Cruise the Streets of Brooklyn With Your Own Sail Wagon (1912)

Looking for a breezier commute? Perhaps take a tip from these young Brooklyn gentlemen and their sail wagon. We’ve even found the instructions in case you want to make your own.

Captured by a Bain News Service photographer between 1910 and 1915, the boys are shown in their homemade wooden vehicle, ready for the wind to send them cruising down a Brooklyn street. The exact location is not identified but the second shot provides a better view of the surrounding neighborhood. The wide streets, large homes and generous sidewalks are reminiscent of Flatbush.

The Brooklyn boys could have built their wagon based on plans provided in The Junior Eagle, a special children’s section of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, published in 1912. The “Handicraft for Handy Boys” column suggested that the sail wagon, or “homemade land yacht,” could provide “an unlimited amount of fun, coasting along the streets in thickly populated sections of the borough, where the street traffic is light.”

Should you wish to build your own wind-powered street cruiser, the instructions suggest materials, such as baby carriage wheels and curtain pole rings to hold the sail, and include drawings. The boys in the photographs seem to have added some extra safety measures as, unlike the instructions, their land yacht includes side rails –– perhaps a wise addition for the streets of Brooklyn.

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