Sue's Audio Books
  • Home
  • Arts
    • Painting
    • Poetry
    • Nature & Science
  • Memoirs
    • African Americans
    • Artists & Intellectuals
    • Explorers
    • Native Americans
    • Pioneers
    • Travelers
    • War & Military
    • Women
  • American History
    • American Revolution
    • American West
    • Civil War
    • Gold Rushes
    • Immigration
    • Slavery & Abolition
  • Miscellany
    • Odd Bits & Tangents
    • Nonfiction Collection
  • Me
    • About
    • Bookish (the Blog)
    • Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
Glass windows of Automat

1950’s Fast Food, the Automat

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960) Brooklyn, judaism, memoirs, Sidney Gross

Above: The Automat on East 14th St., in Manhattan

Sidney Gross (1941-2016)

Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)

Fast food is not an invention of McDonald’s.  Before McDonald’s, there was the Automat.  Once so widespread in New York, the Automat is now extinct, but in the 1950’s it was synonymous with wholesome food and atmosphere.  For as long as the Automat existed, I was compulsive about going there.  When I moved away from New York, it was one of the magnets which drew me back for visits.  Even when I lived in Brooklyn, I would stop in at any branch Automat that I passed, if only to turn the crank in the coffee area and watch the steaming beverage pour from the lion’s head spigot.

My favorite Automat was the branch on East Fourteenth Street in Manhattan.  Twice a day I passed its gleaming windows on my way to and from Stuyvesant High School.  In those days, when a high school became overcrowded, as Stuyvesant certainly was, the Board of Education did not erect an expensive new building to house the overflow; instead they put the students on split session.  The first two years I attended what was known as the “P.M. Session,” which ran from 12:30 to 5 p.m.  Late classes were just a continuation of my earlier existence when I had to attend Hebrew school after P.S. 226 let out at three.  Of course, I was always famished at the end of the day and I still faced, in the rush hour no less, a one hour ride back to Brooklyn.  The Automat lay between the school and the subway station, so it was natural to stop there and fortify body and soul before boarding the Sea Beach Express.

What did I eat there?  Well, since dinner would be waiting for me in Brooklyn, I had to content myself with a light and thrifty snack.  This was usually a cup of tea and a small green ceramic pot of Horn & Hardart baked beans.  The beans were so much different than the ones we had at home, which were simply Heinz vegetarian fresh from the can.  These were dark brown.  They weren’t watery, and they contained bacon, spices, and onions in an absolutely heavenly combination.  To this day I maintain that the Horn & Hardart recipe for baked beans is worth all the gold in Fort Knox.

Every Automat was built on a grand scale, a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach.  The front windows went up a good story and a half, and you entered via a revolving glass door so that the visual line of the windows was not broken.  The dining room was immense, filled with small tables which would hold four uncomfortably on straight-backed chairs.  A small group of tables was roped off from the rest by a red plush cord.  On a brass stanchion was a plain but neat sign which read simply “Ladies.”  Each of the tables in the reserved area held a clear bud vase which contained a single daisy.  A nice touch, I always thought.

The floor and walls of the dining room were faced with reddish beige marble.  These were the days when New Yorkers made much of the Moscow subway station.  If you were visiting Russia, this was supposedly a “must see.”  In my own mind, I identified the Horn & Hardart with what the Moscow subway station must be like.  Well above the hubbub of the ground floor was an ample balcony meant to accommodate the overflow crowds which must have been common in the Automat’s heyday.

Smack in the middle of the main floor was what had to be the eighth wonder of the modern world—the Automat change booth.  Everything in the Automat was calculated on the use of nickels.  If you did not have nickels to buy food, you went to the change booth.  The change maker on Fourteenth Street really knew her business.  No matter what coin or bill you presented her with, she reached into her drawer and threw a fist full of nickels onto the counter which separated her from the rest of the world.  She never seemed to count them—or make a mistake.  Ingrained in my memory of the Automat is the sound of those nickels crashing against the marble change counter.

To the left of the change booth was the Automat itself, a solid wall of shiny glass doors graced with porcelain knobs on brass stems.  It looked like nothing so much as a theater marquee as it glittered in the light streaming from a battery of incandescent bulbs overhead.  Like soldiers, the doors were aligned in vertical file.  Each was clearly labeled: creamed spinach, baked beans, lemon pie, chicken sandwich.  The joy of all this was that you could peek through the glass and see your selection already before you on its own plate.  All that needed to be done was to insert the appropriate number of nickels (in my day the top was five), twist the porcelain knob, and presto, the door would fly open and you would reach in and grab your food.  One of my childhood fantasies was to discover a door with a broken knob which would pop open without the aid of nickels.  I never found it, but the lure kept drawing me back.

So, there was our fast food of the fifties.  Contrasted with McDonald’s and Burger King, the Automat system must have been like hunting through a file drawer as compared to a computerized retrieval system. Yet I can’t help but feel that having it my way would entail the buffalo nickel and the shiny glass door.

Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)

A Cake with a Frosted Siddur (Bar Mitzvah, Part 4) How We Stopped Being Kosher, Part 1

Related Posts

Abstract painting

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

Purim

Doll house Christmas display

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

Hanukkah and Christmas

Abstract oil painting

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

Yom Kippur

Oil painting: Sweet Brooklyn

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

Sweet Brooklyn, Part 2

Old fashioned soda fountain

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

Sweet Brooklyn, Part 1

Abstract oil painting

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

How We Stopped Being Kosher, Part 2

pictures of Gene Autry and Sidney

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

How We Stopped Being Kosher, Part 1

Cake with a frosted siddur

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

A Cake with a Frosted Siddur (Bar Mitzvah, Part 4)

Happy Parents

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

June 19, 1954, A Special Time (Bar Mitzvah, Part 3)

Family walking to the shul

Sidney's Brooklyn (1941-1960)

Rugelach and Rectitude (Bar Mitzvah, Part 2)

Recent Posts

  • Chickens, Cats, & Self-Perception: On Drawing
  • Rendering Clouds and Water
  • Cloud Identification
  • Japanese Beetle Control
  • Nurses’ Christmas Newsletters (1928-1947), Geneva, Illinois

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016

Categories

Tags

Alfred East American West anti-semitism Arthur L. Guptill audiobooks August Jaccaci birds Brooklyn California Christopher Whall Civil War cochineal Constantine Panunzio constantinople contact Edward Carpenter Francis Roe Frontier Nursing Society Gold Rushes Illinois immigrants Immigration internet archive John Muir judaism letters librivox memoirs Mexico Mt. Rainier nature nonfiction collection Ohio painting pioneers poetry Sidney Gross sketching Slavery & Abolition Spain Spanish Borderlands Thomas Dallam war and military women World War I
  • Home
  • Arts
    • Painting
    • Poetry
    • Nature & Science
  • Memoirs
    • African Americans
    • Artists & Intellectuals
    • Explorers
    • Native Americans
    • Pioneers
    • Travelers
    • War & Military
    • Women
  • American History
    • American Revolution
    • American West
    • Civil War
    • Gold Rushes
    • Immigration
    • Slavery & Abolition
  • Miscellany
    • Odd Bits & Tangents
    • Nonfiction Collection
  • Me
    • About
    • Bookish (the Blog)
    • Sidney’s Brooklyn (1941-1960)
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
© Sue's Audio Books 2021
Copyright: Sue Anderson. All rights reserved.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy