Local artisans restore Horn & Hardart windows as the Philly-born Automat chain savors a moment

Frank Joseph Hardart Sr. and Joseph V. Horn, the Philadelphia restaurateurs who gave America its first Automat in 1902, wanted customers to enjoy good food at great prices in a setting graced with beauty.

Thus the signature Horn & Hardart restaurant and company headquarters in Center City featured not only hot or cold dishes behind little coin-operated windows, but also decorative stained glass by the esteemed Philadelphia artist Nicola D’Ascenzo.

The Art Deco building at 16th and Chestnut was torn down in 1966. Five decades later, the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill and an art dealer in Manhattan hired stained-glass designer Chandler Coleman to repair or restore two decorative D’Ascenzo windows rescued from the wrecking ball.

“The company believed that fine artwork should be in the most common of places, and their restaurants were designed for anybody with a nickel,” said Bruce Laverty, curator of architecture at The Athenaeum of Philadelphia. The library on Washington Square has an extensive collection of Automat photographs, drawings, and documents.

Bernard Goldberg, who owns Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts in New York City and commissioned Coleman to restore the window he is now offering for sale at $1.2 million, said: “It was in terrible shape, and now it’s amazing, a treasure. Chandler’s work is done with love and taste and elegance. He’s a master.”

At his Cathedral Stained Glass Studio in Cheltenham, Coleman said he learned the trade from a master craftsman.

As a boy in Germantown, he spent time in the studio of Kenneth Crocker, a noted stained-glass designer who trained in England. “I wanted to see how it was done,” said Coleman, who repaired the Woodmere window and restored the one now at Goldberg’s.

He said these two Horn & Hardart pieces were not necessarily challenging — at least for work by D’Ascenzo, whom he admires.

”He did mosaics, watercolors, oils, and stained glass. He was a true artist,” Coleman said. “I’ve probably done 10 to 15 D’Ascenzo windows, mostly from churches. His windows tend to be more intricate, with intricate cuts and lots of angles.”

Goldberg categorized some of D’Ascenzo’s work “on par with Tiffany.”

Coleman’s workshop contains a meticulously organized archive of raw stained-glass sheets in a cornucopia of hues and with names such as German crackle and English streaky. He has drawers full of small, decorative, beveled glass facet jewels. Sample stained-glass panels on display recall those that first attracted him as a boy to Crocker’s Germantown Avenue studio.

“Chandler was one of the kids from the neighborhood who would come into the shop. Many of them just wanted to see my Irish setter, who sat in the window,” said Crocker, who is 88 and lives in a retirement community in Rydal.

“But Chandler wanted to learn. He learned just by watching me,” said Crocker, adding that Coleman’s talents were evident early on and can be seen in his mature work at Cathedral Stained Glass.

“Poor is the pupil who does not excel his master,” Crocker said.

Ian Pappajohn, who along with his brother Matt has owned a woodworking business in Philly’s Frankford neighborhood since 1996, built new frames of white oak for both the Horn & Hardart windows.

“Chandler took very careful measurements before the window was taken apart and made templates for us,” Pappajohn said. “We made everything to those measurements.”

Because Goldberg envisioned a buyer wanting to use the window as a privacy screen, “we built three frames hinged together and with rolling legs that would support it and allow it to be moved or pivoted,” Pappajohn said.

He has vivid childhood memories of the Horn & Hardart on the southeast corner of Broad and Walnut and is pleased to have helped preserve objects that attest to the firm’s character.

“Companies used to spend a great deal of money on their headquarters, in the era when things were built to last,” he said. “We’re in a disposable era now.”

Had it not been for a chance encounter at 16th and Chestnut in 1966, the window that has become a favorite stop for Woodmere visitors likely would have been disposed of — permanently.

“As I understand the story, Nancy’s husband, Ray, was passing by the demolition site when he saw the window or sections of it being carried out as trash,” museum director Bill Valerio said.

“He said, ‘Stop, this can’t go into the trash,’ and ran to a phone booth and called his wife,” Valerio said.

Nancy Posel was a librarian and did some rapid research on the window. She told her husband what was at stake, he called a friend who was an architect, and the piece was saved.

Later it was installed in the library portion of an addition to the Posel home in Rydal. The window was a “stunning” feature, said Lita Solis-Cohen, a friend and former neighbor who also is an authority on antiques.

In 2016, Nancy Posel, a longtime patron of the Woodmere, donated it to the museum.

Long after New York’s and the nation’s last Automat closed in 1991 ― the final Philly-area location, in Bala Cynwyd, had shuttered the year before — Horn & Hardart’s vision inspired filmmaker Lisa Hurwitz to make The Automat.

Featuring interviews with comedian Mel Brooks and former Philly Mayor Wilson Goode as well as Hollywood film clips attesting to the cachet that stylish Automats once possessed, Hurwitz’s documentary had a long run at the city’s Ritz Five theater last spring and received four nominations for Critics Choice Awards in 2022.

“Horn & Hardart really were all about quality and creating a wonderful experience for their clientele,” Hurwitz said. “The headquarters and the windows really epitomize the company at its finest. Imagine a restaurant chain doing this today.”

While older Philadelphians think of the Automat — the first of which closed in 1968 in the building that still stands at 818 Chestnut St. — as belonging to their city, New Yorkers feel the same way about theirs, said Hurwitz, who grew up in California.

The New York and Philadelphia operations were run separately, and the New York headquarters seems to have kept better records.

But Hurwitz said Philly’s Athenaeum was immensely helpful in her research and will host a June 22 screening of The Automat with a question-and-answer session afterward.

Meanwhile, interest in Automats — perhaps driven by the appeal of contact-free dining in the post-pandemic era — may be growing.

Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, a New York franchise with Automat-adjacent vending kiosks that resemble a cross between Amazon pickup lockers and stacks of microwave ovens, has opened locations in Philly. And an ”official” website is touting what appears to be a new iteration of Horn & Hardart’s coffee sometime in 2023.