Finding Aids

Allen P. Carter (1906-2006) was the manager of the Service Department of Du Pont Motors Inc. and then Du Pont Motors Service Company. His papers are a series of fragments covering his association with Du Pont Motors Inc. and automobile racing and restoration.

The American Motors Corporation was an automobile manufacturing company that was established in 1954 as a result of a merger between Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motor Car Company. This collection consists of six sales training videos for the American Motors Corporation.

Arthur Wood Tocher (1919-2005) was a transportation history enthusiast, specializing in large vehicles with an emphasis on trucks. This collection consists of truck and car related images. The bulk of the collection contains photographs that Tocher took at truck shows in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The collection also includes images of construction vehicles, postcards of classic cars, a calendar with images of classic trucks, and a large truck photograph mounted on wood.

Boyertown Auto Body Works was a manufacturer of delivery truck bodies for commercial and industrial use, as well as specialty and military vehicles. The works manufactured electric, gas, and diesel vehicles and bodies on all types of vehicles. This small collection comprises photographs of food service vehicles manufactured by Boyertown Auto Body Works during the 1960s.

The Budd Company was a manufacturer of steel automobiles, passenger rail cars, and other transportation products. The company began in 1912 in Philadelphia as the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company, specializing in the manufacturing of all-steel body automobiles. This small collection of papers from the Braking Systems Division consists mainly of Budd Company engineering reports dating from 1946 to 1973. These reports examine brake drums, brake linings, and noise generation. There is also a small set of reports from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) that dates from 1963 to 1967. Also included are materials from the Budd Institute, Phase II, a week-long training at Michigan State University Management Education Center in November 1993.

The collection consists of a synthetic historical file assembled for public relations purposes at Budd Company's Michigan headquarters.

The collection consists of a small group of legal documents of the Budd Company and its related firms preserved by a former employee. Also included are the papers of Budd Company's British and German affiliates, property leases, and agreements.

Victor Herbert (1859-1924) was a composer, conductor and cellist. This item is sheet music of the Dodge Brothers March which was composed in honor of Horace E. Dodge (1868-1920).

Donaldson Brown (1885-1965) was an industrialist and business executive with E.I. du Pont de Nemours and the General Motors Corporation. These papers relate to Brown's association with GM, and reflect his concern with financial policy, organization and operation, and employee relations. They are especially concerned with the period of World War II. Files from the 1920s and 1930s describe Brown's effort to relate pricing policies to financial control.

DuPont Motors, Inc. was a manufacturing company of luxury automobiles, founded by E. Paul du Pont (1887-1950) in 1919 in Wilmington, Delaware. These photographs show exterior views of the vacant DuPont Motors factory in Moore, Pennsylvania, where briefly (1922-1925) DuPont automobiles were assembled.

DuPont Motors, Inc. was a manufacturing company of luxury automobiles, founded by E. Paul du Pont (1887-1950) in 1919 in Wilmington, Delaware. This collection consists of thirty-eight photographs primarily showing the exteriors of DuPont Motor’s Models A, B, D, and G.

Du Pont Motors, Inc. was a manufacturing company of luxury automobiles, founded by E. Paul du Pont (1887-1950) in 1919 in Wilmington, Delaware. The company originally produced marine engines during World War I. These photographs show exterior views of the vacant Du Pont Motors factory in Moore, Pennsylvania, where briefly (1922-1925) Du Pont automobiles were assembled.

Eleuthère Paul du Pont (1887-1950) was the founder of the luxury automobile company DuPont Motors, Incorporated in 1919. In 1930, E. Paul du Pont also became the president of the Indian Motorcycle Company in Springfield, Massachusetts. Throughout his life, E. Paul du Pont developed numerous patents and wrote articles for various trade publications in the automobile industry. DuPont Motors, Incorporated was a manufacturing company of luxury automobiles, founded by E. Paul du Pont in 1919 in Wilmington, Delaware. Indian Motorcycle Company is a manufacturer of a wide variety of motorcycles. In 1930, after selling DuPont Motors, Incorporated stock, E. Paul du Pont bought a large share of Indian Motorcycle Company stock and became the company president. This collection documents both the professional and personal history of Eleuthère Paul du Pont and his family. The material spans from the end of the nineteenth century through the twentieth century. The collection is predominantly textual material and photographic prints having to do with both DuPont Motors, Incorporated and Indian Motorcycle Company administrative and financial correspondence and advertising and publications. Besides business material, the collection includes personal letters between E. Paul du Pont and his siblings and children, and family snapshots and portraits usually taken at their home in Delaware.

Frank R. Zebley (1883-1960) was a Delaware native collector, photographer, author, and one-time speaker of the Delaware House of Representatives. He published Along the Brandywine and The Churches of Delaware. The Frank R. Zebley photograph albums includes nearly 1500 black and white photographs from the city of Wilmington, locations around Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania, and other places of interest in the mid-Atlantic region.

Hahn Motor Truck Company was a manufacturer of fire trucks and buses. The company built its own chassis and commercial trucks such as delivery vehicles and construction vehicles. This small collection consists of three views of an unoccupied Hahn Motor Truck Company deluxe bus: two exteriors and one interior.

