Text by Patrick Bell.
The suburbs really flourished in the fifties and sixties as part of the post war boom in the USA. Many people used their newfound prosperity to buy new homes, moved there with their young baby boomer kids, and also brought their new post war cars along. Today we have a fine gallery of homes and the cars, plus a few people (and one dog) as well.
In the image above, it was a nice summer day when this lady posed with a ’58 DeSoto Firesweep 2 door Sportsman (DeSoto speak for hardtop). The neighborhood was quiet, other than a deliveryman with a bicycle down the street.
This solid black ’53 Mercury Monterey Special Custom 4 door sedan looked good and fit well in this solid middle class neighborhood. It appears to have been a warm summer day.
Moving momentarily from the suburbs, but still showing post war prosperity, the driveway was busy at this house in a rural area. In the garage was a ’54 Ford, and heading back this way a ’42 or ’46-’48 Buick sedan, ’51 Dodge 4 door sedan, and a ’53 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Coupe. I don’t recognize the black car on the right edge, and the license plates are not readable.
A house built on a hill, with a basement garage, narrow driveway cut into the hill, corrugated fiberglass awnings, and a rudimentary power pole. Apparently high winds were not a problem at this location. The car in the drive was a ’55 Buick Century 4 door Riviera, the first year for the four door hardtop.
Somebody’s pride and joy; a new ’57 Ford Custom 300 Tudor Sedan. The owner added a clamp on outside mirror, and the paper in the windshield likely was a buyer’s tag. Across the street, visible through the Ford looks like a ’55 Oldsmobile, and the house next door was for sale or rent. The neighborhood looked fairly new, and was in a somewhat rural area with roadside mailboxes.
A clean and shiny V8 powered ’57 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Sedan from Illinois that was well equipped with the exception of whitewall tires, which it sure needed in my opinion. They were insured with State Farm, and had a collection of stuff on the rear package tray. It was a nice summer day in this suburban neighborhood.
A loyal dog faithfully watching the street while his owner takes a photo of a clean ’59 Ford Thunderbird hardtop. It had the optional fender skirts and whitewall tires, and was wearing a ’64 issue Massachusetts license plate. It looked pretty good for a five year old car.
Another ’59 model, this one a Chevrolet Parkwood wagon with whitewall snow tires on the rear, and a Washington state license plate issued in Pierce County, where the seat is Tacoma. The house looked fairly new, and was in a rural area with a dirt/mud driveway. There was a lady working in the yard in the background, and the lawn, flowers and shrubbery looked very nice on a sunny late spring or early summer day.
Continuing with a ’59 theme here was a Ford Fordor Ranch Wagon parked in the driveway of a newish home where the lawn was just beginning to grow. It had a Florida license plate of either ’63 or ’66 vintage registered in Columbia County (if I am reading the first two numbers correctly at 29), which is located in the northern part of the state along the Georgia border. It looked like some visitors were about ready to leave.
One more ’59 and then we will move to the sixties. A Chevrolet Impala 4 door sedan on the left with possibly a New York license plate, and a ’60 Valiant V-200 4 door sedan to the right. The Koern family sure had some steep steps to maneuver to get to their front door. The flowers were blooming so another summer day image.
Another warm summer day, a good time to put the top down. That is just what this man did with a ’64 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible. Down the street was a ’61 Cadillac Sixty-Two or de Ville Six Window Sedan with a missing fender skirt, and parked at the curb looked like a ’63 Chevrolet C-series pickup.
A mother and daughter, all dressed up, while Grandpa was helping Grandma into a ’64 Chevrolet Bel Air 4 door sedan in the driveway. In the garage was a ’62 Buick LeSabre or Invicta. The house was a nice ranch style with a large driveway.
This ’62 Buick LeSabre 4 door sedan must have been a trailer tow vehicle, as there was a hitch on the front bumper used for backing. The lady of the house was posing by the front door, and there were a couple of lawn chairs by the blooming tree and flowers.
A sharp and new looking ’65 Ford Mustang convertible equipped with a V8 and the optional spinner wheel covers. The license plate is hard to ID as there were several states/provinces with that color combination during the mid-sixties.
Our final shot today was another warm weather car, a ’64 Buick Electra 225 convertible. I could have bought one just like this one, with a red interior, full power, air conditioning, mileage in the low 70’s, back in 1974 for $1000. It was a very nice car, but I was in the used car business and the market for convertibles had tanked during that time period. So at that time, it was too much money for the car lot, and too much car for me.
This neighborhood may have been in a dry climate going by some of the trees, but the flowers were blooming, so it was likely a springtime photo.
Thanks for riding along on our driveway tour and have a great day!
Lots of interesting scenes! The driveway with the 55 Buick looks impossible. Maybe it had a T-shaped turning area that isn’t visible from this angle. The temporary power pole is also unusual.
The 57 Ford pic is shot at the perfect angle to display it’s sharp styling and not accentuate the buggy headlights.
Americana- living the dream! Growing up in an apartment in The Bronx and as a fifteen-year-old moving to midtown Manhattan, these scenes were idyllic for the city dweller. Love them all!
The “Stang” and the “T bird” are my favs. Spiffy, first gen, “Valiant” in the one pic looks good as well.
