The Automat
New York kids in 1946 loved being taken to a Horn & Hardart Automat where you dropped nickels into a slot, then turned a porcelain knob that opened a glass door and took out a treat from the brass-trimmed compartment. In Eating My Words, food critic Mimi Sheraton wrote that she always got the fish cakes, cheese-baked macaroni and creamed spinach, followed by pumpkin, blueberry or apple pie.
Thought of as a New York City icon, the Automat actually was based on a Swiss invention and imported from Philadelphia, where Horn & Hardart had its headquarters. But in the 1940s the city had more than 50 Horn & Hardart restaurants, mostly Automats, as well as retail stores usually located near or in subway, el and railroad stations for prepackaged takeout meals, and shops in low income neighborhoods where they sold day-old food. The Automat was a prime tourist attraction.
Horn & Hardart was among a number of chains that opened in the city between the 1890s and the First World War, including Child's, Schrafft's and Bickford's. The primary target were the new class of salesgirls, secretaries and typists who needed places to eat lunch quickly and cheaply that were cleaner and more respectable than the lunch counters, greasy spoons and taverns where their male counterparts ate. Horn & Hardart's selling point was its French drip coffee and, of course, its automatic machines.They also proved popular with shoppers and anyone, male or female, who wanted a quick, cheap meal. Families took their kids to the Automat as a special, inexpensive treat after a trip to a movie, a day shopping or as an expedition on its own. And then there were the solitary diners. As William Grimes writes in Appetite City, "The automat was the headquarters for the lonely crowd, the natural setting for the anonymous, the unattached, and the disconsolate."
Of course, the Automat vending machines were not truly automatic. The compartments were on revolving drums and a large kitchen staff kept busy refilling them. More substantial hot food choices like stews, fishcakes, baked ham and Salisbury steak, were available from a cafeteria steam table, although most New Yorkers preferred the vending machines. Most of the food was trucked in from the company's huge commissary that occupied the full block between 49th and 50th Streets, and Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues. Hot items like baked beans, macaroni and cheese and fish croquettes were kept warm inside their compartments by sleeves filled with hot water. The drums holding ice cream were refrigerated. The dolphin-headed beverage dispensers along the wall, however, were automatic, pumping out precisely measured amounts of coffee and cream, milk or chocolate milk, for a nickel.
To a kid the experience seemed magical. First off, there were the ladies in the glass booths, the "nickel throwers." You handed one of them a quarter or a dollar and seemingly without counting she flicked back the precise number of equivalent nickels. Then you got to peruse all the little windows and made your choice. To an adult the Automats seemed sanitary and convenient. You could see the food before you ordered. They had a grandeur to their design which brought a touch of glamor to the mundane workaday world,
The Automats were a major part of a more democratic New York when people of different economic levels mingled more often then they do now. Businessmen and their clerks and stenographers in a hurry often ate a “perpendicular meal” at one of the tall Carrera-glass topped stand-up tables. Shoppers and school kids, actors and songwriters and dating couples might linger at their tables. The down-and-out sometimes stayed for hours over their cup of coffee or a "tomato soup" they concocted from catsup and hot water. People stopped in for a piece of pie and hot coffee at any time of day. You didn't have to dress up, deal with waiters or even speak English at the Automat. It was cheap. Tipping was not allowed.
In Automat: The History, Recipes and Allure of Horn & Hardart's Masterpiece, Lorraine B. Diehl and Marianne Hardart noted that certain Automats attracted special crowds. Horse players would gather at the one at W. 72nd and trade tips. Social activists would plan protests at the one on Union Square. The cabaret crowd gathered in the early AM at the Automat uptown at Columbus. Musicians and dancers from the rehearsal halls at Carnegie Hall could be found on W. 57th St. Some Automats served as social centers for neighborhood seniors who would meet their friends or make new ones. There was even a cabal of Nazi spies who met in the Automat in the basement of Macy's in the early 1940s.
There were Automats throughout the city, including Brooklyn and the Bronx, in 1946, but the Times Square location, the first to open in the city, was the quintessential one with Beaux Art decor including a two-story high, 30-foot-wide stained glass window with the word Automat framed by garlands of fruits and flowers. The round tables were topped with Carrera glass and held a lazy susan filled with condiments. The chairs were stained walnut. The white mosaic marble tile floor was inlaid with black circles. The ceiling was carved with fruit and foliage radiating from a central column which had four beams lined with light bulbs; the effect, according to Automat was that of eating in a carousel. Beveled-glass mirrors were set above an ornate mahogany framework that held the walls of vending windows. The upper edges alternated between arches and horizontals. It was the perfect spot for a quick bite after taking the kids into the city on a Saturday afternoon to catch a first-run movie or to buy Easter clothes. The Manhattan flagship was the three-story Automat at 68 Trinity Place. It occupied the ground floor, basement and sub-basement of a building behind the Trinity graveyard. It had a commissary that serviced all the Automats south of 14th Street.
Horn & Hardart sponsored a local Sunday morning radio program "The Children's Hour," in New York and Philadelphia, that presented young amateur performers. Auditions for the New York broadcast were held on Fridays at a rehearsal hall at Radio City Music Hall where each week from 50 to 70 hopefuls tried out for a spot on the program. It moved to TV in 1950. "East Side, West Side" was the theme and "Less Work For Mother," the advertising slogan for the company's retail takeout stores.