Some weeks ago I posted a short gallery of vintage driveways and I feel it’s time for a follow-up. Once again, it’s a collection of shots from early suburban life, each with a vehicle of interest.
It’s always fun to revisit this period from the mid-20th Century. It’s a moment when much of our modern life was being created, and to examine it leaves a pleasant mix of feelings; it’s at once familiar, yet distant and slightly alien. But as they say, the past is a foreign country. One I don’t mind revisiting every so often.
The home featuring the `56 Chevy 210 coupe looks alot like one a friend here in Omaha owns. Same under-house garage & housewide front porch. But man….those are some deeeeeep awnings over the windows & porch! They must not like the daylight at all! LOL
Here’s the same house today – it’s located in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC.
Current StreetView here:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/iL2YehXUPd3ZrB2aA
I live two streets over from that very house and pass by it daily. I’ll have share this photo with the owner. I’m curious how you were able to map it from the photo alone?
That’s great! I’m sure the current owners would love to see a picture of their own house from decades ago.
The Maryland license plate on the Chevy was a big clue, plus I’m somewhat familiar with the area and thought it might be in Takoma Park or one of the close-in Maryland suburbs.
ha! That’s awesome. I’ve been known to do some Street View sleuthing with old pictures. Well done.
Mom had awnings like this on her old porch; It’s not so much a dislike of the sunlight, but a nice way to make a porch a livable space in the summer.
Random thoughts: 1) After looking at the perfection of the 55 DeSoto today, the first shot reminds me how the 55-56 Dodge suffered from some really kludgy trim details.
2) I love the house in that third shot, with the garage under the front porch. I’ll bet that was a much more pleasant arrangement with something like a Ford Model A than a 56 Chevrolet. It looks like the house next door has the same arrangement.
3) That shot with the red Charger is SOOO mid 60’s! The kids, the car, and the gold Sting Ray bike in the drive (that looks just like the one I had). All of these also remind me of how small most peoples’ houses were back then.
Regarding your thought no. 1, I’d expand on that by saying the Dodge was the least attractive of the other full-size Mopar brands (I’ll exclude Imperial) during the entire 1955-64 time frame. Exceptions may be 1960-61, where Plymouth could take the honor.
During the Exner years, Dodge was generally the gaudiest of the Mopar marques. Unlike GM under Harley Earl, Exner didn’t necessarily hew to the “more money=more chrome” equation.
The trees and shrubbery in the Charger photo look very new, which suggests that the neighborhood is a new subdivision. My parents moved into their house in January 1967, and it was a new neighborhood at the time, with other houses having been built about 6-7 years before.
Now the original owners have largely died or moved out (my mother is last one left on our street), and the old trees and shrubs are being removed as new owners redo the houses to their liking.
Here is a new subdivision in the west end of the San Fernando Valley, town of Canoga Park, on Community Street, circa July 1966. I have absolutely no recollection of the car in the picture but the dog I do.
My father took home movies of our neighborhood in the spring of 1967, just after we had moved there. That photo reminds me of those home movies! Thanks for sharing!
I love that Charger photo. My uncle had a white one of that same year with those same wheel covers. I always did wonder as a young boy why this hot car sported these cheesy wheel covers. It should have some “real” wheels!
“2) I love the house in that third shot, with the garage under the front porch. I’ll bet that was a much more pleasant arrangement with something like a Ford Model A than a 56 Chevrolet. It looks like the house next door has the same arrangement.”
Not to mention the color coordinated fire hydrant just silently waiting, waiting, waiting…..
It’s interesting to look at the actual pictures and how they were taken. The different films are nearly as distinct as the cars. Among film camera geeks there’s as much nostalgia for different films as we have for these cars
The lead picture of the Coronet must be Kodachrome slide film, with its sharpness and saturated, almost luminous colors and dark shadows. It was a unique technology, basically 3 layers of black and white film with the colors added during developing, which made it archival, but also complex and unfortunately toxic. Sadly the formula was lost in Kodak’s bankruptcy. The Charger with kids is almost certainly Kodachrome also, but somewhat underexposed, which it didn’t handle well – it liked a lot of light. (A number of my dad’s pictures had that look.)
