“Hey, Kaiser Roll”: Remembering The Automat
I’m old enough to remember The Automat, the New York cafeteria where you could select food items from little windows after slipping a few coins in the slots. It was a fun place to go to when we were kids.
Lisa Hurwitz’s film, The Automat, certainly brings back memories. She tells how the company began around the turn of the 20th Century first in Philadelphia and then in New York. It was founded by Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart, hence Horn & Hardart, one of America’s first food chains.
Mel Brooks, who’s featured throughout the movie, recalls going to “New York” (i.e., Manhattan) from his native Brooklyn with family to experience The Automat. “We mostly loved the pies,” he says.
There were pies and cakes and the company’s beloved chicken pot pies, baked beans and creamed spinach, and most of all the French Roast coffee Hardart imported from New Orleans. A cup of coffee cost a nickel and came pouring out of brass dolphin heads. When the price doubled in the ’60s, The Automat immediately started its decline. The last Automat closed in New York in 1991. It was located at the corner of 42 St. and 3rd Ave.
“For us, the Automats were like Times Square arcades.”
That’s the only Automat I can positively remember going to though I know I went…
