A Look at Brooklyn, then and now.

If you are of a certain age, or older, and grew up in New York or Philadelphia, then you should remember Horn and Hardart’s Automats. Before McDonalds, Burger King or Shake Shack, they were the original fast food, piping hot homemade delights, delivered into your hands by just putting money into the slots, and turning the knob and opening the little doors. It was great.

Like many great successes, Horn & Hardart took a simple idea, jazzed it up with a gimmick, and became the beloved lunch spot for everyone from office workers, salesgirls, and shoppers, to students and businessmen. The “gimmick” was the automat. Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart opened their first automat in Philadelphia in 1902. After great success in that city, they spread to New York City by 1912. The men got the idea for an automat from a similar establishment in Frank Hardart’s native Germany. It was probably the first time the assembly line concept, so famously used in Henry Ford’s auto plants, was taken to the food industry.

Patrons entered a Horn & Hardart to find cavernous rooms with lots of tables and chairs. There weren’t a lot of wait staff around, ready to take orders, because this was a novel idea – you got it yourself. On one side was a huge wall of glass cubicles, like safety deposit boxes, with glass doors and coin slots. Behind those doors were individual plates containing sandwiches, hot dishes like mac and cheese, and pot pies, desserts, side dishes, fruit, and salads. One simply fed the coin slots with nickels to reach the necessary amount listed on the cubicle, turned the lever to open the glass door, and the food was yours. If you didn’t have change, there was an employee who could make change. The early machines only took nickels. Behind the scenes, and the wall, was an army of invisible workers, cooking and serving up the food, immediately replacing whatever was chosen with a new dish, so the wall of choices always remained full.

There was a wonderful simplicity to it all. You could buy what you wanted, as in a restaurant, spending as little or as much as you wished. Importantly, you could see your food before you opened that door to buy it, enabling you to pick the food you wanted. The food was guaranteed to be fresh. Like any modern cafeteria, drinks and cutlery, etc. were elsewhere in the room. It was most democratic, stock brokers could be sitting at a table next to stock boys, it was urban equality at its best.

Horn & Hardart was also known for their excellent coffee, offering patrons in Philadelphia and New York something new: fresh drip brewed coffee. Before this, both cities were used to coffee that stood boiling cowboy style, with grounds in the bottom, mixed with eggshells to clarify it. H&H coffee was made fresh every 20 minutes or so, and anything older than that was dumped. Workers filled out a time card, and were meticulous in keeping up standards. So much so that coffee was the most popular item in the stores, with customers buying 90 million cups of coffee a year. Irving Berlin even wrote a song about H&H coffee, which became their theme song: “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee.” Coffee remained five cents a cup from 1902 to the 1950’s.

The iconic Horn & Hardarts that many of us remember were installed in the Art Deco 1930’s. They were sleek glass and chrome walls of food cubbies, with Deco font lettering telling patrons where the pie, sandwiches, and other goodies were within the vast wall of food. The recipes for favorite dishes, such as their macaroni and cheese, various pies and pastries, and their famous chicken pot pies are still traded on the internet for people to recreate that long ago food experience.

Like all good things, the automats came to an end. The tastes and eating habits of consumers changed. Cafeteria style food became unpopular with the rise of fast food restaurants. H& H was never a hamburger and fries kind of place. With many people in cities moving to the suburbs, business in the automats died after lunch, which cut way back on profits, as dinner had also been a busy time. Now everyone was rushing to get out of the city. One by one, the Horn and Hardarts began to close.

By the 1970’s many automats had been replaced by Burger King franchises. A new generation of fast and faster, fast food eaters never even missed the slower pace, or the variety of food that the automat provided. The last Horn and Hardart closed in 1991, and the Deco style chrome and glass walls of coin operated cubicles were sold for scrap or to collectors. Many still exist in warehouses and basements, with several people looking to return them to use. Nostalgia, like a great piece of pie, still sells.

I came to NY in time to eat at the Horn & Hardart on 42nd Street, near 3rd Avenue. I was so new to the city, I don’t really remember for sure. I distinctly remember that it was quite the fun experience to put your coins in, (no longer a nickel) and get a sandwich or whatever. This was before I moved to Brooklyn, and by the time I did, this location was a discount store, one of many that operated here before Conway took over the space a couple of years ago. They moved here from the Offerman Building down the street.

The 1950’s photograph shows the Horn & Hardart building at 427 Fulton Street, between Jay and Pearl Streets. The building next door, holding a shop of some kind, is now the Wendy’s. On the next block, on the right, is the building that now is home to Shake Shack. On the other side of the street, we can see that banks were quite at home on Fulton Street, with a Manufacturer’s in the foreground, and Kings County Trust in the background. Far in the back, we can see Borough Hall, and the tall buildings, now our Skyscraper Historic District. Although they may have been altered, all of the buildings in this picture are still here. GMAP

Fulton Street, looking towards Court St. 1950's
Fulton Street, 2012. Conway's was once Horn & Hardart Automat
Art Deco Automat wall. Horn and Hardart. Photo: automat.net

What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. We occasionally ate at this H&H on Fulton St. while on shopping trips. This location indeed turned into a Burger King around 1970 and I occasionally ate there too when I was a student at nearby St. Francis College.

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