Walkabout: Rollin’ Down the Highway, Part 2

Read Part 1, Part 3, and Part 4 of this story.

In 1900, a small group of rich Brooklyn swells organized this borough’s first automobile club. The automobile was still a novelty at this time; an expensive toy that only a few could afford.

The Long Island Automobile Club (LIAC) was founded so these men could get together, discuss the wonders of this new technology, plan road trips, advocate for better highways and most importantly, race their automobiles. Whether they had fine horses, speedy bicycles or the new horseless carriages, wealthy men just loved races.

Part One of this history outlines the first years of the LIAC. The club grew fast, as more and more men bought automobiles. The earliest models were really just carriages with motors. They were open buckboards, some of them, with a steering wheel.

They couldn’t go very fast, they stalled out a lot, and riding in one was a dirty and dusty adventure. As the technology improved, and automobiles got better, more and more people began motoring, and the national love affair with the automobile began. The autoists, as the club members were called, led the way.

By 1904, club membership had exploded, and even though the LIAC had already moved three times, they were ready for another move.

They were now at 32 Hanson Place, but their property was in the way of some LIRR expansion moves, and they were getting set to move again. They settled in nearby at 6th Avenue and Pacific Street, in another garage space, and started making that space their own.

Many upscale clubs might not have wanted to be in a garage, but this was an automobile club, and garage space, where they could store and work on their cars was a must.

The Brooklyn Eagle shows their space, a large garage building which they kitted up to have room to store up to 300 automobiles, a repair shop, as well as tennis courts, locker rooms, shower and bathroom facilities, an office and a reading room on the ground floor.

Upstairs they had a kitchen, dining room, billiard room, a large meeting hall and servant’s quarters. By this time, the club had a membership of 130 men. Their president was Frank G. Webb, one of the founding members, and the head of the racing committee was A.R. Pardington, another founding member.

Arthur Rayner Pardington was a legend of early 20th century motoring. He was the son of a Methodist minister, and began his career as the head of pharmacy at a prominent hospital in Brooklyn. He lived at 576 Bergen Street in Prospect Heights.

He seemed to be one of those men who intuitively recognized the importance of technology, and soon left the pharmacy for an executive position with the growing New York and New Jersey Telephone Company. He rose in the company, and by the time the first automobiles showed up, he was in a financial position to buy one. The automobile would define the rest of his life.

Like many early autoists, he had also been an ardent and dedicated biker. He was one of the dozen or so founding members of the LIAC, and from the beginning of the club had a keen interest in racing. He had been known about town as a dedicated bicycle racing enthusiast.

When the LIAC and eight other auto clubs joined together to found the American Automobile Association (AAA) in 1901, one of their goals was to lobby for better roads in their constituencies. Part of this was for better transportation, of course, but underlying this was the need for speed. They wanted to be able to race.

One of the most enthusiastic auto racing fans was William K. Vanderbilt, grandson of “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad giant. Willy, as he was always called, would be the last Vanderbilt to head the New York Central Railroad.

He loved racing anything that moved, and was a great horseracing enthusiast. But his biggest love was the automobile, and since he had more money than even the wealthiest of the LIAC’s members, he also had the best cars.

He had the dubious honor of being arrested in Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue, for driving a Stanley Steamer automobile without a steam engineer’s license in 1899. He absolutely loved cars.

Germany was making the best automobiles on earth in the early 20th century, and Willy owned two of the finest; a Mercedes he called the Red Devil, and a Daimler White Ghost. Both cars could go as fast as 70 mph at a time when the average car was puttering along with top speeds of maybe 35 mph.

Willy, along with A.R. Pardington, had organized the Vanderbilt Cup in 1904, a race along the roadways of Long Island. The Long Island Automobile Club was one of the sponsors, and its members were participants and enthusiastic spectators of this race.

Pardington had drawn up the rules for the race; the first set of auto racing rules established in the country. They were established through the AAA, Willy’s summer home was in Great Neck, and he was always getting in trouble for speeding along the roads.

