Crow-Elkhart Motor Company, 1920

Museum of the City of New York, Byron Collection

New York, not Detroit as the Car Capital of the Country

In 1900, roughly one-third of the 8,000 cars in the country were owned by New Yorkers; by 1914, the number of cars on New York City streets alone had grown to an astonishing 125,000.  And by 1919, that number had tripled! Though heralded as one of the few places in America you can live without ever having to learn how to drive, the metropolis actually played quite a role in jump-starting the American automobile industry. A new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York examines the century-old relationship between the American automobile and New York City, exploring the influence each had on the other.

The exhibition is divided into three sections: “Promoting Car Culture”, “Accommodating the Car” and “Considering the Impact of Car Culture”.

Promoting Car Culture

Cars, Culture and the City documents the elaborate enterprise of marketing the car, from Broadway’s

“Automobile Row” and the establishment of major showrooms aligned with New York’s theater district to the illuminated signs of Times Square; from the World’s Fairs to the elaborate Motoramas, automobile shows that premiered at the Waldorf Astoria in the 1950s, to the architect-designed showrooms—the “great halls of baronial aspect” where cars were staged in opulent settings tantamount to movie studio sets. Even Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) designed an automobile showroom!  Featured work by some of New York’s most celebrated industrial designers such as Walter Dorwin Teague, Jr. (1910-2004), and Raymond Loewy (1893-1986), as well as drawings of “dream cars” by Carl H. Renner (1923-2001), among others.

Accommodating the Car

Considered “America’s most shining triumphs,” automobiles brought sweeping change to New York City.  Billed casually (and strategically) as “appliances”

Model of General Motors' GM-X experimental automobile that was shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair Credit: Courtesy The Henry Ford Museum, gift of the family of William L. Mitchell

National Automobile Show program, 1935 Courtesy Automobile Reference Collection, Free Library Philadelphia

Packard Dealership, designed by Albert Kahn, Broadway and Sherman, Manhattan. Courtesy Albert Kahn Associates Inc.

by manufacturers, cars relieved the city of the problems created by horses, each of which deposited some 50 pounds of manure per day on city streets; adding to this environmental disaster were the carcasses—some 15,000 per year—that spread infestation and disease throughout the city. In addition to relieving the city of filth and decay, cars were seen as efficient delivery systems for people and goods within the city, especially as the population increased.  The decrease in horse-drawn transportation began prior to 1902, however with the introduction of the Model T—the vehicle that democratized the car—in 1908, the demand for paved roads became an imperative.

Considering the Impact of Car Culture

The initial promise of and excitement about the automobile, of course, has always been tempered by its downside. The car that had promised to remove congestion from the city brought congestion of its own.  Major thoroughfares disrupted and fragmented neighborhoods. The parkways built by Robert Moses have been blamed for contributing to the population move to the suburbs that helped cause the city’s economic decline in the decades following WWII. Competition between motored vehicles and other forms of transportation has intensified with each passing decade.  Today, the human experience with the car in New York City is the stuff of comedy, tabloid headlines, and urban legend.

A Look Ahead

Times Square and Fifth Avenue seem unthinkable without continuous streams of headlights, yet the city’s grid-like physical layout, built long before the automobile’s introduction, has already shown itself to be troublesome for an ever-burgeoning car culture in light of 21st century density and sustainability concerns.  The need to alleviate congestion has inspired architects and planners to conceive of innovative and visionary schemes for multi-level cities, pedestrian plazas, massive systems of urban expressways and regional parkways, as well as strategies to discourage traffic.  On view in the exhibition are a film in which increased bicycle-riding is proposed by the advocacy group Livable Cities.