Old Service Stations

[Eric]

[Eric]

[Eric]

[Eric]

[tous]

Business telephone and a pay telephone?

 

[Eric]

Just now, tous said:

Business telephone and a pay telephone?

 

Yeah, I noticed that. Since both phones connected to the same operator, it seems like they could have made do with one.

Looking at the picture, I can almost smell what that place would have smelled like. They were good smells. Mostly.

[Fog]

Looks like he was piping a bit of used oil into the coal stove to help with the heating bill.

Calendar says August 1937

[gwalchmai]

7 hours ago, Eric said:

Looks a lot like my grandpappy.

[railfancwb]

9 hours ago, tous said:

Business telephone and a pay telephone?

 

Possibly two different phone services. At one time businesses had to have multiple phones because the different telephone companies were not interconnected. 

[Eric]

Washington DC, 1920. That must be before they paved over the swamp.

 

 

[tous]

Is that an Oldsmobile at the pump?

Is Joe Biden in the picture?

[Eric]

47 minutes ago, tous said:

Is that an Oldsmobile at the pump?

Is Joe Biden in the picture?

I could be wrong, but I think that is a mid-teen Cadillac. Below is a 1914 Cadillac Model 30. The grille shape, the flat welted fenders, driving light placement and the scripting of the brand name seem like a match. There are some differences, but this is in the ballpark, I think.

[tous]

I think you're right.

You can almost see the Cadillac logo on the radiator grill.

It was the rounded top of the radiator shell that made me think Oldsmobile.

[Eric]

1 hour ago, tous said:

Is that an Oldsmobile at the pump?

Is Joe Biden in the picture?

I've got my doubts about it being a Cadillac, but it is the closest thing I could find. There are some features shared with Oldsmobiles of the same era as well. There were dozens of automakers back then. I can't keep them all straight, or remember most of them.

[Eric]

2 minutes ago, tous said:

I think you're right.

You can almost see the Cadillac logo on the radiator grill.

It was the rounded top of the radiator shell that made me think Oldsmobile.

The Olds radiators of that era were similar and both cars had flat fender surfaces with a beadline around their perimeters, to stiffen them.

[tous]

It is hard to tell from that perspective.

The Cadillac you show has much thicker wheels and tires that seem closer in than the service station photograph.

And the headlights, though the proper height, don't have the bar between them.

Thanks for trying.

 

 

[Eric]

1 minute ago, tous said:

It is hard to tell from that perspective.

The Cadillac you show has much thicker wheels and tires that seem closer in than the service station photograph.

And the headlights, though the proper height, don't have the bar between them.

Thanks for trying.

 

 

Look at the vertical poles with the Y yokes on top that mount the headlights. That is the same in the first and the second feature and they both do have a crossbar between the headlights. Both cars have a similar curvature to their cowls as well, although the first one has a fuel filler neck visible in its cowl. Most of the cars of that era had their fuel tanks located under the cowl. It's going to bug me not knowing, damn it.

[Eric]

I just noticed too (Duh!) that the second car I posted was right-hand drive. If it was built for a foreign market, it might explain some of the differences.

[Eric]

57 minutes ago, tous said:

It is hard to tell from that perspective.

The Cadillac you show has much thicker wheels and tires that seem closer in than the service station photograph.

And the headlights, though the proper height, don't have the bar between them.

Thanks for trying.

 

 

OK, now I'm thinking maybe it is a 1914 Studebaker. Look at the manufacturer badge on the grille in the pic below. If you look at other pics of 1914 Studebakers, there are plenty of other similarities, although I couldn't find any with the driving lights the first one had. They were mounted on the windshield frame. They could have been aftermarket or borrowed from anther car. The logo looks right though.

[Eric]

Here is a hi-res copy of the first image.

[Eric]

The shape of the radiator is a much closer match with the 1914 Studebaker pic.

[tous]

It is.

The skinnier tires and wheels seem to match, but the front fenders seem to have a more contour and pronounced lip, no?

Could be a same model year-to-year difference.

The extensions for the bumper mounts and height of the bumper matches pretty well.

Does the shape for the convertible top offer a good clue for automobiles in the 1920s?

The shape and number of rear windows?

This is fun.

 

[tous]

A fellow on this site agrees that it is a 1914 Studebaker.

https://www.shorpy.com/node/9442

[Eric]

1 hour ago, tous said:

It is.

The skinnier tires and wheels seem to match, but the front fenders seem to have a more contour and pronounced lip, no?

Could be a same model year-to-year difference.

The extensions for the bumper mounts and height of the bumper matches pretty well.

Does the shape for the convertible top offer a good clue for automobiles in the 1920s?

The shape and number of rear windows?

This is fun.

 

This car is pretty definitely a mid-teen car. Tops on cars of that vintage would have been one of the fastest-wearing items on the car and there was no shortage of craftsman back then that could fabricate new ones. There weren’t a lot of complex body features they had to match up with. On that first pic, the top doesn’t even appear to attach to the windshield frame, just overhang it. There probably are a couple of leather tethers though, to support the front against the wind.

I think that the most consistently reliable feature to start with, when trying to identify a car of that era, is the radiator shell. Manufacturers generally stuck with a certain shape and style for those and it is a part of a car that someone would have been less likely to swap out, for whatever reason.

In this case, I went through manufacturer names from this wiki page to find a name that might look like the logo on the grille in the first pic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Vehicle_manufacturing_companies_established_in_1914 When I got to Studebaker, I could have kicked myself. Even before finding badging on a car in another pic, the name was really all that could fit in what I could make out of the badging. 

[Eric]

48 minutes ago, tous said:

A fellow on this site agrees that it is a 1914 Studebaker.

https://www.shorpy.com/node/9442

I found the hi-res pic on Shorpy, after doing a Google Image search for the origin of that first pic. It didn’t occur to me to scroll down and look for comments. I’m surprised I never ran across that site before. I love stuff like that. I’ll definitely be spending some time exploring it, when I can.