| by Mike Davis | |
(2000-12-11) |
You'd never expect to find one of the country's most outstanding public car museums in such an out-of-the-way spot as Norwich, New York. Yet here it is, the three-year-old Northeast Classic Car Museum midway between Utica and Binghamton in what Empire Staters call the Southern Tier.
Although the museum proclaims to have the largest collection of Franklin cars anywhere - no doubt true - from a car nut's point of view, this has to be one of the most user-friendly museums I've encountered. It is light and bright inside a relatively new series of Butler buildings, with good layout of its more than 100 vehicles, generally grouped by makes, and not overly cramped as so many car museums are.
The Northeast Classic Car Museum owes its origins to a combination of local boosters and a magnanimous local collector, George Staley.
Norwich grew up along the Chenango Canal, which in 1837 connected the Mohawk River at Utica with the Delaware River at Binghamton. In addition to serving local agriculture it soon became a small center for manufacturing, using canal boats to start shipping such goods as gloves, fireplace equipment and patent medicines worldwide. The canal was replaced by railroads in the 1870s, and N.Y. Route 12 had paved over a good bit of it by the 1930s.
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But by the 1990s, the town had fallen on hard times as the factories dried up, and local businessmen were looking for another focus to attract dollars. They thought of tourism, but had nothing in particular to offer except fairly pristine 19th-century architecture and an attractive, New England-like town square. Then one day a visitor from Colorado dropped into the Chamber of Commerce in search of a Franklin car collection he'd heard about.
Storied Franklins
Franklins were unique air-cooled cars made in Syracuse, N.Y., from 1902 to 1934. And a one-time air-cooled aircraft engine expert named George Staley who'd made a fortune had returned to his family dairy farm in a distant corner of Chenango County to start his collection of air-cooled cars and other classics. The Chamber made a deal: they'd provide the museum if he'd provide the cars.
The museum presently houses, by my count, about 25 Franklins, not all of them Staley's. Over the third of a century they were built, the Franklin evolved from an in-line four-cylinder to a straight six to a handsome but death-rattle V-12 in 1932.
Four distinct Franklin styles evolved over the three decades: at first, a barrel-shaped bonnet for the Four; then, in the years before and after World War I, a sloping, Renault-like snout; this was replaced by a slanting oval grille (not a radiator, to be sure, because there was none!) and finally handsome, bright-metaled true classic car front ends in the final eight years. In those of the late '20s, the grille featured a circular fan cut-out to speed cooling air flow over the cylinders. Peak year for the Franklin was 1929, with a bit over 14,000 produced, and it died not long after the depths of the Depression in 1932.
I can remember my folks talking about Uncle Damon's "air-cooled Franklin" and a snapshot in the family album, but I have never paid much attention to the marque before because it was long before my time and not "Detroit iron." If you want to know more about Franklin cars, get Sinclair Powell's "The Franklin Automobile Company," published last year by SAE Press and available for $39 plus shipping via www.sae.org.
Among other classics are a line of a dozen or so Packards, a quartet of Lincolns and a double handful of Auburn-Cord-Duesenbergs, most completely restored, owned and currently licensed by Staley. Indeed, this octogenarian central New York collector employs a staff of three - mechanic, woodworker and painter - at his shops among the family barns.
Not all the Northeast Classic Car Museum's exhibits are strictly classics. Collector cars, to be sure, include a rare '29 Chevrolet landau with convertible top over just the rear seat, one of 300 built at the GM plant in Buffalo; an unusual Model B Ford woody; a '50 Jeepster, the sporty coupe derived from the SUV grandfather Jeep Station Wagon; and several fascinating unrestored vehicles including a 1910 Buick Model 10, an early Dodge touring car, and a '22 Ford TT pickup truck.
For those whose first-hand memories don't go back so far, the museum opened a third gallery this fall to house during winter months a display of muscle cars, mostly collected from local folks who are happy to have their beauties in dry, warm storage until they can take to the roads again in nicer weather. Notable here are a variety of Chrysler makes including a conventional '70 Plymouth Roadrunner nose to nose with the long-snouted, rear-spoilered Superbird variation (remember Richard Petty's #43?).
For those whose idea of interesting cars is based on current movies, there's even a gull-winged Back to the Future DeLorean, a favorite, alas, of many museums these days.
To please its benefactor Staley, the museum includes his 1965 Divco step van, suitably painted with his family dairy sign, as well as part of his collection of air-cooled aircraft engines, including monsters from B-17s, B-29s and Cold-War jets. The museum hasn't figured out what to do with it yet, but it also owns a Franklin-powered Rushwin two-place high-wing monoplane.
In my book, this museum is well worth the difficulty in finding it. Norwich is centered in the triangle formed by Interstates 81, 88 and 90 (N.Y. Thruway), at the intersection of N.Y. routes 12 and 23 and less than an hour from Syracuse, Utica or Binghamton. The Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y., is some roundabout miles east. If the females in your excursion don't care for old cars, they will probably find interesting the accompanying period fashions on mannequins around the exhibits, or - if all else fails - antique shops in the area.
The museum buildings are located on the south side of Rexford Street, which also is N.Y. 23 east of 12, a couple of blocks north of the town square. Admission ranges from $3.50 for children 6-18 to $7 for adults. Telephone is 607/334-AUTO and you can find it, along with others, listed on the www.classiccarmuseum.org Web site.
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