[PRCo] Re: 1950 Grant Street

[Fred Schneider]

I love the picture Matt, particularly those things we don't see today ... there are so many things that disappeared.

Knowing Pittsburgh Railways people, the newspaper photographer had to run to get there before the line truck.   Was that a Press, Post Gazaette or Sun Telegraph picture?   Any idea?  

The Amoco gas station.   Let's see, that was one of the brands created when Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company was broken up.   It was Standard Oil Company of Indiana.   In the merger with BP (1998), the Amoco name lasted ten years and then disappeared.

The Gulf Oil advertisement was local.   The company eventually expanded into all the states.   Then, and I forget who, someone who was not wanted tried to gather up all of Gulf's stock.   Chevron came dashing in ... the knight on a white horse ... to save Gulf.   The saved it alright.   Chevron absorbed Gulf, took the things they wanted like the Philadelphia refinery.   Chevron put their name on the gas stations they wanted.   It gave them a marketing presence.   Then the sold off the rights to the Gulf name to other people.   Cumberland Farms of Ohio, a convenience store chain, can sell "Gulf products" in this area.   I suspect with it goes the obligation to buy from Chevron?   It's nothing but a hollow name today.    The family had a connection ... dad worked in the research lab in the 1930s and got my uncle a job there.   Uncle Fred retired from Gulf.   A lot of old Gulf people lost money and jobs. 

That Packard automobile at the far right side of the picture.   My first car was one of those 53rd Series Packards.   By the way, it may have been the only automobile company not to have cars identifiable by year but the 53rd Series was probably about 1949.   Tom Phillips used to own Packards.    My recollection of mine was that it rode like a Greyhound bus and had just about the same acceleration potential.  The company went for snob appeal.  Their advertisements used the term, "Ask the man who owns one."   The original three luxury cars in this country were Peerless, Pierce Arrow and Packard ... the three Ps.   The depression wasn't kind to luxury car  builders.   Two went out of business and Packard downgraded from a luxury car to a mid-range car.   When I said luxury.   Remember the picture on the cover of the PCC book?  That 1930 Packard on the cover sold for $4000.   The PCC sold for $16,000.   You want to adjust for inflation?   Well, Push the streetcar up to somewhere over a million and the automobile to about a quarter of a million.   That should put Packard into perspective before it was downgraded.  

On the car track heading north on Grant Street is a 1949 Kaiser.   My Grandpa Rebele, a self-employed electrical contractor in Pittsburgh, always favored the underdog.   A Graham Paige automobile got him through World War II.   When it wore out, he could not possibly buy from the big three.   He had to have something from the start up company.   He helped Henry Kaiser loose $31 million dollars on those 1949 cars.   Oh, another sidebar, Mac Sebree, who owned Interurbans Publishing and did my PCC books, owned a house in the Hollywood Hills with his friend Bob Shay that had previously been owned by the Henry Kaiser.   Bpb died about two years ago and Mac passed away this spring.   (No, I don't care that they were gay.   They were just other friends.   Mac did me a big favor.   He had faith in two PCC books and he would have done another book for me if I had ever finished it.)  

I suspect that perhaps the least common of the three cars nearest the camera is the 1941 Chevrolet with the trolley wire wrapped around it.   The difference between the 1940 and the 1941 was the little marker light above the headlight.   In 1941 we were still in the depression.   Unemployment in Pittsburgh in 1940 according to the US census was still 30%.   I don't think GM sold too many of their cheapest car that year.   I wonder if this car was up on blocks during the war.    It looks too good to be real.    My father ran his 39 Chevy all through the war ... I figure it might have been up to around 70,000 miles when he scrapped it in 1949.   By then he'd replaced the piston rings and valves, the running boards were marine plywood covered with tar and rubber (the sheet steel originals had rusted out in Pittsburgh's atmosphere).  The seat cushions were badly worn.   At one point even the gas line broke.   (Today we figure a car is good for 200,000 miles or more but not in those days.)   

I didn't find one good link for the Kaiser.   I knew about the Packard.   But here is a great link for the old Chevies.   Ken might like it?   Or is these cars too old for your interests Mr. J?   

http://oldcarandtruckpictures.com/Chevrolet/


 


On Jun 28, 2010, at 3:43 PM, Barry, Matthew R wrote:

> Intersection of Grant Street and the Boulevard of the Allies.  1950.  Broken carline wire.
> From Historic Pittsburgh.
> 
> Matt
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