183599 Thu Apr 21 20:51:43 -0700 2005 3 15 Pennsylvania 0 985061 Does anyone have an address of a horn & hardart shop in the philadelphia area? Thu Apr 21 20:51:43 -0700 2005 0 richard 1 985064 The last Horn and Hardart was at 16th and Sansom and closed almost a year ago. Too my knowledge the owner was the one who owned the name. Steve R Thu Apr 21 23:08:02 -0700 2005 985061 0 Steve R 2 985075 Posted on Wed, Nov. 13, 2002 It started at the Automat A century ago, on Chestnut Street, there began a business that would change the way Americans eat. An anniversary book tells the story. By Marilynn Marter INQUIRER FOOD WRITER Before drive-through restaurants dominated our landscape, before the first golden arch loomed over McDonald's, there was Horn & Hardart, which opened America's first Automat at 818 Chestnut St. In this automated cafeteria, customers could buy ready-to-eat foods dispensed from behind little glass doors by depositing nickels or tokens in a slot. It was June 12, 1902. To mark the 100th anniversary of the Automat, Marianne Hardart, great-granddaughter of cofounder Frank Hardart, teamed with New York writer Lorraine B. Diehl to write The Automat: The History, Recipes, and Allure of Horn & Hardart's Masterpiece (Clarkson Potter, $18), due in stores by Thanksgiving. The women also are cocurators of "Horn & Hardart's Automat," an exhibition of memorabilia and photographs that runs through March 16 at the Museum of the City of New York. Marianne Hardart's father, Tom, was the last of three generations of family management of the Automats, which at their peak were said to serve upward of 800,000 people a day. The companies that grew from Joe Horn and Frank Hardart's handshake partnership - Horn & Hardart Baking Co. in Philadelphia and the Horn & Hardart Co. in New York - have affected American culture and cuisine in ways the founders could not have imagined. They are widely credited as the first major fast-food chain and the first prepared-food take-out (the chain's slogan was "Less work for mother"). Vending machines are another outgrowth of Horn & Hardart's innovation. And perhaps most striking today is the blossoming of coffee into a national obsession. Before Starbucks and mocha lattes, and before Chock Full o' Nuts drip coffee weaned a wider audience from the old boiled brew, a Horn & Hardart lunchroom serving "the best cup of coffee in town" opened on Dec. 22, 1888, at 39 S. 13th St. Frank Hardart, 38, a Bavarian-born immigrant, was introducing Philadelphians to French-drip coffee, which he learned to roast, grind and brew working in restaurants in New Orleans. To the partnership, Philadelphian Joe Horn, 27, brought a $1,000 investment and a vision of giving working folk high-quality fresh food cheaply and quickly. The fledgling Horn & Hardart - a 15-stool luncheonette - was soon a standing-room-only success. By 1936, there were 89 Horn & Hardart locations - including Automats and/or cafeterias, restaurants with waitress service, and take-out shops - in the Philadelphia area alone. Of those, 32 were take-out. Within a few years, take-out took off, and by 1964 accounted for 55 of 99 Philadelphia-area operations. Numbers for the New York operation are less well-documented, but Diehl cites 42 Automats and 10 retail stores there in 1931-32. By 1943, there were 17 take-out shops in New York. Fans of H&H's wholesome "almost-home" cooking will appreciate the book's 14 recipes, including some previously unpublished. "Finding the old recipes was harder than I expected," Hardart said. "They came from different sources and had to be adapted for home use and new ingredients where things are not found in stores today." As children, many of us who grew up in Philadelphia watched with fascination as workers behind the glass-windowed wall busily refilled and rotated the display shelves. We pondered the choice between creamed spinach and Harvard beets to go with our Salisbury steak, or maybe everybody's favorite, the baked macaroni and cheese, paired with a side of stewed tomatoes. And if we timed it just right, might a bigger piece of chocolate cake be in place when the door magically opened? The Automat revolutionized food service in America. Uniform recipes, commissary kitchens, and a central supply network made it possible to maintain the same high standard for foods at all H&H locations. The early automatics, or "waiterless restaurants," were already enjoying modest success in Europe when Horn first saw one of the ornate brass-and-glass units in Germany. He paid the then-enormous sum of $30,000 to have one shipped to Philadelphia. The German-built units were imported and adapted by Horn for restaurants at 818 Chestnut (1902), 101 S. Juniper (1905), 909 Market (1907), and 21 S. 11th St. (1912). In 1912, the partners introduced streamlined, patented American-made equipment at an Automat on Times Square in New York City. That same year, the House That Nickels Built set the price of a cup of coffee at 5 cents. It was held there for 38 years. By the 1940s, Automats were as much a place for meeting friends and seeing celebrities as a source of reliable food. But you could just as easily be sipping your coffee across from a vagrant squeezing the last drop of flavor from a used teabag. In Philadelphia, politicians and the court crowd (on both sides of the law) hung out at the H&H at 1508 Market St. Insurance salesmen "rented" office space at the 6006 Market St. location for a nickel (later a dime) a cup. The 234 Market H&H became a gathering place for dock workers. There was even a table reserved for "ladies of the night" at the 11th and Arch location. And diamond merchants did business at the original Automat on Chestnut, near Jewelers Row. (After that site closed in 1968, its Automat wall was put on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington.) Quotes throughout the book recall diners' experiences at the Automat, among them playwright Neil Simon's memories of eating there as a child during the Depression: "To have your own stack of nickels... to be able to choose your own food, richly on display like museum pieces; to make quick and final decisions at the age of 8, was a lesson in financial dealings that not even two years at the Wharton School could buy today." To maintain quality, Hardart says, the partners and executives lunched daily at the commissary, at 202 S. 10th St., where the food served at all of the Philadelphia locations was prepared. They tasted menu items and new creations between sips of black coffee from a different H&H outlet each day. Everything was made fresh daily, and coffee was brewed fresh every 20 minutes. Menus were about the same in both cities, but Philly had a corner on scrapple. And New Yorkers reportedly got more sugar in their stewed tomatoes. The last of the original Horn & Hardart restaurants, on City Avenue in Bala Cynwyd, closed in 1990. On April 18, 1991, the last New York Automat, at 42d Street and Third Avenue, shut down after 34 years. Rising postwar food prices, population movement from the cities to the suburbs, and demands for higher wages and benefits pushed prices up in what had become a less loyal marketplace. The world had changed, and paternalistic Horn & Hardart, where parents, their children and grandchildren often worked side by side, could not survive. But the company's decline had been evident as early as the '60s. By then, McDonald's and other emerging fast-food chains had began luring a new generation of gulp-and-go diners away from the everyone-is-welcome H&H experience to a more anonymous and impersonal style of eating. Contact Marilynn Marter at 215-854-5743 or at mmarter@phillynews.com. Fri Apr 22 11:46:43 -0700 2005 985064 0 Johnny Boy 3 985078 Thanks for sharing this piece of history! I really enjoyed learning about automated eating. Fri Apr 22 13:24:37 -0700 2005 985075 0 Adrienne