1920s Auto Races, Rockville Fair
This race car is a total mystery…what on earth is it? It appears to be a two-man race car. Photo by Lewis Reed
Early action shots like these are rare, however, the following photographs were taken by Lewis Reed at the Rockville Fairgrounds in the early 1910-1920s. The fairgrounds were just outside Rockville, about where Richard Montgomery High School is today. The Fair lasted four days, from August 21st to the 24th, and drew visitors from local counties, Washington, and Baltimore.
Dirt track action. Photo by Lewis Reed
August 1923. Auto race, Rockville Fair
Crowds at the auto racetrack, Rockville Fair, August 1923
The photo above depicts an auto race at the Rockville fairgrounds. The photo of a harness race below was taken from approximately the same vantage point, which you don’t see very often in pictures from that era. Fairground race tracks, typically one-mile or half-mile dirt racing ovals with wide sweeping curves and grandstands for spectators, were easily adapted for the new sport of automobile racing.
Harness race at the Rockville fairgrounds, circa 1910. Same vantage point as auto race above. Photo by Lewis Reed
Below is a 1923 Washington Post ad for auto race at the Rockville Fair.
Sources: Dirt Track Auto Racing, 1919-1941 – A Pictorial History By Don Radbruch
Shorpy.com – a vintage photo blog of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s
Minivan – How It All Began
Minivans… you must have heard about them. Back in 1983 — when Ronald Reagan was president — the economy was far from robust and Chrysler was on death’s doorstep (talk about déjà vu). Chrysler needed a home run, and Lee Iacocca, who was running the company at the time, gambled that the first wave of baby boomers who were starting families would likely want something roomier and far more practical than the traditional family hauler, the station wagon.
Mentioning “family car” in 1983 would have conjured up a station wagon. I remember getting carsick while sitting in the rear-facing third row torture chamber, cut off from the rest of the family and their forward-looking vantage point. The tail-gunner position, however, was a great way to test out new hand gestures and making silly faces on following motorists. Do you have any idea how impossible it is to win the alphabet license plate or billboard game when you’re the last one to see everything? I spent many a family car trips never once seeing where we were going, only where we’d been. “Oh, look, there WAS the Bay Bridge. There WAS a bear. There WAS the most incredible thing ever except … whoops, now it’s gone. Too bad.” Indeed, how soon we forget that the minivan, when it debuted 30 years ago, was such a welcome replacement for the station wagon.
Iacocca practically bet the company on the fact that a new automotive segment dubbed “the minivan” — a front wheel drive small van built on the K-car platform — would catch on with the boomers. It was a $660-million gamble, only made possible by money acquired earlier from Washington’s $1.5-billion bailout of Chrysler.
It soon turned out that Iacocca’s gambit wasn’t merely a home run — the Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager turned out to be a bases-loaded grand slam.
On November 2, 1983, the first minivan rolled down the assembly line in Windsor. These 1984 model-year Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager models quickly appeared in dealerships alongside the Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant K-cars.Along the way, Chrysler has developed countless minivan firsts and toppled countless competitors that imitated them — and it remains just about the last one standing — as Chrysler just passed its 30th anniversary in the minivan market.
Now that I think about it, maybe facing backward so much during my formative years is why I tend to look backward too much in life and get nostalgic for silly things like rear-facing station wagon seats and minivans.
Sources: Autoevolution & Allpar
Two Years, 77 Posts & Thank You
Today marks the two-year anniversary of this blog. It’s been an honor to share the history of Reed Brothers Dodge – whether you’ve read our blog, followed us on Twitter, or “liked” us on Facebook. I would like to thank those mentioned below, and many others, for their kind words and the visibility they have provided.
To help review the past year I thought I’d search around on the Internet and see what others have been saying about us.
Included among the posts on our Facebook page:
“… you have a lot of Rockville History on that site!!!!”
Other mentions online and in print:
- Hemmings Daily Blog Four-Links – NYC cop car show, Reed Brothers Dodge history, coachbuilder Mark Nugent, microcars in the Pacific Northwest – posted a photo of of Reed Brothers Dodge and blogged about us. Photo caption:
“Reed Brothers Dodge has been in business in Rockville, Maryland, since 1915, almost as long as Dodge has been around. Unlike most new car dealerships, though, Reed Brothers cares enough about its heritage to have put together a nice website with plenty of vintage photos and history of the dealership.”
Responses to “Four-Links – NYC cop car show, Reed Brothers Dodge history, coachbuilder Mark Nugent, microcars in the Pacific Northwest”
“In the same week where we’re all extremely concerned for Detroit’s historic legacy, I can’t be the only one who felt some comfort…. Comfort that the Reed family valued their dodge dealership’s history enough to hang on to the artifacts and share it all with us. I’m long from my Maryland roots, being posted to London (and still here and happy), and so there was an additional wee bit of poignancy for me and the family.”
“With regard to the Dodge dealership and its 90 year history, it’s too bad that an institution like that can be simply erased by the stroke of a pen. The loss to the people who depended on it for their livelihood and the loss to the community itself is so often never recovered.”
“The Reed Brothers site is about 10 times better than many operating car dealer websites-certainly a sad ending.”
- C Bodies Only Forum – the home for C-Body Platform Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth Automobile Owners. – Reed Brothers Dodge, Rockville, Md.
“There is a remarkable webpage devoted to the history of Reed Brothers Dodge, a dealership in Rockville, Md. that was a Dodge dealer from the very early days until 2009. Ultimately it was a sad story, but the former owners maintained an incredible archive of the family business. Click on the links in the right sidebar titled “Site Navigation” for some incredible pictures.”
