Mystery Friday Foto #19 Solved: The 1907 Reunion of Oldsmobilists at the Empire City Track in Yonkers
Jeanne Booth, an archivist at the Hicksville Public Library, was looking for your assistance to identify two Mystery Fotos found in their archives.
Greg O. and I are both stumped!
Answers to the Mystery Foto questions:
Identify:
- The race course -Hint: The track is located in the New York metropolitan area.
The Empire City Track in Yonkers, New York. Now, the site for Yonkers Raceway.
- The race and date- Hint: This was a special event for fans of one manufacturer
The event was the "Second Reunion of Oldsmobilists" held on Declaration Day, May 30, 1907
- The drivers in the Mystery Fotos- Hint: Includes a Vanderbilt Cup Race driver
David Bruce-Brown can be seen in the second Mystery Foto.
- The four race cars/automobiles- Hint: All the automobiles have the same manufacturer.
Comments (2)
Congrats and kudos to the amazing Ariejan Bos of The Netherlands for solving this very difficult Mystery Foto. See Ariejan's correct answers below.
Enjoy,
Howard Kroplick
David Bruce-Brown can be seen standing to the left of the first Oldsmobile.
Ariejan Bos
The clue to these photos is the fact that all three cars are Oldsmobile:
a Curved Dash runabout and a 1906 as well as a 1907 roadster. From this it appeared that these photos were taken at the Holiday reunion of Oldsmobile owners on Decoration Day, May 30, 1907. The location was Empire City track, Yonkers, NY.
Source: The Automobile, May 9, 1907
Probably we see some of the winners of the races these cars took part in: Colby on the runabout and C. Allen Hudson on the 1906 roadster (on the two car photo). The other photo shows the 1907 roadster, but as it is my impression that the person standing behind both Oldsmobile roadsters is the well-known David Bruce-Brown (winner of the 1907 roadster event), the driver on the 1907 roadster must be one of the other drivers. The mask however doesn't help in identification.
Source: The Automobile, June 6, 1907
About the cars: the curved dash is difficult to date, but they were still sold in 1906. The roadster on the same photo is the 1907 model H Flying Roadster (with 3-segment radiator). The other roadster is the 1906 model L Gentlemen's Roadster, having three interesting details:
First the coil springs, an accessory shown on an Oldsmobile roadster in the 1906 Sager ad; second the multi-segmented radiator, which is not the usual Oldsmobile radiator type that year; and finally the diamond-shaped badge (which I cannot explain at the moment).
Best wishes,
Ariejan Bos
Kleiner's Korner (Submitted by Art Kleiner)
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 7, 1907
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 12, 1907
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 29, 1907
Comments
Howard, The photos were taken in June 1905 at the Morris Park Racecourse which was located in the Bronx. The race was held on June 10 that year. The drivers were Louis Chevrolet in the Fiat on the left and Dan Wurgis in the Reo. The four autos entered in the race were the Fiat ( which won the race), followed by the Reo, a Decauville driven by Guy Vaughn and a Renault driven by C. J. S. Miller.
Believe that’s David in the single car image, too. He’s standing ( face is literally behind the steering wheel ). This was the only part I could figure out ( that this man is in both images ) A big congratulations to Ariejan Bos!
If you search - David Bruce Brown - He had an exciting, but unfortunately short life as a race car driver.
I have to make a correction: the 1907 roadster is on the two car photo (with the curved dash Oldsmobile), the 1906 roadster is on the single car photo! In the past we called that the printer’s devil ...
Great info., Ariejan and Howard!. Another Vanderbilt racer (1905) noted above who participated and broke speed records at the Oldsmobile meet was Emanuel Cedrino, who almost to the day one year later was killed in a racing accident in France. Source: New-York Tribune, May 31, 1907.
I apparently missed the Cedrino record run, but he was of course a bit of a strange element that day driving a Fiat. He was killed indeed exactly a year later, but that wasn’t in France but during practice on Pimlico Oval , a US dirt track. I remember Emmanuel Cedrino especially because of the photos by Lazarnick made during the 1905 Vanderbilt Cup race, where he is shown with his (future) wife, ‘his favourite mechanic’.
Thanks for the correction - I misread a headline about the accident. I read the word “fence” as “France”. Guess that can happen when I start commenting at 6 am before my first cup of coffee!
Well….. at least I got the decade right. Pretty close geographically also.
With the Preakness coming up in a few days, where was the ‘Pimlico Oval’ in Baltimore in relation to where the horse track is today?