It’s not as obvious, but I will guess that the white house with the 60 Chevy wagon is Monochrome, also a slide film, but a more normal technology. Also very sharp and very saturated with dark shadows, but a bluer overall look. It’s still available.)
The others are likely various versions of regular color negative film like Kodacolor. (With possible exception of the Connecticut woman in front of the Ford, which could be Kodachrome except for the sky.)
Ah, a film buff. So below is it Kodachrome, Kodacolor, or Agfachrome?
Probably Agfachrome, based on the amount of grain when you zoom in. Seems too saturated to be Kodacolor.(Also, phrased like a trick question, so the answer has to be the unusual one lol.)
I used Agfachrome for a backpacking trip once (it was cheaper!) and was disappointed in the grain on the landscape pictures from the tops of the ridges. But it did look good for the 2 or 3 macro pictures, with the grain adding to the bokeh of the background.
ETA Ektachrome, not Monochrome. Damn autocorrect is way too aggressive on my work phone.
That 56 two tone 210 two door looks amazing. Almost like put there for an ad. The 68 Cougar also looks perfectly well for its home
Cougar was my dream ride back in those days!!
I still remember the cereal company that offered a plastic 1969 Mercury (including the Marauder!) within each box of the cereals made by that company (somehow, Post sticks in my mind).
The goal was to get kids to pester their parents to buy those cereals to collect the entire line of miniature Mercurys. Which, of course, I did!
I really enjoy these pictures. What’s interesting to me, as a mid-century product myself, is what has changed and what has not. My town is mostly populated with homes from the 1920’s to early ’70’s. A surprisingly number of them seem to have original landscaping, so don’t look too different from many of the houses in these photo’s. That house with the Lincoln, and the scrubby juniper and rock veneer siding, could have been my first house vintage 1970 in San Jose. And while it’s not exactly common, one will occasionally see cars from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s on the streets or even in the driveways in front of these houses. But it’s the people who look so different – hair, clothing. Did my Mom actually dress like that when I was a kid? Did I really dress like those kids? Though to my everlasting regret, I never had a Stingray bike 🙁 I was the nerd with the Schwinn Racer 3 speed.
We had a “Stingray”, “Schwinn”, and a “Huffy”! lol
Mine was a Raleigh Rode, England’s first reaction to the StingRay. The difference was that it had (has actually) narrow 1-3/8″ wide tires, rather than the 2 1/2″ ones on the Schwinns and other American bikes of the time.
I actually wrote about it here some years back
Here’s a modern shot of the house in the 2nd picture – the house has been added onto extensively, but it’s the same place. A Ram pickup has replaced the Ford Country Sedan:
Eric, someday, I’ll have to get you to tell me how you are able to find the addresses of these places (houses, businesses, etc.) just from their photos. It amazes me.
The house with the Ford wagon was the most eye-catching of the photos to me as this looked like so many of the houses in which I lived as a kid. And to JPC’s point about how small peoples’ houses were back in the day…YES. I have neighbors in my town who have garages larger than those houses. To wit, aside from a difference in vehicles over the years, notice how the modern version of the Ford-wagon house now has an addition with a second story.
The funny thing is that back in the mid-century, many of these suburban families were larger than modern families living in the same neighborhoods…and yet the houses are now larger for fewer people. It seems that cars are not the only things that have bloated in the past 60 years.
I meant to include the StreetView link for this house – it’s in Middletown, Ohio, about an hour north of Cincinnati:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ry4SvWfa9An9wyVq7
I just enjoy doing the research to track these places down.
Very true about small houses and big families. The family that lived in that house at that time likely had 3 or 4 kids. New houses’ “great rooms” are probably bigger than that entire house.
Our house in Maryland, circa 1964 was in the 1500-1700 sq. ft. size since the basement was finished off. Held five people. Now, in Alamo, CA, I’ve been in 3500 sq. ft. houses holding four total.
Seeing several “Levittown” type homes..
Very interesting group of photos – never cared for the ’56 Dodge though did like the ’55, nice trim handling & styling. The Lincoln coupe in driveway has open garage with what appears to be another Lincoln inside.
Most of those tricky garages were built in the late 20s, and the typical car got too long and wide for them just a few years later. The T-turn wouldn’t have been easy even for a Ford T!
