wanted more. When the automobile arrived, cyclists were ready to embrace its promised freedom. The Locomobile combines railroad and bicycle technology. It’s powered by a compact version of a steam locomotive engine, and the steel-tube frame, wire wheels, pneumatic tires, and chain drive come from bicycles.
Locomobile proudly identified the New York Fire Department as a customer in this 1901 advertisement.
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Like other motor vehicles, steam cars had a limited range, in this case restricted by the amount of water and fuel they carried. Fuels such as kerosene were used to boil the water and create steam. This cutaway reveals a water tank, boiler, two-cylinder steam engine, and fuel supply under the seat.
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Additional Readings:
1890s, 19th century, power, Henry Ford Museum, Driving America, cars
1950 Plymouth Deluxe Suburban Station Wagon. THF90908
The earliest station wagons hauled travelers and luggage between train stations and hotels. Wagons remained low-production specialty vehicles until the 1950s, when parents embraced them as ideal vehicles for transporting growing families. Packed with children, groceries, camping gear, or luggage, station wagons became the very symbol of the family car.
Durant Motor Company, "The New Star Car," 1924. THF105552
Star, made by Durant Motor Company, became the first manufacturer-produced station wagon in 1923. Early wagons, also known as depot hacks, were utility vehicles, and not very family-friendly.
"The New All-Metal Plymouth Suburban, the Car with 101 Uses," Chrysler Corporation Plymouth Division, 1949. THF105554
By 1949, when the Plymouth Suburban was introduced, families were growing and suburbs expanding. The utility of the modern Suburban appealed to parents, and the first all-steel body was a major upgrade from older wood-body wagons.
1957 Ford Station Wagon Ad, "Nine's Fine!" THF105560
By 1957, all wagons had steel bodies. But designers applied wood—or fake wood—to “woody” wagons for many years.
1961 Chevrolet Catalog, "There's a Chevy Wagon for Every Purpose, Every Family!" THF105556
Even compact cars like the Chevy Corvair had wagon versions. This 1961 Chevy sales brochure touted its rear-engine Corvair Lakewood, with storage in front and back.
By the 1930s, many motorists had grown weary of camping out. Turned out it wasn’t much fun cooking meals, sleeping in crude tents, and roughing it with primitive equipment and few amenities. Homey little cabins like this one, which were increasing in number at the time, seemed much more appealing. Often home-built by the property owners with a little elbow grease and a can-do attitude, these offered privacy, a modicum of comfort, and a needed respite on the journey from home to one’s final destination.
This tourist cabin, now in the “Driving America” exhibition in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, was once part of a group of cabins clustered together along U.S. Route 12 in Michigan’s picturesque Irish Hills region. Originally called the Lore Mac Cabins, this modest cabin complex was built between 1935 and 1938. Today this cabin looks much as it did back then, with many of its original fixtures and furnishings.
Come now on a tour of the Lore Mac Cabins, as a series of snapshots and personal reminiscences give us a glimpse of what the place was like back in the 1940s.
The cabins were arranged in a semi-circle along a dirt road. Common bathroom facilities were located behind the main office and the owner’s residence (visible in the foreground of this snapshot). Men’s and women’s shower facilities were located here as well.
The owner of the Lore Mac Cabins was also an approved Gulf gasoline dealer. Two gasoline pumps out in front beckoned both overnight guests and other motorists needing to fill up while driving along busy Route 12 between Detroit and Chicago.
The cabin proprietors lived behind the office in which lodgers registered for their nightly stay. Here the daughter of the owner (and donor of the snapshot) poses self-consciously on the back porch of their residence.
The heat for the “heated cabins”--as advertised in large letters emblazoned across the main building--was provided by small, pot-bellied stoves in each cabin, fueled with wood or coal. The Gulf gasoline sign is visible out front.
In the early 1940s, the owner charged around $2.50 for a single cabin and four to five dollars for a double cabin. The interior walls of the cabins were lined with an inexpensive beaver board material while linoleum covered the floor. Throw rugs alongside the metal-frame beds added a touch of hominess. Guests not wanting to trek all the way to the central sanitation facility could use a white enamelware commode discreetly placed under the bed.
