Kleiner’s Korner: Part 4 - Buffalo, NY Wants the 1907 Vanderbilt Cup Race
Part 4 of this series takes us back east to Buffalo, NY which after the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup Race decided to put a bid in for the following year's race. Thomas Flyer manufacturer, E. R. Thomas, supported the bid. All documentation from The Motor Way of October 25, 1906 except as noted.
Art Kleiner
Interestingly the city put a bid in a year early without even knowing of the problems that would ensue in 1907 to hold the race on Long Island. And they already had planned a better course (in their opinion) than on Long Island!
I'm assuming the E. R. Thomas mentioned here is the E. R. Thomas auto manufacturer and who also became a director of the Motor Parkway. (wnyheritage.com)
Thomas felt roadways such as the Motor Parkway would have a positive impact on the automobile industry and probably believed that his home town should share in the benefits. (The New York Times, Nov. 11, 1906)
The course was actually through farmland to the east of Buffalo proper on macadamized and dirt roads with two railroad crossings.
The bid was supported by the city of Buffalo and the Automobile Club of Buffalo.
The course of the proposed 1907 Vanderbilt Cup Race near Buffalo, NY.
A current view of the proposed course.
Not much more is known about Buffalo's bid for the 1907 race except that it didn't succeed!
Comments
Art, Thanks a lot for putting in the extra effort for documenting these relatively unknown attempts for hosting the Vanderbilt Cup Races (even though we all know the Long Island races are the only ones that really count)! Now that so many early periodicals have been digitized we have an incredible opportunity to further our knowledge of this important subject.
Thanks Gary - its truly a labor of love! As you say, digitization has made researching our favorite subject that much more rewarding and efficient! But it is still a thrill to read through the original hard copies when they are found.
I remember when I was doing research on the Fulton Motor Truck, going up to Henry Austin Clark’s house - we wandered through the basement looking through all sorts of period magazines for ads and info., then upstairs to the library also filled with goodies. For a librarian/historian it was paradise! I’ll take a “real” object over a computer screen any day!
Agreed! However for purposes of sorting through lots of information for a particular topic you can’t beat the search and find functions. But by relying on that only there’s so much that one would miss on other interesting finds. Even when I use the search functions I usually scan the entire on-line document to pick out bits of useful information. I’ve find many of the items I post on the blog that way.
Also, about your comment regarding LI being the “real” home of the Cup Races, I’ll be having an upcoming post about the 1907 race again being proposed on LI even after it was announced it wouldn’t. And another post about offers to host the 1908 race off of LI.
By the way, I’ve been coming across a name associated with aviation on LI in the early 1900s named Lee Hammond. Any relation?
Sorry Art, no relation that I know of (unless very distant), but he definitely was a very interesting aviator with Long Island connections as his wife came from Garden City. He truly proved the old adage that a landing you could walk away from was a good landing, having crashed numerous times!