Heirs to the Horn & Hardart
When the last Horn & Hardart Automat closed on April 9, 1991 (audio link), it left a strange void in American life. Strange because Americans love gadgets, and yet no equivalent to the Automats moved in to fill this kitchy gap.
However, the Japanese love gadgets at least as much as we do, and have loosed an impressive array of automated vending machines on the world. Besides the usual coffee, soda, and cigarettes, their machines manage to dispense eggs, rice, live beetles, fishing tackle, toilet paper, toys, flowers, cameras, batteries, popcorn, fried food, porn, live lobsters, kerosene, dry ice, and, uh, used schoolgirl panties.
Similar vending machines, but super-sized, have been popping up around the world. Often referred to as automated convenience stores, they (so far) lack the Automat 's brave-new-world panache, faux grandeur, and chutzpah. McDonald's tried their own version, called Redbox, but pulled the plug in 2003. BoingBoing mentions a "Coin-op Seven/Eleven in a box" in this 2002 post.
As far as we're concerned, the new milennium won't have distinguised itself until it has produced a 21st-Century Automat, combining the unerring dexterity of assembly-line robotics, the transparent utility of an iPod and the streamlined down-hominess of a Jersey Diner.
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(click for full-sized image)
Related links:
• We found this FEBO "Automat" in Amsterdam which bears the most remarkable resemblance to the old New York Automats we've seen yet. (Unfortunately for us, it's not in English.)
• This upscale cafeteria in Manhattan's Hudson Hotel is frequently compared to the Automat. We don't see it, though, and attribute the comparisons to well-paid PR hype.
• The Tiktok Easy Shop Big Box was a charmless automated convenience store that failed to take off, and does not seem to be lamented.
• First Horn & Hardart opnes in 1902. (timeline)
• First NYC Horn & Hardart opens, 1912.
• Rare photos of the founders, exterior, and a delivery truck
• Postcard illustration from the era shows 'how an Automat works'
• Quality and freshness at the H&H.
• Automats in the movies: Easy Living (1937) shows the workings of one. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Marilyn Monroe sings the song "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" which contains the line "A kiss may be grand but won't pay the rental on your humble flat or help you at the Automat". In The Apartment (1960), Jack Lemmon says he spent his Christmas evening at an Automat. In That Touch of Mink (1962) Doris Day’s friend Audrey Meadows stocks the machines in an Automat, and there is a lengthy (humorous) scene set there. Ladies' Man (1947) features an Automat scene, and an Automat-like restaurant is featured in 1998's Dark City.
• Dining-out images from the 1940's.
• Why care about the Automat?
• Musings on a waiterless restaurant
• Remembering Horn & Hardart's masterpiece, also here, and at the Smithsonian. A Smithsonian display.
• Robotic Nation Evidence (by the author of How Stuff Works) scans the technical horizon for automated convenience stores and other robotic developments.
UPDATE: A high-tech German 'automat' for a new millennium. (video)
See also: Sentimental journey, 50's-era pop culture.
Categories: Humor, Pop+culture, Americana, History, Japan
Linked at Basil's Blog, Beltway Traffic Jam, Cafe Oregano, bRight & Early, Jo's Café, Stop the ACLU, Mudville Gazette, Cao's Blog, Euphoric Reality, Wizbang!, The Political Teen, Point Five, My vast right wing conspiracy, The Big Dog, Iowa Voice.
posted by Mister Snitch! at 10:04 PM
8 Comments:
When I was a boy my mother used to take me to the Automat and hand me a bunch of change and let me have at it. It was my very, very, very favorite restaurant.
Jim
Parkway Rest Stop
http://parkwayreststop.com
I wasn't raised around here, but it was famous. When I came here in 1980, I checked it out (the one that remained, in Manhattan), but it had already fallen onto hard times. As had the rest of the city, actually, which suffered terribly during the 70's. I think mostly sentiment kept it around for another decade.
I wanted the Automat to still be great, as it once was. It was a wonderful, fun, Coney Island kind of restaurant adventure. Those who missed it entirely will never understand - but I knew you'd find this post, Jim.
There were some efforts in the years since that I could not document for this post (although I will add links if they are found). For example, I remember a Japanese Manhattan restaurant in which food was brought to patrons by means of a conveyor belt. It would just emerge from the kitchen and appear before you, no waiter involved. This was I felt rather Automat-like in spirit. I always looked for efforts like that, something that would bring back that Automat feeling. I'd hoped with the advent of these automated convenience stores that someone would attempt to create an Automat-like experience. Seems to me that it should be possible to do it in spades, today. We have robots building cars almost without human intervention - where is the all-new, all-robot, high-tech Automat?