The chairs scattered about the property became a perfect place to pose for snapshots. Taking pictures provided a concrete reminder of a trip and might serve as free advertising for the proprietor when guests shared their adventures with family and friends back home.
Alas, competition eventually made it impossible for small Mom-and-Pop operations like the Lore Mac Cabins to survive. Travelers began to bypass tourist cabins like these for the improved amenities of motels, motor inns and, by the 1950s, standardized chains like Holiday Inn.
Cabins like those at the Lore Mac were certainly preferable to camping. But, despite the attempts by tourist cabin proprietors to offer “homes away from home” at a modest price and in an informal atmosphere, the days of these early bare-bones roadside lodgings were numbered.
Donna R. Braden is Curator of Public Life at The Henry Ford.
travel, Driving America, Henry Ford Museum, Michigan, roads and road trips, by Donna R. Braden, hotels
Where can you get a real diner experience, especially here in Michigan? The answer is Lamy’s Diner inside Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation—an actual 1946 diner brought here from Massachusetts, restored, and operating as a restaurant in the Museum since 2012.
Now Lamy’s Diner is more authentic, more immersive, and serving more delicious food than ever! What’s behind this makeover?
In 1984, the Henry Ford Museum purchased the Clovis Lamy's diner. It took a crane to lift the diner in preparation for transporting it from Hudson, Massachusetts. Once here, it was restored to its original 1946 appearance. THF 25768
Back in the 1980s, museum staff worked with diner expert Richard Gutman to track down an intact vintage diner for the new “Automobile in American Life” exhibit. Gutman not only found such a diner in Hudson, Massachusetts (moved twice from its original location in Marlborough, Massachusetts) but also helped in its restoration and in interviewing its original owner, Clovis Lamy, about his experiences running the diner and about the menu items he served.
Diners are innovative and uniquely American eating establishments. Lamy, like other World War II veterans, was lured by dreams of prosperity and the independence that came with being an entrepreneur of his own diner. As he remarked, “during the war, everyone had his dreams. I said if I got out of there alive, I would have another diner—a brand new one.”
This photograph shows Lamy's Diner on its original site in Marlborough, Massachusetts, 1946. The diner moved three times, first to Framingham, Massachusetts, next to Hudson, Massachusetts in 1949, and finally to the Henry Ford Museum in 1984. THF88966
Sure enough, when he was discharged from the army, he ordered a 40-seat, 36- by 15-foot model from the Worcester Lunch Car Company, a premier diner builder at that time. It boasted a porcelain enamel exterior, 16 built-in stools, six hardwood booths, a marble counter, and a stainless steel back bar. Lamy could choose the diner’s colors, door locations, and outside lettering. He and his wife Gertrude visited the Worcester plant once a week, eager to check on its construction. 
Clovis Lamy stands behind the counter of his diner in Massachusetts. His favorite part of running a diner was talking to his customers. THF 114397
Lamy’s Diner opened for business in April 1946, in Marlborough, Massachusetts. As Lamy remembered, business was brisk:
We jammed them in here at noon—workers from the town’s shoe shops—and we had a good dinner trade too… People stopped in after the show…[and] after the bars closed, the roof would come off the place.
During the long hours of operation (the place closed at 2 a.m.), the kitchen turned out everything from scrambled eggs to meat loaf. To Clovis Lamy, there was no better place than standing behind the counter talking to people.
But the dream had its downside. The work day was long. He was seldom able to eat with his family. After moving the diner to Framingham, Massachusetts, he sold the business in 1950. The new owner moved it down the road to Hudson.
Lamy’s Diner exterior as it looked in the Museum in 1987. THF 77241
When Clovis Lamy and his wife viewed the diner at the 1987 opening for “The Automobile in American Life” exhibition, they confirmed that it looked as good as new. “Even the sign is the same,” he remarked later with a tear in his eye.
