Large, Impressive, and Very Rare: the 1917 Simplex-Crane
Evaline Kimball was born in Rumford, Maine, on her family’s farm in 1864. Growing up, she went to live in Chicago with her uncle William Wallace Kimball, the founder of the Kimball Piano Company. “With his great wealth and connections to high-society Chicago,...
America’s First Supercar
A “supercar” is loosely defined as a high-performance street-legal car. I’ll tell you all about America’s first Supercar – the Stanley K Semi-Racer – but first a bit of background history. In 1906, at Ormond Beach (now known as Daytona Beach, Florida),...
Ford Model K
In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt occupied the White House, the average life expectancy was 47 years, only 14% of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub, the tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower, the average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour, and most...
What does a Stetson hat have to do with a Searchmont car?
“Ground floor: Perfumery, stationery, and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware, food and Searchmonts. Going up… ” So might have said the elevator operator at Wanemaker’s Department Store in 1904. Following the bankruptcy of the...