THE LAST AUTOMAT

For most of the twentieth century, lunch in New York and Philadelphia could be bought from a wall of glass. Rows of small windowed compartments sat in panels of brushed steel. A customer dropped a nickel into a slot, turned a knob, and lifted the door to take out a plate of macaroni and cheese or a wedge of pie. Cashiers in glass booths — women with rubber tips on their fingers, known as nickel throwers — handed out the five-cent pieces the compartments took. 1

Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart opened their first lunchroom together in Philadelphia in 1888, and the first automat in the United States in that city on June 9, 1902. The first New York automat opened in Times Square on July 2, 1912. 1 At its height the automat made Horn & Hardart the world's largest restaurant chain, with more than 80 restaurants in New York and Philadelphia feeding hundreds of thousands of people a day. Coffee came from silver dolphin spouts and was brewed fresh every 20 minutes. Until 1950 a cup cost a nickel. 2

What displaced the automat was the fast food it had helped start. By the mid-1970s Horn & Hardart was replacing some of its restaurants with its own Burger King franchises, and by the end of the decade the company's attention had moved to mail order. 13

The last automat stood at the southeast corner of 42nd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan, at 200 East 42nd Street. It had opened in 1958, well after the automat's heyday, and the company had been trying to sell it for a year. It closed on the night of Tuesday, April 9, 1991, with the window sign reading "Closed for Renovation." 13

The last night was recorded. The reporter David Isay reached the automat about half an hour after a tip. The room looked normal, its tables crowded with older men and women nursing coffee and reading the paper, until the sound of drilling came from the back. Workmen had begun cracking the stainless-steel machines off the wall with chisels and hammers. They unscrewed the marble-covered turn knobs and pulled out the small black-on-white signs beside each compartment. None of the customers knew. At six o'clock the manager locked the two revolving doors, two hours before the usual closing time. Customers arriving for dinner pushed at the door, shrugged, and walked away. Those still inside read and lingered over a last coffee, pouring what spilled onto their tray back into their cups to make it last. 4

Horn & Hardart did not end that night. It kept a catalog division and renamed itself Hanover Direct in 1993. What ended was the automat — the coin-operated glass-door lunchroom where a nickel bought lunch. 1

This episode is an AI-rendered reconstruction. Every image is an original generated scene; no archival footage is presented as documentary footage.