Posts Tagged ‘New York’

Driving the Lincoln in 1919 ~ part 2: depart NYC

May 16, 2018

LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO

When Beatrice Massey and her husband decided to set out for the West Coast in 1919, they invited two friends to join them in their Packard.

Hoag.jpg

The 42nd Street dock in New York City. This photo, taken five years later in 1924, shows LHA Field Secretary Gael Hoag with the group’s official Packard. [University of Michigan–Special Collections Library, lhc2893.]

“We picked them up at the Seymour Hotel in New York City, at three o’clock, Saturday, July 19th, and started for the Forty-Second-Street ferry in a pouring rain, as jolly and happy a quartette as the weather would permit. Our guests were a retired physician, whom we shall speak of as the Doctor, and his charming, somewhat younger wife, who, although possessing the perfectly good name of Helen, was promptly dubbed ‘Toodles’ for no reason in the world….

“It had rained steadily for three days before we started and it poured torrents for three  days after; but that was to be expected, and the New Jersey and Pennsylvania roads were none the worse, and the freedom from dust was a boon. We chose for the slogan of our trip, ‘It might have been worse.’ The Doctor had an endless fund of good stories, of two classes, ‘table and stable stories,’ and I regret to say that this apt slogan was taken from  one of his choicest stable stories, and quite unfit for publication. However, it did fit our party in its optimism and cheery atmosphere.

“With a last look at the wonderful sky-line of the city, and the hum and whirl of the great throbbing metropolis, lessening in the swirl of the Hudson River, we really were started;  with our faces turned to the setting sun, and the vast, wonderful West before us.”

* From Beatrice Massey’s book, It Might Have Been Worse: A Motor Trip from Coast to Coast, 1920.

Lincoln Highway photos on neat stuff blog

January 25, 2010

At Atomic Antiques, Mark Stevens posts “neat stuff from the 20th century.” He recently posted these two cool Lincoln Highway images. Visit his page (scrolling down a bit) to see the photos larger and read a bit about them. Feel free to comment too.

Before visiting his site, can you identify the location of the first and the purpose behind the second?

New Great Race US-only auto tour announced

July 8, 2008

Great Race Sports, planning to celebrate the centennial of The Great Race from New York to Paris with a commemorative re-run this summer, had to delay the event after the Chinese government revoked travel permits for foreigners following demonstrations in Tibet and along the Olympic Torch Run. New dates are April 25 – June 28, 2009. But scheduled for later this year is an event that will follow much of the Lincoln Highway.

“The Great Auto Race Celebration Tour” will retrace almost the exact route driven by George Schuster and the winning team aboard the 1907 Thomas Flyer a century ago. The 3,700-mile cross-country event will start in New York City on October 18, 2008, and finish in Los Angeles on November 1. It is meant to be a fun and relaxing event with short optional rally sections. Enthusiasts are welcome to join anywhere along the route for 3, 5, 7 or 15 days for an entry fee of $100/day.

Cars of any era are eligible to participate, and teams can travel at their own speeds while previewing next year’s route before it becomes a competitive event. Here’s the tentative schedule of overnight stops — much of the route covers the Lincoln Highway from Indiana through Nevada.

Sat 10/18 Albany, New York – 184 miles
Sun 10/19 Buffalo, New York – 317 miles
Mon 10/20 Cleveland, Ohio – 215 miles
Tue 10/21 Auburn, Indiana – 185 miles
Wed 10/22 Joliet, Illinois – 323 miles
Thu 10/23 Cedar Rapids, Iowa – 292 miles
Fri 10/24 Omaha, Nebraska – 286 miles
Sat 10/25 North Platte, Nebraska – 308 miles
Sun 10/26 Cheyenne, Wyoming – 244 miles
Mon 10/27 Rock Springs, Wyoming – 228 miles
Tue 10/28 Provo, Utah – 220 miles
Wed 10/29 Ely, Nevada – 270 miles
Thu., 10/30 Beatty, Nevada 310 miles
Fri., 10/31 Riverside, California 283 miles
Sat., 11/1 Los Angeles, California 65 miles

Visit The Great Race site for more information.

100th Ball Drop Marks New Year in Times Square

January 1, 2008

More than a million people filled Times Square, the eastern terminus of the Lincoln Highway, to celebrate the new year with the 100th drop of a giant lit ball. An all-new version features 9,576 light-emitting diodes behind 625 triangular Waterford crystals and aluminum frame. At 11:59 pm, December 31, the ball dropped down a 77-foot pole in 60 seconds atop 1 Times Square (not to street level). Here’s a video of it being assembled:

There were also 110 certified confetti engineers who tossed out 2 tons of confetti by hand from the tops of buildings.

The ball’s LED bulbs are smaller but more than twice as bright as last year’s lights, which were a spiky mix of 600 incandescent and halogen bulbs in 4 colors. It was lit for 6 hours but used only the electricity of 10 toasters. The new lights can create more than 16 million colors (and video imagery) but were limited to 25. The $30,000 in crystal is just a small part of the ball’s $1.1 million value.

Dropping a ball has been a way to synchronize clocks since the 1800s. The first ball in Times Square was made of wood and iron and lit with 100 25-watt incandescent bulbs. It replaced a new year’s fireworks display started in 1904 that was later outlawed by city officials. Three other balls have been used since then, and now this new one, the fifth. For the next 11 month, it will rest in a vault 50 feet below 1 Times Square, beside the fourth ball.