Lamy’s Diner interior as it looked in the Museum in 1987. THF 3869
For 25 years, no food was served at Lamy’s Diner in the museum. It was interpreted as a historic structure, until the opening of the new “Driving America” exhibit in 2012, when museum staff decided to once again serve diner fare there. Delicious smells of toast and coffee wafted out of its doors, while the place hummed with activity. Museum guests sat in the booths, on stools at the counter, or at tables on the new deck with accessible seating. They could choose entrees, beverages, and desserts from a menu that was loosely inspired by diner fare of the past.
Then, in 2016, Lee Ward, the new Director of Food Service and Catering, came to me and posed the question, what if we served food and beverages at Lamy’s that more closely approximated what customers would have actually ordered here in 1946? The diner is already an authentic, immersive setting. What if we took it even further and truly transported guests to that time and place? I have always believed in the power of food to both transport guests to another era and to serve as a teaching tool to better understand the people and culture of that era. Over the years, I’ve helped create Eagle Tavern, the Cotswold Tea Experience, the Taste of History menu, the Frozen Custard Stand, and cooking programs in Greenfield Village buildings. So I excitedly responded, sure, we could certainly do that!
But, as the chefs and food service managers at The Henry Ford began to ply me with endless questions about the correct menu, recipes, and serving accoutrements for a 1946 Massachusetts diner, I realized I needed help.
Dick Gutman talking to Lamy’s staff.
Fortunately, help was forthcoming, as Richard Gutman—the diner expert who had found Lamy’s Diner for us in the 1980s—was overjoyed to return to the project and give us ideas and advice. And the 300-some diner menus he owned in his personal collection didn’t hurt either. In fact, they became our best documentation on diner foods and what they were called in 1946, as well as the graphic look of the menus.
Cookbooks of the era offered actual recipes for the dishes we saw listed on the menus, while historic images of diner interiors provided clues as to what the serving staff might wear, what kinds of dishes customers ate on, and what was displayed in the glass cases on the counter.
All of these are reflected in the current Lamy’s Diner experience. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll encounter when you visit Lamy’s after its recent makeover:
New Lamy’s Diner menu, front and inside
Kids’ menu
New England Clam Chowder, a signature dish in New England diners and here at Lamy’s
Chicken salad sandwich, using a recipe from the 1947 edition of the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, a pioneering cookbook that offered practical recipes for the average housewife.
Meat loaf plate, using Clovis Lamy’s original meatloaf recipe
Milkshake, which in Massachusetts is a very refreshing drink made of milk, chocolate syrup, and sometimes crushed ice (no ice cream), shaken until it is creamy and frothy.
Toll House cookies, invented by a female chef named Ruth Graves Wakefield in 1938, at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts.
Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich, a New England specialty based upon Archibald Query’s original marshmallow creme invention and later called “Fluffernutter”
Prices are, by necessity, modern, but typical prices of the era can be found on the menu boards mounted up on the wall, based upon Lamy’s original menu and prices.
So, for a fun, immersive, and delicious experience, check out the makeover at Lamy’s Diner!
In Other Food News...
A Taste of History: Now featuring recipes and menu items guests might see prepared in Greenfield Village historical structures, such as Firestone Farm and Daggett Farmhouse.
Mrs. Fisher's Southern Cooking: The menu is based solely on Mrs. Fisher's 1881 cookbook or authentic recipes.
American Doghouse: New regional hot dog options are available, from the Detroit Coney and Chicago dogs to the California dog wrapped in bacon and avocado, tomato and arugula.
Donna R. Braden, Senior Curator and Curator of Public Life at The Henry Ford and author of this blog post, has decided that her new favorite drink is the refreshing Massachusetts version (without ice cream) of the chocolate milkshake. She thanks Richard Gutman and Lee Ward for their enthusiasm and support in making this makeover possible.
Massachusetts, 21st century, 2010s, 20th century, 1980s, 1940s, restaurants, Henry Ford Museum, food, Driving America, diners, by Donna R. Braden, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
Thanks to Walter Dorwin Teague’s design, Texaco service stations projected a clean, modern and – perhaps most importantly – instantly recognizable image. (From the Collections of The Henry Ford.)