He and the LIAC had lobbied hard for improved public roads on Long Island, and they were slowly being built, but they were also travelled on by everyone else, including horse drawn vehicles and bicyclists.

The Vanderbilt Cup was a big deal for the moneyed elite. Willy had Tiffany’s design a huge silver trophy for the winner, and professional drivers from all over the world entered the race. The course was the America’s Cup of road racing.

It was around 250 miles in length, winding through the towns and cities of Long Island. All of the participants had to be members of recognized automobile clubs, although later they could be the drivers for members of recognized automobile clubs.

Like the jousting matches of old, this was for the lords and gentry, there would be no upstart farmer’s son in a homemade jalopy coming in and winning this race.

The race was an international success, and much of the credit for that has to be given to A.R. Pardington, who by this time was employed full time by Vanderbilt to organize and run the race.

Even by the third or fourth race, drivers were complaining that the course was too dusty and the roads too narrow, so the course changed each year to make it more interesting, and to find the best roads.

The course was a secret, and not revealed until the last minute, so racers couldn’t practice and learn the nuances. But in 1906, disaster struck and a spectator was killed. The race was on public roads, after all.

Willy Vanderbilt decided that he needed to have a dedicated private road for his race. He and some of his very rich racing buddies got together and decided to form a corporation which would build a private highway through Long Island.

It would be a “motor parkway” which meant it was for motor vehicles. No horses, no bicycles, no pedestrians. It would also be a toll road, which would enable it to pay for itself. The board of directors was headed by Vanderbilt, and included Henry Ford, August Belmont, John Jacob Astor, Frederick Bourne and others.

A.R. Pardington was sent out to get the land. He was a masterful salesman, and got some landowners to donate right of way, telling them their surrounding land would triple in value.

Not all of them bought that, so he had to buy strips of land, or in some cases, buy entire farms. Of course, not everyone sold, so the new parkway had to be laid out with twists and turns that avoided the holdouts’ property.

Bonds were sold for the construction, and in 1907, Willy and his board of directors held a groundbreaking ceremony in which he declared “The day of the automobile has come. A highway is about to be constructed free from all grade crossings, dust and police surveillance.”

It was a private road, so perhaps he could keep the police out. He must have really been looking forward to racing his German cars down his own private roadway.

The highway was constructed mostly by Italian immigrants, and by 1907, a nine mile stretch between Bethpage and East Meadow was done. The rest of the highway took until 1911 to finish. It had 12 toll lodges along its path, with toll houses that were manned by men who lived there, and were expected to be on duty 24/7, whenever someone rolled in.

Aside from the races, the road was used primarily by wealthy people, as they were the only ones who could afford cars at the time. They loved the ability to have their own private road that connected them to their summer homes on the Island. The road was called the Long Island Motor Parkway.

More on that road later. Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, the LIAC saw new interest as more and more automobiles began coming on the roads.

Their headquarters on Pacific Street were only meant to be temporary, and ideally, they were planning on moving somewhere near Eastern Parkway or near Prospect Park in Park Slope.

Many of their members lived there, and it was also a quick trip to Ocean Parkway and Coney Island’s beaches, or a trip along Eastern Parkway to the roads leading to Long Island.

But they weren’t able to find any available property there at that time, and so stayed downtown, moving once again, this time to another large garage building on Cumberland Street, near Atlantic Avenue.

This building had also been a large garage, and had plenty of room for cars on the ground floor, and was set up similarly to their space on Pacific Street.

In 1905, they had a new extension added to the building, which tripled their space, giving them the most impressive automobile clubhouse in the city. J. Graham Glover was the architect.

Not everyone was thrilled with them being there. Neighbors complained that the club members had no regard for their well-being or quiet enjoyment of their homes. The members were inconsiderate and obnoxious. We’ll continue the story with that, next time.

(Long Island Automobile Clubhouse, Cumberland Ave. Brooklyn Eagle, 1907)