Vroom with a view in Boyertown

Charles E. Duryea, a pioneer in the automobile industry, was a stubborn man.

When other automakers in the first decade of the 20th century began using steering wheels instead of tillers (a movable pole), Duryea was convinced tillers were better.

His 1907 Buggyaut, for example, was controlled by a tiller that not only steered the car, but switched gears and regulated speed. His factory in Reading built what he called “the scientific auto.”

It may have been scientific, but it was not successful, according to Kendra Cook, curator at the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles, which includes the Buggyaut and five other Duryea automobiles in its extensive collection of horse-drawn and motorized vehicles mostly made in Pennsylvania. These include carriages, wagons and sleighs, as well as gasoline-, steam-, and electric-powered autos.

“He didn’t care what the customer wanted. He had no business sense whatever,” Cook said of Duryea, whose auto company (producing about 100 cars a year) went bankrupt.

Duryea and his brother Frank built one of the first American gasoline-powered automobiles in 1893. They became the first American auto manufacturer when their Duryea Motor Wagon Co. assembled 13 horseless carriages at a factory in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1896.

After the brothers had a falling out, Charles started his own plant in Reading in 1900. Reading was a hub of early auto manufacturing because of its railroad network and access to raw materials.

The nonprofit museum will honor the Duryeas and other automotive pioneers when it holds the 49th annual Duryea Day this Saturday at Boyertown Community Park on Madison Street. The event will include hundreds of antique autos on display, a flea market, food booths and music. Visitors may take a trolley bus to the museum to see early automobiles made by long-forgotten companies and individuals. They include:

n The oldest gasoline-powered auto in the collection, made from carriage parts by James F. Hill, a mechanically inclined man from Fleetwood, Berks County. Cook said the vehicle used a steam engine when built around 1872, but it is unknown when Hill converted it to gasoline power. The chain-driven buggy, with a wooden body and wooden-spoke wheels, was one of the earliest autos powered by an internal combustion engine.

n A 1907 Dragon five-passenger touring car made in Philadelphia, painted royal blue with gold stripes. “It’s pretty, but it’s not a well-operating car,” Cook said.

n A yellow 1914 Dile Model A Sports Roadster, built in Reading. The car’s name combined the first two letters of the last names of its makers, Frank Dick and Irving Lengel. Intended to compete with the Ford Model T, the Dile flopped because its $695 pricetag was a then-substantial $200 more than the Model T, according to Cook.

n Two Biddles, a green 1915 model and a tan 1918 roadster. This car was produced in Philadelphia and New York from 1914 to 1922.

n A dark-green 1922 touring car made by the Daniels Motor Co. of Reading. This luxury auto, costing a whopping $5,000 (equivalent to more than $70,000 today), couldn’t compete with better-known luxury brands, such as Packard, Peerless and Pierce-Arrow, Cook noted.

Many of the hundreds of American car companies that emerged in the early 1900s previously made carriages or bicycles. The Boyertown museum shows the transition from vehicles powered by horse or man to cars and trucks using engines.

“What makes us different is we have all kinds of vehicles, not just cars,” Cook said. “I like the evolution of it.”

The museum is housed in the former factory building of the Boyertown Auto Body Works, which operated from 1926 to 1990 and produced vehicles such as an olive 1950 U.S Post Office delivery truck and a Mister Softee ice cream truck (both on display). Also on site is the former Jeremiah Sweinhart Carriage Factory, where carriages, sleighs and farm vehicles were produced from 1872 to 1914.

The late Paul Hafer, owner of the body works, founded the museum in 1965 with horse-drawn and motorized vehicles he had collected.

Besides vehicles, the museum has installed a 1921 cottage-style gas station that originally was in Strausstown, Berks County, and became a Sun Oil Co. outlet in the 1940s; and the Reading Diner, complete with a marble countertop, red-leather stools and wooden booths, which was built in New Jersey in 1938 and was on Route 422 in Exeter Township, just east of Reading. Converted into Fegely’s Family Restaurant in 1950, the original diner was saved and restored by the museum after the restaurant closed in 2003.

Diner Day, at which the public may buy coffee and pie at 1938 prices and eat inside the diner, is held several times a year. The next one will be Nov. 8 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Edward Levenson is a freelance writer.

He can be reached through editor Harry Yanoshak at 215-345-3051 or hyanoshak@calkins.com

Vroom with a view in Boyertown