Walter Dorwin Teague’s Texaco Stations
Gasoline is a fiercely competitive business. We’ve all seen intersections with two, three, even four rival gas stations clumped together. Standing out from the crowd is a must. Over the years, retailers developed any number of ways to set themselves apart, including everything from unusual architecture to ultra-clean restrooms. Brand identity – in whatever form it might be – was an essential part of the business.
The Texas Company, better known by the portmanteau Texaco, had its origins in the great Spindletop, Texas, oil strike of 1901, which suddenly had the United States awash in cheap petroleum. Unlike its competitors, which focused on regional markets, Texaco was determined from the start to build itself into a national brand. By 1942, the company had 40,000 outlets spread across the country.
One of Teague’s Texaco stations in use – appropriately enough, in Texas. (John Margolies Roadside America Transparencies. From the Collections of The Henry Ford.)
In 1934, Texaco hired industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague to create a fresh, unified look for the company’s service stations. Teague came up with a boxlike building covered in white porcelain enamel. Evocative of the then-popular streamlined look, Teague’s design simultaneously suggested speed, modernity and cleanliness. (And, with that porcelain exterior, it was easy to clean.) The gleaming white surface contrasted sharply with its surroundings, wherever the station was located, and readily caught motorists’ eyes. It was easy to illuminate at night, too – a significant benefit for retailers operating around the clock. In time, some 10,000 Teague stations were built across the United States, giving Texaco outlets a consistent appearance and identity.
The basic box building became popular with many of Texaco’s competitors, too. Eminently practical, the design provided space for an office/service counter, automobile service bays, storage, and the all-important restrooms. Furthermore, it could be expanded (or reduced), as business conditions warranted, without harming the building’s overall appearance.
By the 1970s, porcelain enamel was out and darker concrete, brick and wood surfaces were in. (John Margolies Roadside America Transparencies. From the Collections of The Henry Ford.)
But what was fresh and modern in the 1930s was, inevitably, dull and outdated within a few decades. In the 1960s, oil companies began to move away from bright porcelain boxes in favor of more subdued brick facades and gabled roofs. By the 1980s, the box plan itself was superseded by the larger convenience stores we still see today. But Walter Teague’s design lives on in the Driving America exhibit. Our Texaco station was built and operated in Kingston, Massachusetts, before it came to Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in 1987. The station may not be selling gas anymore, but the its gleaming porcelain still attracts plenty of visitors!
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
Driving America, Henry Ford Museum, roads and road trips, design, by Matt Anderson
1913 Scripps-Booth Rocket
V-2 cylinder engine, air-cooled, 35 cubic inches displacement, 10 horsepower
Inexpensive cyclecars, as the name suggests, often used motorcycle engines like the V-2 in this Scripps-Booth prototype. The air-cooled motor meant there was no need for water or a radiator, while the splash lubrication system eliminated the necessity for an oil pump. The prototype’s engine is mounted with its crankshaft parallel to the rear axle, simplifying the belt connections between transmission and wheels.
1910s, 20th century, Henry Ford Museum, Engines Exposed, engines, Driving America, cars, by Matt Anderson
1930 Ford Model A
Inline 4-cylinder engine, L-head valves, 201 cubic inches displacement, 40 horsepower
Painting engine blocks is a long-standing tradition among automakers. In the 1960s, Ford favored blue while Chevrolet preferred orange. But green was Ford’s color of choice when this Model A came off the line. The black enameled pipe, running diagonally along the block just below the carburetor, returns surplus oil from the valve chamber back to the crankcase.
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
Michigan, 20th century, 1930s, Henry Ford Museum, Ford Motor Company, Engines Exposed, engines, Driving America, cars, by Matt Anderson
1989 Honda Accord
Inline 4-cylinder engine, overhead camshaft, 119 cubic inches displacement, 98 horsepower
Using a front-wheel drive layout in a front-engine car allows for a compact design, but it requires some clever packaging under the hood. The Accord’s automatic transmission is combined with a differential into a single unit called a transaxle, mounted on the passenger side of the engine. The transverse-mounted engine has three valves per cylinder – two intake and one exhaust.
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
1980s, 20th century, Henry Ford Museum, Engines Exposed, engines, Driving America, cars, by Matt Anderson
