: Picture, if you will, Manhattan's tony Fifth Avenue filled with
people bustling around shops, offices and residential highrises;
the street overflowing with cars and buses making their way along
the crowded thoroughfare. Now take yourself back to the turn of
the Twentieth Century when the overflow in the street was filled
more with pushcarts and pedestrians than cars, and the omnibuses
were drawn by horses. Not even elevated trains or trolleys were
permitted down this fashionable avenue due to influential
residents who scoffed at unsightly overhead wiring and ugly rails
imbedded in the road. But change was brewing, and in the summer
of 1905 New York City introduced the very first motorized bus,
which would redefine the landscape, not only of Fifth Avenue but
also of all city streets forever.
As part of the New York Transit Museum's centennial celebration
of the motorized bus, it is showcasing vintage toy buses in its
Grand Central Holiday Train and Bus Show. Located in the New York
Transit Museum Gallery Annex in Grand Central Terminal, an
impressively historic location in itself, the exhibit will run
through the holidays until January 16.
Fifty-five toy buses from the collections of John Dockendorf and
Kurt Resch will be on display, along with vintage and modern day
model trains, sponsored, in part, by Lionel. "The buses are a
little overlooked and they're really wonderful toys. I think toy
collectors are really going to enjoy this show in that respect,"
says Rob Delbagno, manager of exhibitions at the New York Transit
Museum.
While past holiday exhibitions in the Grand Central space have
focused on toy trains, Delbagno took great care in choosing just
the right pieces to make sure the motorized bus was not
overlooked in its special centennial year. "Anything that was a
New York-specific bus caught our eye immediately, so we
definitely leaned in that direction. We favored American-made
toys over other buses but not exclusively, and we tried to get a
cross section over time," notes Delbagno.
Jackie Gleason "Away We Go Honeymooners Special" bus. This tin
toy from 1955 also came with a bus driver's uniform to coincide
with the popular television series The Honeymooners.
In keeping with the New York theme, a particular favorite of
collector Resch is his Lincoln Tunnel toy. "It's a tin windup that
was made in Newark in the 1930s. It's got New Jersey on one side
with farms on the lithography, and it's got New York City on the
other side. It's not enclosed, but the trucks and cars and buses go
in one side and come out the other," says Resch. Manufactured by
Unique Art Manufacturing Company (later bought by Marx Toys), the
Lincoln Tunnel can be dated by the pudgy policeman towering over
the tiny vehicles, whereas later versions had a thinner cop.
The exhibition features a horizontal display case acting as a
timeline of toy buses showing the differences of the toy bus
eras. According to Delbagno, "You can see three different shapes
up to the present. The 20s all had a very distinct shape, and
then the big change occurred in the 30s when everything started
to go streamline and then they kind of pop back into a boxier
form after World War II and they haven't really changed all that
much."