You chose well with that first shot of the DeSoto. Neat suburban homes, a space-age supercar, and not a cloud in the sky (well, almost).
There’s even a kid delivering papers on his bike. Reminds me of that Jim Carrey movie “The Truman Show.” In a good way.
Conjures up “The End of the Innocence” by Don Henley
I sometimes take a short cut to work through a neighborhood that still looks like it must’ve when it was new in 1956.
Apart from the mature trees and the CR-Vs.
The first photo resembles Roosevelt Avenue in Stowe Township, Pennsylvania where I grew up only about a mile away. The houses were made of brick in alternating red and yellow colors. The only difference is that there was no grass between the sidewalk and the curbs. My paternal grandparents live there in one of the only two houses that existed before the subdivision was completed in the early-mid 1950s.
Recent Google street view of Roosevelt Avenue:
I very much enjoyed the vintage cars and homes i was a mid 60s kid my father was the owner of a Buick dealership i went to work for him during the summer’s in my early teens it was so amazing being around those new cars and occasionally got to drive those really cool Riveras and the grand sports definitely the grand ole days . In the pic its the home i was raised in and my one of my dads Buicks with his race boat on the back .
I loved this driveway tour and shot of suburbia back in the day! Really wish I had driven around a lot more in my younger days. More driveway tours, please!
Nice, different suburbs than I live in but very nice indeed .
-Nate
How many of us grew up in these 1000 sq ft houses and never thought anything about it.
I did just that myself but with a family of five plus grandmother it was pretty crowded. Th shots with the 57 Ford and 64 Ford convertible could have been in many parts of Houston. Subdivisions like these were everywhere.
My favorite was the black ’53 Mercury sedan. To me Mercurys from 52-54 are beautiful cars. The 61 Cadillac in the 64 Ford convertible picture is a Series 62. It has the small Cadillac crest on the lower front fender just ahead of the door. I had the same thought about the red and white 55 Buick. How did they get it in that driveway??? I suppose it’s the angle of the shot
At least two of the houses were Kit Houses, purchased through a Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog and capable of being assembled in 30-40 days. The parts were manufactured in mid west factories, more that two hundred factories in the early 1900’s. I know, I grew up in one, a 1-½ story.
Great memories of my 1950 Ford two door sedan with Smitty muflers, fender skirts and an ooga horn.
Thanks for the memories.
That black 53 Merc looks like the one my great grandmother and grandmother owned. They bought it after the 54s had come out, got a loaded 53 Monterey for what a stripper 54 base model would have cost. Dad did a little bit of customizing to it, when he was in junior high school, but it looked like this car when new, theirs was even black!
The unidentified black car in #3 looks to be a 1952 Olds sedan.
These images together look like a Robert Bechtle retrospective.
Should I be surprised that the ’62 Buick in the third-last photo doesn’t have whitewalls? It looks almost undressed without them.
The black sedan next to the 53 Bel Air could be a 51 Buick Super, as you can see the chrome trim on the rear window. Not sure about Olds having the trim??
It could be a Buick Special (not Super), as both the Olds and the Buick shared the same BO body. Yes, the Olds had that chrome trim on the rear window.
I stole this All American home picture off the internet several years ago. My Great Depression Babies parents could attain this dream in the mid/late 1950’s; but not so much their children.
Don’t those 2 door hardtops just look delicious compared to the 4 door sedan style junk they build today?…..From cars to SUVs to pickup trucks,the manufacturers of today will only offer us a 4 door sedan style vehicle….Is that what they call progress?
We had an 8X10″ picture of my mom, all dressed up, getting into her black 1960 Chrysler New Yorker, just like the one below. I would say that that is the best she ever looked at about 38 years old, and the NY was easily the best looking car she had owned. Sadly, that and about 1000 other pics were lost in 1982 when we moved back to Toledo from Las Vegas. The box of pics was the only thing missing when the truck was unloaded. Weird. Along with pics of the NY, also lost were pics of the awful yellow Mercury my dad had when I was very small, I think it was a ’58, and the Caddy, T-Birds, Imperial, Lincoln MK III, and ’69 Sedan De Ville, along with my sister’s Cutlasses, one of them I had later on, and a ton of pics of my ’74 Roadrunner. The latest vehicle in the box was my truly sad ’77 Macho Power Wagon. And in an even bigger blow, also in that box were my CB radio “Skip Tapes”, a dozen cassettes of me from 13 to 18 years old talking all over the world. You could tell the early ones just from my voice, which sounded a lot like my mother back then. Then you hear it start to change, and by tape #5, I sound just like I do 50+ years later. I would pay $1000 for those tapes without any hesitation.
The black car you see through the side glass of the 1957 Ford Custom 300 2-door Sedan is a 1950 Mercury. The 1962 Buick with the trailer hitch mounted on the front bumper was most likely used to back a boat down into a lake. Back in the 1950s my dad’s fishing buddy had an old Ford panel truck with a front mounted hitch that he used to guide his fishing boat down into Lake Travis below Mansfield Dam, near the low water crossing, Northwest of Austin, Texas. Whenever he would get to the lake, he would unhook his boat from the rear bumper and turn around and pull up to the boat and then hook it up to the front bumper and then guide it down to the waters edge and launch his boat. There was no boat ramp.