I was wrong – car in garage is a Ford (Lincoln in driveway
Also, Vintage.es has some Euro pictures with a Peugeot 402, a Traction Avant, and some weird microcars.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/11/europe-1958.html
That photo of the Cougar reminds of the 1967 or 1968 Cougar that “lived” in our subdivision, which was filled with single-family homes built in the early 1960s.
It was owned by the high-school gym teacher, who shared the house with her female roommate. They always drove Mercurys, and both cars were generally some variation of dark green. At about the same time the gym teacher had the Cougar, her roommate drove a 1970 or 1971 Mercury Montego hardtop coupe in the same dark green.
re. the house in Silver Spring, MD (with the under-porch garage), I will say that unlike in many areas, that neighborhood (I lived near there for a good part of my childhood and still know people in the Silver Spring/Tacoma Park area) continues to have homes that are mostly still small and original. It must be the zoning or something that discourages excessive tear-downs and additions.
I agree that that garage would be a terror…although with a Tesla, the current owners probably manage it for the charging.
And it’s nice to see that the tree out front has done quite well in the past 66 years or so.
Doubt too many cars actually went into that garage since before “WWII”
Good point – it’s interesting that that area has seen much less in the way of tear-downs than other close-in DC suburbs. (By the way, I used to work in downtown Silver Spring, about a mile from that house.)
I guess Silver Spring has historically been less prestigious than other areas – also that house is built on a small, 5,000-sq. ft. lot, and it looks like it’s nonconforming in its zoning district – with requirements like setbacks and lot coverage maximums, that likely makes outright redevelopment less appealing than in neighborhoods with bigger lots.
Tell me about it… I grew up in Bethesda, and can barely find my way around nowadays when I venture back. There is virtually nothing recognizable that has been left from more than 30 years ago.
Ironically, it was a well known (or at least discussed) fact that Silver Spring was “less prestigious” than, say, Bethesda back in the day…and yet, it seems that they’ve done quite well for themselves in terms of preserving some measure of charm (I’m thinking Tacoma Park in particular) while Bethesda is just a McMansion and high rise wasteland. Funny how values change.
Just a brief story regarding Silver Spring being “less prestigious”:
I worked in Silver Spring, and lived in Rockville, between 2000 and 2003. During that time, I bought my first cellphone.
I bought my cellphone at a Radio Shack in (upscale) Potomac. At the time, they were assigning most new numbers to the newly-created 240 overlay area code. Being a ridiculous traditionalist, I preferred a 301 area code, so I asked if that was possible. The store manager said they still had some 301 numbers left, but only with Silver Spring exchanges, and “no one wants those.”
I said I didn’t care, and the manager found that hard to believe. He reminded me that Caller ID might show “Silver Spring MD.” I assured him that I didn’t care, and somewhat incredulously he gave me such a number.
Incidentally, I still have that number (though my wife and I switched phones at some point, so really it’s her number now).
I love Americana. Great shots of life as we wanted it to be and many were able to enjoy.
Based on my statistically insignificant observations, I could never understand why garages were so small and cars so big.
My garage dates back to 1925, the year my house was built. The original footprint was tiny; they added on to the back to accommodate more modern cars, but it was never going to be big enough without tearing the whole thing down. Most of the other original garages in the neighborhood can barely fit a Prius. They just wanted to cover the car, but never figured anyone would need space for a mower, snowblower, pressure washer, garden tools, spare tires, workbench, etc.
My favorite vehicles of these photos:
The ‘56 Chevy 210
The ‘60 Dodge
The ‘68 or ‘69 Sting-Ray (wild guess at the year based on the color)
Reason is a personal bias. My Dad’s first car was a ‘56 210, and his second car was a ‘60 Dodge. I owned a ‘71 Sting-Ray in blue.
Honestly I wouldn’t kick that lead in DeSoto or the Cougar out of my fantasy garage either.
And Eric (and Jeff beat me to this question above but) How do you DO that?!?!?!?!? I understand you live not too far from Silver Spring, and have awesome sleuthing skills with Street View, but you nailed the one in Ohio too.
As I mentioned the other day, you have a gift!
Really fun photos! Thanks for compiling these.
Got to love the carport in front of garage. Back then most families only had one car and single car garage. Guess the carport was a sign this family was moving on up! Love that 56 Dodge, part of beginning of Exners fabulous finned fantasies for Chrysler Corp.