Horn & Hardart

Automat at 818-820 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1904 postcard

Horn & Hardart was a food services company in the United States noted for operating the first food service automats in Philadelphia and New York City.

Philadelphia's Joseph Horn (1861–1941) and German-born, New Orleans-raised Frank Hardart (1850–1918) opened their first restaurant together in Philadelphia, on December 22, 1888; the small (11 x 17 foot) lunchroom at 39 South Thirteenth Street had no tables, only a counter with 15 stools. The location had housed the print shop of Dunlap & Claypoole, printers to the American Congress and George Washington.

By introducing Philadelphia to New Orleans-style coffee (blended with chicory), which Hardart promoted as their "gilt-edge" brew, they made their tiny luncheonette a local attraction. News of the coffee spread, and the business flourished, they incorporated as the Horn & Hardart Baking Company in 1898.

Description and offerings[edit]

Automated food[edit]

Horn & Hardart postcard, circa 1930s

Inspired by Max Sielaff [de]'s Automat Restaurants in Berlin, they were among the first 47 restaurants, and the first non-Europeans to receive patented vending machines from Max Sielaff's Automat GmbH factory in Berlin, the creators of the first chocolate bar vending machine for Ludwig Stollwerck [de].^[1] The first automat in the U.S. was opened June 12, 1902, at 818 Chestnut St.^[1] in Philadelphia by Horn & Hardart.^[2] The first New York Automat opened in Times Square July 2, 1912. Later that week, another opened at Broadway and East 14th Street, near Union Square.

Newspaper ad from 1922 for the Philadelphia locations, featuring food not sold at the automat. It also explains that one out of every sixteen people in the city eats in the restaurant daily.

In 1924, Horn & Hardart opened retail stores to sell prepackaged automat favorites. Using the advertising slogan, "Less Work for Mother," the company popularized the notion of easily served "take-out" food as an equivalent to "home-cooked" meals.^[3]

The Horn & Hardart Automats were particularly popular during the Depression era, when their macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and creamed spinach were staple offerings. In the 1930s, union conflicts resulted in vandalism, as noted by Christopher Gray in The New York Times:

In 1932 the police blamed members of the glaziers union for vandalism against 24 Horn & Hardart and Bickford's restaurants in Manhattan, including the one at 488 Eighth Avenue. Witnesses said that a passenger in a car driving by used a slingshot to damage and even break the plate glass show windows. Glaziers union representatives had complained about nonunion employees installing glass at the restaurants.^[4]

Horn & Hardart automat in Times Square, circa 1939

By the time of Horn's death in 1941, the business had 157 retail shops and restaurants in the Philadelphia and New York areas, and served 500,000 patrons a day.^[5] During the 1940s and the 1950s, more than 50 New York Horn & Hardart restaurants served 350,000 customers a day.

In 1953, the company split into two independent corporations: the New York company was named the Horn & Hardart Company, while the Philadelphia company was named the Horn & Hardart Baking Company. New York was traded on the American Stock Exchange, and Philadelphia was traded on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange.

Coins and chrome[edit]

H&H Automat brass token

These cafeterias featured prepared foods behind small glass windows and coin-operated slots, beginning with buns, beans, fish cakes, and coffee; these were popular, busy restaurants, where in the late 1950s, for under $1.00, one could enjoy a large, if somewhat plain, meal purchased with nickels usually obtained from the cashier. Each stack of glass-doored dispensers had a metal cylinder that could be rotated by the staff on the other side of the vending wall, hiding the contents while they refilled each dispenser in the stack with a plate of salad, pudding, meat, or vegetables; each dispenser had a slot for one or more nickels, and a knob to rotate the nickels out of view into the internal cash box and to allow the glass door to be raised up and locked in a horizontal position for easy removal of the plate or bowl of food. More expensive items required tokens valued up to 75¢ which were available from the cashier; some of the rectangular dispensers were heated, some cooled. Eventually, they served lunch and dinner entrees, such as beef stew and Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes; the self-service restaurants operated in the city for nearly a century.

