New York Times Article “Cars and the City, Imperfect Together”
The New York Times will published a cover article in Sunday's Automobiles section detailing the upcoming exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.
The article "Cars and the City, Imperfect Together" by James Barron describes the roles of John Russell Pope and Willie K. and the Long Island Motor Parkway:
"New York had showrooms that lined block after block on Broadway for nearly half a century, turning window-shopping into entertainment. The cars were not the only attractions; celebrity architects like Frank Lloyd Wright were commissioned to design showrooms and to work on other projects that would not have been necessary without the automobile. John Russell Pope, architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, designed local parkway tollbooths. "
"...the book by Mr. Albrecht and Mr. Patton makes clear that the automobile caught on first with upper-crust types. “And since a lot of rich people lived in New York, the car was a New York thing,” Mr. Albrecht said. He said that of the 8,000 cars in the United States in 1900, nearly a third were owned by New Yorkers. They raced them at City Hall Park and built getaway roads. William K. Vanderbilt II, a great-grandson of the railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, built a parkway on Long Island. "
Sixteen pieces of my Vanderbilia will be part of the exhibition.
Comments
I remember many years ago, sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, walking up some street in New York, and coming upon a J2 Allard spotlighted in a showroom. It was orange, and just glowed in the dark. It was one of several events that ignited my interest in sports cars.