You would think that with the rush to embrace technology that allows the consumer to serve themselves (the self-checkout counters at supermarkets and Home Depot) that they would be all over bringing the automat back. Heck, it's got cost savings and the retro thing going for it. Why haven't they then? Well, because it's difficult to have a machine be snotty to you and get your order wrong (well, at least when you can see what you're getting through a little window it is).
The NY Daily News ran a great article on automats back in 2002. Check it out here if you like. This article also mentions a "Museum of the City of New York" that has an automat display (among other things) that sounds pretty interesting.
Cheers,
Ed T.
So rudeness cannot be programmed? Well, the machines can never really take over then. That link is a real find, great article by Pete Hamill.
I found a link to that museum exhibit but it had been taken off line, apparently it was not a permanent installation.
The Automats are part of lost New York, and Hamill mentions other lost pop-cultural artifacts lost to history such as the Camel sign. We can think of all kinds of lost places, styles, and ways of doing things. I stumbled over a site recently that featured all these fading building signs - that is, signs painted right on the brick of a building, advertising a business or service no longer there. We're a bit better at saviing stuff with the Internet, but then again we make so much more of it. Anyway, the subject of bygone culture is one that's going to inspire many more posts, it's quite a rich vein to mine.
It is hard to imagine, though, that this particular artifact, the Automat, won't come back, isn't it? We can understand why the Camel sign is gone for good. We know why they'll never X-ray your feet at the shoe store again (this practice had already ended when I was a kid, but some of the machines were still around). But the Automat seems destined for a revivale. True, fast food is now done better by McDonald's, but other franchises have carved out their niches (Boston Market, Denny's, etc.). If as Hamill said the unions killed H&H, that also is probably not a problem anymore. And the city has a number of retro diners, so it's not as if retro or Art Deco have lost their appeal.
It does seem to me that someone will open a new, truly Automated Auomat. Possibly it will be a small startup, or maybe one of the big franchises will crank up this piece of nostalgia. But will it be McDonalds? Starbucks? Bill Gates?
The odd thing about H&H was that people where behind the dispensers & not long after one took out a sandwich a worker tucked another one in from the back. So it was less a giant vending machine than a "modern" cafeteria. I'd compare it more to a present day 7/11, with wrapped sandwiches, salads, burritos & burgers exceptthe food is less fresh & there's no place to sit down. The machine-like aspects of Japanese culture in which individuality doesn't count for much are traditional & ingrained & very few catch on in America, where we are messy & take things personally, including broken vending machines.
Well-observed, Bob. I remember the people scurrying around behind the glass doors, too, keeping things running. I alluded to the fact that a new Automat could be a TRULY automated eatery, and not a pretend one, but you spelled it out.
All through the Automat's heyday, when we watched a film with a 'special effect', from a simple fade-out to a ray-gun blast, we really did engage in a suspension of disbelief. We knew that Superman really didn't look as if he were flying, but we understood at some level that this was as good as we had a hope to expect. So we made a connection that the filmmaker could not. I think folks at the Automat did the same thing. There was no way to get that pie in the glass box except for someone to put it there, and we knew it. But the theater of the place was designed to help us believe that pies and sandwiches magically appeared out of an endless cornucopea. The food was the star, its glass case the runway, and nothing was going to upstage it.
I was thinking today about Johnny Rockets, a franchise (we have one in Hoboken) that sells restaurant nostalgia. The look of the place, the food itself and the dishware on which it's served are evocative of a 50's Soda Fountain meal. But the chain also attempts to mimick the manner in which service performed in that era, as much as is possible. The experience is not that different from what would be required to revive the Automat, except that as Bob correctly points out - it should actually BE automated.
Oh thank you, thank you, thank you! What a wonderful reminder of my childhood in the city? I question it because I'm not certain I ever experienced an automat (though deep down inside I feel I have:) OR, I am living the many automat stories I heard as a child. These things tend to mix up in your head (mine anyway) when you get older. I wonder, was the Brass Rail an automat?
I hope you don't mind if I link to this post. I'm going to try to include the event on my blog.
Thanks again for the memories?
It's my pleasure, Louise.
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