Horseless Carriage
Made by St. Louis Gasoline Motor Co.
St. Louis, Missouri, ca.
1900
Metal, rubber, leather, wood
MHS Collections
1998 108 0001
Americans have a long and rich tradition of equating the open road and an unfettered ability to travel with freedom. Throughout the twentieth century the automobile has become an icon of liberty like no other mode of transportation. Advertisements routinely suggest that to own a car is to have material abundance, social status, and access to a lifestyle of one’s own choosing. For example, a 1924 magazine advertisement exclaimed, “Freedom for the woman who owns a Ford.”
This circa-1900 horseless carriage was made by the St. Louis Gasoline Motor Company, a company that specialized in “motor wagons” as well as motors and transmission gears for carriage makers and others wanting to construct their own vehicles. After many owners, all of whom worked to restore and repair the car in various ways, the vehicle came to MHS in 1998 by way of its last owner, Mr. Charles McMahn of San Diego, who wanted the car returned to its home in St. Louis.
Horseless Carriage and Woman
Henry Ford Museum
October issue of Delineator,
Designer, 1924.
Organized by the Virginia Historical
Society with additional support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter
Foundation and the
Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Changing Exhibitions Fund, American. Support
in St. Louis is provided by The Stanley and Lucy Lopata Foundation
This exhibition has been made possible in part
by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Great Ideas Brought to Life.