Carolyn Hughes Crowley described the appeal of the Automats:

In huge rectangular halls filled with shiny, lacquered tables, women with rubber tips on their fingers— "nickel throwers," as they became known—in glass booths gave customers the five-cent pieces required to operate the food machines in exchange for larger coins and paper money. Customers scooped up their nickels, then slipped them into slots in the Automats and turned the chrome-plated knobs with their porcelain centers. In a few seconds the compartment next to the slot revolved into place to present the desired cold food to the customer through a small glass door that opened and closed. Diners picked up hot foods at buffet-style steam tables; the word "automat" comes from the Greek automatos, meaning "self-acting." But Automats weren't truly automatic. They were heavily staffed; as a customer removed a compartment's contents, a behind-the-machine human quickly slipped another sandwich, salad, piece of pie or coffee cake into the vacated chamber.^[6]

The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour[edit]

Radio program[edit]

Beginning in 1927, Horn & Hardart sponsored a radio program, The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour, a variety show with a cast of children (including some who as adults became well-known performers^[who?]). The program was broadcast first on WCAU Radio in Philadelphia, hosted by Stan Lee Broza, it was broadcast on NBC Radio in New York during the 1940s and 1950s. The original New York host was Paul Douglas, succeeded by Ralph Edwards and finally Ed Herlihy.

Television program[edit]

The television premiere of The Horn & Hardart Children's Hour appeared on WCAU-TV in Philadelphia in 1948, succeeded by WNBT in New York in 1949, telecast on Sunday mornings. Stan Lee Broza hosted in Philadelphia, and Ed Herlihy in New York.

Decline[edit]

Automat at 1165 Sixth Avenue showing areas for beverages and pies at right of dining area

The restaurant chain remained popular into the 1960s, featuring not only automats but sit-down waitress service restaurants, cafeterias, and bakery shops. In the late 1960s, consultants attempted to develop automats with interior decoration relevant to surrounding neighborhoods; thus, the Automat on 14th Street was decorated with psychedelic posters; the eateries began to close with the rise of fast-food restaurants, served over the counter and with more payment flexibility than traditional automats. By the mid-1970s, at some locations, Burger King franchises replaced the automats.^[7] Horn & Hardart further expanded its fast food operations in 1981, with its acquisition of the Bojangles' Famous Chicken n' Biscuits restaurants, which it sold to a California investment company in 1990 for $20 million.^[8]

In 1979, Horn & Hardart agreed to buy the Royal Inn in Las Vegas for $7.4 million.^[9] By late 1980, the sale had been completed, and the property was rebranded as the Royal Americana Hotel, with a New York theme.^[10] A $3.5 million renovation^[11] increased the room count to 300.^[12] By 1982 though, the hotel was experiencing substantial losses, and Horn & Hardart decided to close it,^[11] they reportedly agreed that December to sell the property to an investment group for $15.4 million.^[13]

The last New York Horn & Hardart Automat (on the southeast corner of 42nd Street and Third Avenue) closed in April 1991.^[14] Horn & Hardart continued to own a catalog division; it renamed itself Hanover Direct in 1993. That year the company bought Gump's; it sold it to an investment group in 2005. Hanover Direct purchased International Male in 1987 when founder Gene Burkard retired.

Revivals[edit]

Horn & Hardart opened two 1950s themed Dine-O-Mat restaurants in New York, they closed in 1989, after less than two years in operation.

In the early 1990s, two entrepreneurs bought the Philadelphia company (Horn & Hardart Baking Co.) out of bankruptcy. While they did not open any restaurants, they did reproduce a dozen of the most famous food items, including macaroni and cheese, Harvard beets, tapioca pudding, and cucumber salad;^[15] the food was packaged fresh, refrigerated, and sold in supermarkets throughout Philadelphia and New Jersey. The food was still available up until 2002, then disappeared from the stores.

More recently, the Horn & Hardart name was used for a now-dormant chain of coffee shops in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; the Horn & Hardart Coffee Co. closed its last coffee shop in 2005.

A company called Horn & Hardart Brands has a website, with a 2014 copyright, offering coffee online and at food stores in the Philadelphia area ^[16]

A version of the current automats used in the Netherlands, Bamn!!, was located in New York's East Village at 37 St. Mark's Place, between Second Avenue and Third Avenue, but has since closed, though their website is still active.^[17]

Currently the Horn & Hardart – Bakery Cafe is the name of a coffee shop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.^[18]

The assets of the company were purchased in 2015 and the brand is being reborn as Horn & Hardart Coffee, they have recreated the original East Coast City Roast and branded coffee is offered on their website.They also offer a subscription service called The Automat Club.^[19]

In popular culture[edit]

Films[edit]

In the screwball comedy Easy Living (1937), a whole scene took place at a New York Automat.
In the Doris Day – Cary Grant romantic comedy That Touch of Mink (1962), Doris Day's roommate works in a Horn & Hardart Automat in Midtown Manhattan. The film also has several amusing comic bits involving the Automat's glass-door vending hatches.
In the film Trading Places (1983), a glimpse of an Automat is briefly seen in the Philadelphia train station.
In the film When Harry Met Sally... (1989), one of the interviewed couples mentions meeting at a Horn & Hardart.
In the film Metropolitan (1990), pivotal plot points occur as the characters dine at a Horn & Hardart.
In the film Dark City (1998), Rufus Sewell's character is seen going into an Automat to retrieve his wallet.
In the film Rosemary's Baby, the reflection of Horn & Hardart can be seen in the window of the Time-Life Building when Rosemary is waiting to meet her friend Hutch.
In the film "King Kong" (2005), a Horn & Hardart restaurant is prominently featured in scenes at street level in New York City.

