History
In 1895, eccentric and visionary entrepreneur [2] John Brisben Walker had his Cosmopolitan magazine sponsor the second automobile race ever held in the United States. [3] [4] Walker had long been enamored with transportation innovations, reportedly offering his acquaintances, the Wright brothers, room on his estate in Irvington, New York, for their work. [5] After one of the steam-powered cars made by the Stanley Brothers had set a new speed record of 27.4 miles per hour in November 1898, [6] he bought the Stanley Brothers company and patents for $250,000 in early summer 1899. [1] In this, he partnered with Amzi L. Barber, [7] a fellow Irvington resident who made his fortune producing and selling asphalt used to pave roads around the country. They set-up the Automobile Company of America [7] to produce steam carriages, but almost immediately, Walker and Barber parted ways and split the company in two. Walker set up the Mobile Company of America with the right to the Stanley patents but no factory, while Barber's Locomobile Company of America shared the patent rights but also received the Stanley Watertown factory and most of the steam cars under production. [8] [9]
Walker purchased parts of the former Ambrose Kingsland estate [10] in North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow, New York) and hired McKim, Mead & White to design a purpose-built automobile factory at the foot of the village's Beekman Avenue. [11] Manufacturing machinery was purchased and the new factory at Kingsland Point produced its first Mobile Steam carriage on March 7, 1900. Advertising claimed it to be the largest automobile factory in the world. [10] [8]
Mobile's version of the steam carriage had a 5 to 12 horsepower engine, with a water tank range of about 35 miles and a gasoline tank range of between 60 and 75 miles. In 1901 kerosene could replace gasoline for fuel. Originally built as a light runabout, Mobile added up to 24 styles of bodies to improve poor sales. By 1902, a top speed of 50 mph was claimed. Prices for the Model 4 runabout started at $750 (equivalent to $27,257in 2024) rising to a 9-passenger "coupe" Model 50 at $3,000 (equivalent to $109,027in 2024). [9] [8]
The Automobile Races held at Newport, Rhode Island in September 1900 featured a steam vehicle race won by Joseph H. McDuffee driving the Mobile. Also in September 1900, Walker, accompanied by his 8-year-old son Justin, displayed the hill-climbing prowess of the Mobile (reportedly a two-seat, 2-cylinder Model 4 runabout)[ [12] by driving one up Pikes Peak to a height of 11,000 feet (but not to the top of the 14,115-foot-high peak), presumably the highest altitude ever reached by an automobile until then. [13] In August the following year, one of his cars, driven by others, did reach the top. These stunts, however, were ridiculed by the Colorado newspapers in articles claiming that "the west is not yet prepared for the flood of automobile travel that Mr. Walker promises to let loose in the mountains." [14]
Advertising for the Mobile Company was taken out in most major magazines, and as Walker was the publisher of The Cosmopolitan, the Mobile Company of America featured prominently in it. Mobile's new factory was expected to produce 20 steam carriages weekly. By the fall of 1901, production was averaging 5 steam carriages a week. [15] [10] Barber's Locomobile Company built approximately 5,000 steam runabouts over three years. Mobile, being slower to market, built an estimated 600. In early 1903, the Mobile Company of America stopped production. Later in 1903, the equipped automobile plant was leased to Maxwell-Briscoe. [9] [15] In 1905, Walker sold The Cosmopolitan to William Randolph Hearst. Not long after the sale, what seems to be a press release appeared in identical form in several newspapers around the country [16] [17] under the caption "Why It Was Sold". In pertinent part, it read:
…a sudden change in public favor from steam to the French gasoline car left the company with branch houses from Boston to San Francisco and losses exceeding $1,700,000. Mr. Walker personally assumed the indebtedness of the Mobile Company of America, and not only paid it off in full, but returned to every shareholder the amount of his investment, with interest. This action required the sale of the Cosmopolitan Magazine, Kingsland Point, and some other properties.
With some short interruptions, the site of Walker's automobile plant would continue to be used to build cars until June 1996, when General Motors finally stopped production of cars there and closed its North Tarrytown Assembly plant. [10]