Hoopes Brothers & Darlington was a firm that produced wooden wheels. It was founded by brothers Thomas Hoopes (1834-1925) and William Hoopes (1830-1917) on their farm about a mile northwest of West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1866. Initially, they manufactured spokes for wagon wheels from local timber. In 1869, they established a factory in West Chester proper and, within three years, were manufacturing complete wooden wheels. In time the firm became the largest establishment of its kind east of the Allegheny Mountains. The records of Hoopes Brothers & Darlington, Inc. are relatively complete and give a full picture of the firm during its peak years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Hoopes Brothers & Darlington was a firm that produced wooden wheels. It was founded by brothers Thomas Hoopes (1834-1925) and William Hoopes (1830-1917) on their farm about a mile northwest of West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1866. Initially, they manufactured spokes for wagon wheels from local timber. In 1869, they established a factory in West Chester proper and, within three years, were manufacturing complete wooden wheels. In time the firm became the largest establishment of its kind east of the Allegheny Mountains. This small collection consists of an account book of rim stock; a biography of one of the firm's founders, Thomas Hoopes; the autobiography of lime kiln owner John G. Robison; Edward S. Darlington's membership certificate in the Carriage Builders National Association; and board of directors' meeting minutes from 1903 to 1932.

This handbill for the Jackson Park Garage on Stony Island Avenue in Chicago advertises its mechanical services and lists monthly specials for Ford 4, Chevrolet 6, and Pontiac 6 automobiles. The NRA (National Recovery Administration) eagle symbol is in the right corner. The National Recovery Administration was a U.S. government agency established during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to stimulate business recovery through fair-practice codes. Companies that subscribed to the NRA codes were allowed to display a Blue Eagle emblem, as a symbol of cooperation with the NRA.

The Budd Company began in Philadelphia as the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company specializing in the manufacturing of all-steel body automobiles and then later railcars. This collection contains two enlarged reproduction black and white photographs taken at the Hunting Park plant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One is of the Budd Company's drafting room and the second is of the Budd Band float during a parade.

The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) is an advocacy organization that represents automobile dealers to automobile manufacturers and the United States government. This collection highlights the activities of NADA. The collection is arranged into two series based on format; Audiovisual and Publications. The material within the series are arranged chronologically. The audiovisual materials focus primarily on coverage of events, news segments, automobile manufacturer footage and other programs pertaining to NADA, while the publications focus on industry news, products, regulations, and legislation.

This oral history project was initiated to provide supplementary material for Hagley’s 2015 exhibit, Driving Desire, that feature items from the Z. Taylor Vinson Transportation Collection. The three interviewees are; Rick Shnitzler, Fred Simeone, and Yann Saunders, all were personal acquaintances of Z. Taylor Vinson as well as highly involved in either collecting or dealing auto ephemera and/or automobiles.

Plymouth was brand of automobiles produced by the manufacturing company the Chrysler Corporation. Plymouth's first appeared in 1928 as a low-priced option to compete with Chevrolet and Ford. This item is a television commercial film for a 1960 Plymouth Fury.

This collection consists of a picture reference file of American automobiles built between 1877 and 1979. Most pictures are illustrations clipped from magazines and other publications, but there are also some postcards, photographs, and ephemera items.

The Saxon Motor Car Company was located in Detroit, Michigan and had offices in Troy, New York. It began producing automobiles in the winter of 1913-1914, when the company introduced a two-seater roadster. The album contains photographs of the Saxon Motor Car Company's offices in Troy, New York and Detroit, Michigan.

Strother MacMinn (1918-1998) was a designer, writer and influential teacher of automotive design. He assisted in the design of automobiles at General Motors, Opel, and Oldsmobile. But his main position was as an instructor of automotive design at the distinguished Art Center College of Design in California. These are six prints of car models designed by MacMinn for DuPont.

The Studebaker Corporation was an automobile manufacturer headquartered in South Bend, Indiana. The Studebaker Corporation began making automobiles in 1902. This item is an advertising giveaway for the 1938 Studebaker. Inside is a tintype of two people sitting in the original 1902 Studebaker so that their heads appear in the windshield of the 1938 car when the giveaway is folded.

Wayne W. Light (1882-) was a lawyer andlight delivery vehicle inventor. The collection consists of items amassed by Light to document his attempts to become an automotive inventor and manufacturer.

WorldAutoSteel is an institutional membership organization comprised of eighteen major global steel producers dedicated to innovative vehicle steel application technologies that are environmentally sustainable and meet the automotive industry's needs. This collection consists of records that document a series of projects conducted by WorldAutoSteel, a unit of the World Steel Association. The files come from WorldAutoSteel headquarters, primarily from Edward Opbroek, who was the director of WorldAutoSteel from 2006 to 2011 and the program director for UltraLight Steel Auto Body (ULSAB) and UltraLight Steel Auto Body - Advanced Vehicle Concepts (ULSAB-AVC). These records would be of value to researchers interested in the intersection of the steel and automobile industries, automotive benchmarking, innovations in steel design and engineering, and communications strategies.

Consists of Z. Taylor Vinson's collection of transportation ephemera, which focuses primarily on automobile history but also documents other forms of transportation. Includes trade catalogs, books, magazines, and artifacts in addition to manuscripts relating to Vinson's career at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

For over sixty years, Zachary Taylor Vinson (1933-2009) amassed a large and comprehensive collection of printed material documenting on the history of transportation, particularly automobiles. This small collection of French lithographs depicts early aeronautical and motor vehicle subjects. All but one were designed by either Ernest Montaut (1879-1909) or his wife, Marguerite Montaut (1883-1936). The final print is by poster artist Georges Hamel (1900-1972).