What does a Stetson hat have to do with a Searchmont car?
“Ground floor: Perfumery, stationery, and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware, food and Searchmonts. Going up… ” So might have said the elevator operator at Wanemaker’s Department Store in 1904. Following the bankruptcy of the...
Granddaughter of Abbott sees her first Abbott-Detroit
At the auto museum, we are always excited to welcome descendants of an owner or manufacturer of a motor vehicle in our collection. Last year, we welcomed descendants of Finley Robertson Porter, builder of the F.R.P., and Helen Hartley Jenkins, original owner of the...
Tinker Camp 2019
Earlier this year, we were pleased that Camp Beech Cliff approached us and asked if we would host a Tinker Camp for them here at the auto museum. A couple months later, we were even MORE pleased to hear that Tinker Camp was so popular among the registrants that Camp...
The Metz Plan
What would you do if you had just taken over control of a debt-ridden company with a pile of unsold spare parts? If you were Charles Herman Metz, you would have come up with a plan – because not only did you possess a fine technical mind, you were also...
Two sisters ride coast-to-coast on Indian Motorcycles
Summer 1916 – Augusta (32) and Adeline (26) Van Buren, two sisters, become the second and third women to drive coast-to-coast trip on their own solo motorcycles (the first was Effie Hotchkiss – her mother technically rode, not drove), and the...
The Pioneers of Automobile Collecting
Let me take you back to the very beginning of the old car hobby – back to 1939 to be exact – and an article that appeared on September 8 of that year. The headline read, “Vintage Cars Will Undergo Various Tests,” and the article went on to say, “Motordom’s...