The Automat, fabled chain that closed in 1991, is staging a comeback | Retrologist Roadside Roundup

Plus, fire devastates Atlanta icon; a chilly tour of the "McAtlas"; a game for NYC trivia nerds; biggest Buc-ees is coming; why one Wegman's is keeping its old sign; and more headlines from the road.

A ghost sign for Horn & Hardart Automat lingers on West 38th Street in Manhattan. (Rolando Pujol)

I never stepped inside a Horn & Hardart Automat, that fabled urban precursor to fast-food restaurants that stirs nostalgia in those who remember the chain and “anemoia” — nostalgia for that which you never experienced — in so many others, myself included.

The last location closed in 1991, at the corner of East 42nd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan. Today, it’s home to a Gap.

Where you can today “fall into the Gap,” many remember “falling for” the last Automat and its charms.

How did it work? As the name implies, you didn’t deal with people, at least not at first. (If you needed nickels for the food machines, someone was on hand to make change for you.)

Behold the wonder of the Automat, as exhibited at the Lunch Hour NYC show at the New York Public Library in 2013. (Rolando Pujol)

Patrons were entranced by a wondrous, elegant wall of glassed boxes containing tantalizing food, and for the right amount of nickels followed by the twist of a knob, the tiny door would open, and the meal was there for the taking. It could be chicken pot pie, baked beans, the fabled mac and cheese, a simple sandwich, a pastry.

A simple but sophisticated mechanism (Rolando Pujol)

(Behind the wall, people were preparing and placing the food, out of sight but never quite out of mind.)

Behold a majestic Automat wall! (Rolando Pujol)

There was a deep and distinct sense of community at the Automat— people then were likelier to eat their grub at a table rather than rush back and gobble it at their desks. With nowhere to go and not much money, some folks made an art of hanging out and subsisting in Automats, even on the condiments placed at the marble tables.

Yes, marble tables.

The architecture of the Automat, catering to the common person, treated you with a kind of dignity and respect that today’s patrons of fast-food restaurants could barely imagine.

This food may have been “fast” and “cheap” (and not to mention tasty), but it was served in a sumptuous cathedral-like setting of marble and Art Deco design touches. The coffee dispenser — set in an ornate backplate that accepted nickels —spouted your coffee (and cream!) from a dolphin head like the one co-founder Joseph Horn had seen in a water fountain in Italy.

The coffee was unlike anything Philadelphians and New Yorkers had tasted before, with origins in New Orleans-style French Press.

The legendary Horn & Hardart coffee dispensers. Outrage ensued when the price went from a nickel to two nickels in 1950. (Rolando Pujol)

Founded by Horn and Frank Hardart in Philadelphia in 1888, Horn & Hardarts were initially lunch shops until they imported an earlier version of “Automatic” restaurant technology from Europe, opening the first in 1902. The first H&H opened in Manhattan a decade later and grew to dozens of locations. There were also bakery outlets.

While the chain never spread beyond New York and Philly, it became a place that represented urban glamour and sophistication to the wider world, morphed into a tourist attraction, and established itself as an institution intrinsic to the identity of both cities.

But times and tastes changed, and management wasn’t what it once was, so as the 20th century wore on, the Automats faded away.

Many old Automats would become Burger Kings in the 1970s, when Horn & Hardart was in deep twilight.

I’ve long thought the Automat concept could be revived, and some restaurants have done just that in more restrained and updated ways, including a spot that opened for a time not far from the site of the final store on Third Avenue.

But something remarkable is happening, which I hope Mel Brooks gets to experience. (He is the “star” of the amazing Automat documentary that you must watch.)

Yes, the Automat is poised for an unlikely comeback.

A man in his 30s, who, of course, never experienced them, has become sufficiently convinced that the world needs Automats again and is trying to bring them back— just as they were.

Reports the New York Post:

David Arena is only 35, but to the entrepreneur and serial startup guy from Philadelphia, that faded “ghost sign” [see my top image] looks like the future. He’s confident he will bring the Automat back from the dead.

And he thinks he can get the first location open within the year.

Call that blind optimism, maybe, the millennial admits cheerfully. But then again, to wake up every day believing that you’re the guy who’s going to bring H&H’s homespun mac-‘n’-cheese charm to the cynical, $17 salad-choked streets of post-pandemic Midtown, you’ve got to be some kind of dreamer.

And this dreamer calls the project “his life’s calling.”

“We’re going back to the nostalgic 1920s, 1930s charm, to beaux arts, art deco, to the machines themselves — and we’re not going to modernize the recipes,” Arena told The Post, describing what customers will find when they step into his 21st-century reinterpretation, filled with comfortable seating and people tucking into pie and cups of hot coffee at all hours — just like old times.

A part of the fabled New York (and Philly) of yore would return, and Arena already has a robust web presence. (I just ordered some Automat coffee and a colorful mug to go with it!)

The coffee will not come in this can, but the mug plays off this design. (Rolando Pujol)

It’s poetically appropriate that Arena is from Philadelphia, like the Automat’s founders, and would likely open the first location there.

Today in New York, a few traces are left of the chain, a question I explored in this newsletter, below. (And please add this gorgeous Automat remnant in Philly to your list.)

---

Fire damages historic Atlanta gay bar and Kodak building with famed scaffold sign

A fire severely damaged the site of the Atlanta Eagle gay bar and the Kodak building (with its famed sign) in Atlanta on Ponce de Leon Avenue, a stretch that has seen disaster befall it before. A hate crime was not suspected but the blaze remains under investigation. The site was listed as one of the first protected LGBTQIA+ spaces in the South, according to Atlanta News First.

The Kodak building opened as a photo business around 1950, but has long been shuttered.

There has been talk of redeveloping both buildings amid an upswing in the Midtown neighborhood.