“That’s a nice story. Thanks for sharing. That place is near Washington D.C., I’ll have to cruise past and take a picture next time I’m in the area.”
“I love the historical history too Bob. Seriously that is some pretty neat history.”
- The Forward Look Network – The World’s Largest Source of 1955 – 1961 Mopar Info – posted two photos of Reed Brothers Dodge dealership from the 1950s under the “Forwardlooks in old pictures/postcards“
- Classic Mopar Forum.com
Classic Mopar Forum.com
- HudsonJet.net History of Hudson Dealerships: The dealership section is not only dedicated to the dealerships of the Jet years, but all known Hudson dealerships. The site posted a photograph of Rockville Garage. “In business from 1915 thru at least 2013, they sold Hudson from 1917 thru 1921.”
- Just A Car Guy Blog “Dodge, it’s history and 100th year anniversary are here… and a family owned dealership, (3rd generation) owner is blogging about it!”
- The Old Motor Car, online vintage automobile magazine featured a 2-Part series covering the history of Reed Brothers Dodge.
The Reed Brothers – Selling Dodge’s for Ninety-Four Years, Part I
The Reed Brothers – Selling Dodge’s for Ninety-Four Years, Part II
- Norris-Banonis.com I was delighted to provide Kevin Banonis of Norris-Banonis Group with two photographs that will go into the month of May 2015 calendar which features a 1952 Dodge Coronet. One photo is of the 1936 Reed Brothers Dodge canopied Gulf Gas Station and the second photo is of the original 1915 Rockville Garage. Below is a rough draft of what the product will look like. It may change a tiny bit between now and press time but this is pretty much how the finished product will look for the month of May 2015. The printed calendar will be high resolution and will be available for purchase on their website.
And then there’s Twitter…
Reed Brothers received numerous re-tweets and mentions on Twitter,
@reedbrothers welcome, fantastic story about your family dealership, thanks for sharing.
@reedbrothers I am sorry the Chrysler Corporation treated your dealership so unfairly in recent years. I am a local resident of Rockville.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank YOU for stopping by. I appreciate your patronage, whether it be via our blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or other social media.
Dodge Brothers March
Sing a song of old Detroit, for she’s the flashing, dashing pioneer of motor glory …
Dedicated by Victor Herbert to the Late Mr. Horace E. Dodge in Respectful Appreciation of His Generous Efforts Towards the Advancement of American Music; Published Especially for Dodge Brothers.
I love this march and the history behind it — it is such a typical success story of the early part of the 20th century. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) owes much of its prestige to half of the auto-building Dodge Brothers, John and Horace. It was Horace, the more mechanically-inclined of the two — and a decent enough amateur musician, by all accounts — that helped pay for a permanent conductor hired in 1918 to give the symphony world-class status. More importantly, he contributed $150,000 toward the cost of a new concert hall and led the successful fund-raising campaign for the building. Detroit’s Orchestra Hall, which opened in October 1919.
The Symphony was what finally smoothed the way into Detroit high society for Horace. Prior to that, the brothers were repeatedly blackballed — they were hard-drinking brawlers who didn’t much care what other people thought of them. (Their first major success was in manufacturing parts for Henry Ford’s assembly line. John Dodge was asked why the brothers abandoned that lucrative work to make their own cars. “Think of all those Ford owners who will someday want an automobile,” he snarked.) By the time the brothers suddenly died in 1920 — both from complications of the influenza then raging world-wide, although Horace’s condition was precipitously undermined by John’s death—such was their renown that none other than Victor Herbert paid tribute with “The Dodge Brothers March.”
The Dodge Brothers company distributed both the sheet music and, according to one source, 100,000 recordings of the piece.
Below are the lyrics and sound recording (without voice) of the march:
DODGE BROTHERS MARCH LYRICS
From the hills of San Jose San Jose
To the lights of gay Broadway gay Broadway
Sing a song of old Detroit
For she’s the flashing dashing pioneer of motor glory
Born of thunder steel and flame
All the world now hails her name hails her name
Here’s to Dodge and old Detroit
We pledge the glory of their fame
From the hills of San Jose San Jose
To the lights of gay Broadway gay Broadway
Sing a song of old Detroit
For she’s the flashing dashing pioneer of motor glory
Born of thunder steel and flame
All the world now hails her name hails her name
Here’s to Dodge and old Detroit
We pledge the glory of their fame
What better way to tap into the soul of an era than through music?
References:
The Dodge Brothers: The Men, The Motor Cars, And The Legacy
Johns Hopkins University, Levy Sheet Music Collection, Box 075, Item 028
The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922
1976 Showroom & Car Lot
A 1976 Dodge Charger displayed on showroom floor
I found these two gems while looking through some of my old photo albums. The top photo shows what appears to be a 1976 Dodge Charger displayed on the showroom floor at Reed Brothers. Usually, the flashiest of the new models, spit-shined to perfection, would be displayed inside the showroom. Banners touting the new models were also strung up in the showroom.
In the second photo, nothing screams 1970s like the line of beige and baby blue cars all lined up in rows on the side lot. Across the road is the big barn that said, “MILK FOR THOMPSON’S DAIRY” on the field that is now the new urban development known as King Farm. I remember Lawson King’s dairy cows. Lots of them! They used to graze in the fields just a few feet from the roadway right across the road. At its peak, King Farm was the largest milk producer in the area and had been in agricultural use for nearly 75 years before it was approved for development in 1996.
Cars lined up awaiting prospective buyers
Books
Related Resources
Copyright Notice
Reed Brothers Dodge History (1915-2012) by Jeanne Gartner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Reed Brothers Dodge History 1915 – 2012 
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