Literature[edit]

In his 1963 book Memoirs of a Mangy Lover, comedian Groucho Marx recounts a dispute he had with an Automat attendant over a nickel.
Charles Wright's 1963 book The Messenger mentions Horn and Hardart as a place where women working for charities hold their meetings "over tea and rolls, once a week, between two and four p.m."
In Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's Baby (1967), Horn & Hardart pumpkin pie is mentioned as the "best dessert".
It was mentioned in Jean Shepherd's bestselling short story collection In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (1966), when Ralph says to Flick, "I was down at H & H", later explaining that he was talking about Horn & Hardart in New York City.
In Paul Auster's 2017 novel 4 3 2 1, Ferguson visits the restaurant, which is described as a place of "twentieth-century American efficiency in its craziest, most delightful incarnation".^[20]
In From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967), by E. L. Konigsburg, Claudia and Jamie eat "breakfast", including macaroni and cheese casserole, baked beans, and coffee, at Horn & Hardart's as they read about the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit of the bargain-bought "Angel" statue in The New York Times.

Museum exhibits[edit]

Temporary[edit]

In November 2002, the Museum of the City of New York had a special Automat centennial exhibition featuring photographs, artifacts, original furniture, china and vending machine panels.
On June 22, 2012, the New York Public Library opened an exhibition on June 22, 2012, titled "Lunch Hour NYC". The exhibition "looks back at more than a century of New York lunches, when the city's early power brokers invented the 'power lunch' ..... and visitors with guidebooks thronged Times Square to eat lunch at the Automat." Among many educational and entertaining items is a fully restored wall of Automat windows. The exhibit was scheduled to run until February 17, 2013.^[21]

Permanent[edit]

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History previously had displayed in its cafe an ornate 35-foot Automat section, complete with mirrors, marble and marquetry, from Philadelphia's 1902 Horn & Hardart^[22] although this exhibit has since been removed. In 2006 Paul and Tom Hardart donated the business records for the Horn and Hardart chain of restaurants and retail stores to the Smithsonian Archives; the records include annual reports, business correspondence, operating manuals, photographs, sales materials, and printed materials such as employee newsletters and clippings.^[23]

Music[edit]

Concerto for Horn and Hardart is a classical music parody written by Peter Schickele, one of many which he attributes to the fictional composer P.D.Q. Bach.^[24] The hardart in this composition is a musical instrument which is played by dropping coins into it to retrieve the implements used to actually play the notes; the hardart is inscribed Minor Labor Matris, Latin for the real Horn & Hardart slogan, "Less Work for Mother."
Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" lyrics mention the automat.

Stage productions[edit]

In the song "Colored Spade" from the musical Hair (1967), the character Hud (a militant African-American) satirically assigns to himself various racial stereotypes including "Table cleaner at Horn & Hardart".^[25]^[26]
In the Broadway play The Nance (2013), Chauncey Miles frequents a Horn & Hardart Automat at a certain time of the evening when gay men congregate to find sexual partners.
In act 2 of Neil Simon's Broadway play The Odd Couple (1965), during the discussion of how to salvage the burned London Broil dinner, Cecily Pigeon advises "Well then, we can eat up in our place. We have tons of Horn & Hardart's."
The original Broadway set for the musical The Producers (2001) incorporated some of the Automat.^[27]

Television[edit]

In the television series Agent Carter, the main characters often meet in the Automat in New York City.
In the season 4, episode 14 Arrested Development, titled "Off The Hook", Lucille 2 complains to her lover Buster Bluth that she is "nothing but a Horn & Hardart" to you, in response to his expecting her to mother him with food. Buster Bluth mistakes the name of the restaurant for a sexual innuendo.
In season 7, episode 26 ("The Party"), of M*A*S*H, the relatives of the 4077, after their "reunion" in New York, decide to eat at the Automat.
The Honeymooners main characters, Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton, are shown inside an automat, searching for a radio show prize, in the "Lost" Honymooners season 5 episode, "Finders Keepers".