The historic Krispy Kreme across the street, owned by Shaquille O’Neal, was damaged in twin blazes in 2021, the original structure demolished in favor of a new one, but the historic sign remained. The Mary Mac Tea Room down the avenue recently had to close for a while after the roof sustained damage in a storm.

Drone footage, below, shows the Kodak sign survived the blaze.

Interestingly, and sadly not surprisingly, both buildings were placed on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s Places in Peril list for 2021.

---

The McAtlas Substack explores the question of the world’s northernmost McDonald’s

My friend, the James Beard-Award-winning writer Gary He, runs a neat Substack called McAtlas, about all things McDonald’s.

In his latest dispatch, he explores the three-way battle for the world’s northernmost McDonald’s.

Gary writes:

Located at the edge of the Arctic Circle near the Santa Claus Village that draws more than a half million visitors a year, the McDonald’s in Rovaniemi, Finland opened in December 1997 to great fanfare.

“Since this restaurant is the closest to the North Pole, we hope this will become Santa’s favorite neighborhood restaurant,” said then-McDonald’s CEO Jim Cantalupo at the opening of the chain’s northernmost outpost.

There was no reason to believe that the title would ever be at risk.

Well, surprise, it would be at risk. Read on below and give McAtlas a follow if you enjoy exploring the world of McDonald’s.

The Battle for Northernmost McDonald's

---

Calling all NYC trivia nerds (like me)

Signs like this are your sign to test your NYC knowledge. (via OUTFRONT Media)

This is a moment that’s been 60 years in the making.

Next year, New York City will mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Officials have announced a civically clever way to celebrate and engage the public: Trivia.

In the leadup to the celebration, the campaign, called Trivia Moments, is posting daily multiple-choice questions about New York City history at digital-screen touchpoints around town from now (it actually started April 29) until the end of 2024, including digital displays in subway trains, at station entrances, on large Times Square displays and at major transportation centers like Grand Central Terminal, reports Gothamist.

Playing is a breeze: You scan a QR code, sign up for the contest, enter your answer, and you’ve entered the competition. A dynamic leaderboard will show those in the lead, so this contest may be your Warholian 15 minutes.

Each week, the person who gathers the most points wins $34 in OMNY (the MetroCard replacement) money, translating to about a week of free subway and bus rides.

You can’t win again after that, but you’re incentivized to keep participating, as a big, final winner will be declared at the end of the year — and take home an unknown prize.

Ooooh!

"The NYC Landmarks60 Alliance hopes that Trivia Moments will bring New Yorkers together to enjoy fresh facts about our city, and will increase the wider public's awareness of the 60th Anniversary of New York City's Landmarks Law next year," said Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, chair of The Historic Landmarks Preservation Center and the NYC Landmarks60 Alliance, in an OUTFRONT Media news release.

"The contest displays questions about the complex and intriguing history of New York City -- including sports, arts, business, politics, and of course, architecture. Millions of people – from commuters to tourists to residents – can test their knowledge at these screens placed in and around transit stations. We hope this program will offer an enjoyable, and even informative diversion, for everyone, young or old, who rides the subway," she continued.

As a big trivia buff (shocker, I know), you know I’ll be playing!

---

The Retrologist Roadside Ticker ….

• You gotta love Wegman’s. The supermarket chain has decided to keep vintage signage at its smallest store, located in East Rochester, New York, because the old look better fits the midcentury building. How about that!

The Loft’s Candies sign, as seen in July 2023 (Rolando Pujol)

• It was big news when a vintage Loft’s Candies neon sign emerged from its storefront sepulchral in 2016, and a punch in the gut when it vanished again. But it hasn’t gone far. It’s in the safe hands of Let There Be Neon in TriBeCa until it returns to the original building, to be displayed inside.

The final days of the Clover Deli in 2020, before the American Sign Museum rescued the signage. (Rolando Pujol)

• The new wing of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati will open on July 13, and we’ve been getting preview dollops, including the return to the public view of an old friend: the Clover Deli sign, a decades-long and much-missed icon of Manhattan, once at East 34th Street and Second Avenue.

• The world’s largest Buc-ee’s is poised to open in central Texas. It will also be — get this — the largest convenience store on the planet!

Buce-ee’s monicker draws inspiration from the name of the founder’s dog – Buck – and the 1950s mascot for Ipana toothpaste, Bucky Beaver, who belted out the “brusha, brusha, brusha” jingle. (Rolando Pujol)

• Barnes & Nobles has returned to Chicago after a 14-month absence from standalone stores, and three more are on the way.

• The Stagecoach Inn in Salado, Texas, is reopening its restaurant, working with the folks behind the stylish and nostalgia-fueled Monument Cafe in Georgetown.

• Printemps, the classic Parisian department store, is opening a branch in Manhattan, at 1 Wall Street, featuring high-end restaurants to go with the fancy merch.

• I told you last month about the return of Downtown LA’s beloved Clifton’s Republic. Here’s an update from the LA Times, which published an interview with Clifton’s owner, Andrew Meieran.

• An iconic sign for a now-closed strip club, a highway landmark in San Antonio, Texas, has been purchased by … the owner of another strip club.

• Wichita's Mings’ Restaurant is closing after over 40 years in business. But the sign — and restaurants on the site — have been around a lot longer.

• The last location of Powdrell’s Barbeque is moseying into the Albuquerque sunset.

• Let’s visit the first Sonic in Stillwater, Oklahoma. It’s still there!

A Jack In The Box relic at the Valley Relics Museum, photographed by me in 2018.

• The wonderful Valley Relics Museum receives a nice writeup here. I’m overdue for a visit to this treasure trove of Southern California roadside Americana.

Thanks for reading! Please support my efforts by subscribing. I've included options for how to support below. Happy travels!