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Aristo-Craft
Trains Internet Depot |
Bruce: What we want to do Nat is to start with day zero. Let's start with the Polk Brothers. We know you through the TCA meets and you have a brother named Irwin. Are you the senior member?
Nat: No, I'm the junior member.
B: Both youngsters at heart! You fellows started in the hobby business in approximately what year?
N: We started in New Jersey in 1933 on Halsey Street and my brother at that time was still working for Hearst Newspapers running the model aviation program in seventeen newspapers. In 1935, he was the Field Director for the Junior Birdmen of America.
You know William Randolph Hearst actually brought in the Boy Scouts of America. He always liked boy's organizations and he had an organization called the Boy Scouts of America, who wore Daniel Boone fur hats. And they were not scouts as you know them today, they were like western scouts. And when the Boy Scouts came over here from England, we pleaded with Hearst to give up that name and he did reluctantly. He always hungered for youth organizations, and after Lindbergh flew across, the aviation thing was wild and the young people were so involved in it he started with what they called the Junior Birdmen of America. Hearst ran a column daily with a full page or two on Sunday's in seventeen of his newspapers. My brother was the Field Director working to put the seal of approval on various model aviation kits and running the contest all over the country.
B: Were there model aviation companies as we know them today?
N: Oh yes, there were companies like Comet who made kits and they also made railroad kits too, you know. They were all model airplane companies at that time. In fact, during those days you didn't have any model railroad shops, you didn't have hobby shops, you had model airplane shops. We were the ones who eventually took and showed them how to sell trains, because at that time Varney and John Tyler of Mantua were selling by mail.
B: Most of those airplane model shops were in department stores, weren't they?
N: We ourselves had leased departments in about thirty department stores throughout the country.
B: Did they sell strictly airplanes?
N: Airplanes, glue, supplies, wood, and all.
B: When did that hobby start?
N: As soon as Lindbergh flew across in 1927, after that it was go. In fact, Bamberger Air Club asked us to form a club which we did with the Newark Evening News, and they asked if my brother or one of us would go to work for them and then they would open the department.
B: So you had shops, franchises in thirty department stores?
N: Yes, that went on until the late 1930's and so on.
B: How did you get into model railroading?
N: Model railroading, of course, was a love of ours always. Because we sold Lionel and American Flyer and Marx - that was strictly from the toy end. When people like Gordon Varney and John Tyler from Tyco or Mantua it was called then, because the company was in Mantua, NJ, started to sell by mail. We got very interested and talked to those two.
1934 was the year that Al Kalmbach started Model Railroader, and that was the year we opened in New York City. Bill Walthers was already in the mail order business. So we went to Tyler and to Varney and said we think we can sell these train kits and locomotives and so on through the model airplane shops. Well, they didn't believe that, but they were willing to have a go at it. So, we bought a bunch of stuff and gosh, in one month we got rid of it because it was very easy to teach those model airplane shops to go into model railroading. After that they were called hobby shops, no longer model airplane shops and we did very well.
About this time the fellow in Chicago, you know the Redbook man, Donnelley - Reuben Donnelley went into business. He was making kits mostly, and he came to us and we did the same with his line.
B: He was OO and O gauge?
N: Yes, he was OO and O gauge. That was one of the reasons that Lionel jumped head first into OO. They were so afraid that this guy who was loaded with money that he could put in a gauge they didn't have. I told Josh Cowen, don't crash into it because you have HO lurking in the background and it is much more popular and much more available in HO, but Lionel jumped right in to OO because they were worried about Donnelley, they weren't worried about any of the HO guys. That was a mistake on their part, as we all know now. Cowen was afraid of Donnelley's money and that Donnelley would surpass him.
When Donnelley's daughter died in an accident at home, he lost all desire to do anything, and that was when he stopped making anything else. He kind of lost heart.
B: Polk's, at first, was located near Macy's on Seventh Ave.?
N: It was Polk's Hobbies - Polk's Model Craft Hobbies.
B: There were hobby shops on 42nd St., weren't there?
N: No, at that time only Charlie Penn was there, but he had some model railroad supplies in his office where he published the magazine (Model Craftsman), and the only reason he had hobby supplies was because some of the guys couldn't afford to pay him so they gave him goods.
B: He had a little hobby craft store?
N: No, he had a few counters. He started to sell this merchandise to get his money out of the advertising.
B: Did Walthers at one time have a store in New York?
N: No, Bill Walthers stayed in Milwaukee where he was in the Rolodex card business, and the hobby was a secondary thing because he loved railroads and he used to ride with the engineer in the locomotive all the way to New York. And then he would come to our place to clean up and wash up. He didn't do that to save any money, he just loved riding up front in the locomotive.
B: Lionel Trains were sold where at this time?
N: Number one was hardware stores and number two was the department stores. Hobby stores did not catch on to the toy train business and there weren't enough toy shops around to have a twelve month a year train business.
B: One of the early hobby shops was started by Howell Day, correct?
N: Howell Days was in New Jersey, and he had one of the early hobby shops. He started like everybody else with kits and parts and supplies. Al Kalmbach was kind enough to give us the plans for a different locomotive every month and he would give us the plans ahead of time that so we could buy the materials and wrap them in brown paper. When the magazine came out all the guys came rushing up for the rods and parts and boiler tubes because they would have to work them out on a lathe.
B: So most of the things that you were selling then were for kits made in the States?
N: They were made in the States, but they were strictly kits, you know, parts and so on.
B: And they were cottage industries?
N: Some were cottage industries, and in those days you could call both Varney and Mantua cottage industries easily, because that's where they worked.
B: Herb Walter, a legendary O gauger, the 'old man,' at one time worked for you?
N: Oh, the old man, you know its a funny thing you call him the old man, which probably sounds as if he was always an old man, he was never young. He always looked old. He worked for us. He sold behind the counter and he was a nice enough man that he projected an image --- we were all young you know and bouncing around there, and he was the solid type of a guy, and he just leaned on the counter with his pipe or whatever.
B: I knew him when he worked for Carmen Webster at Model Railroad Equipment Corp., and he looked a bit like William K. Walthers.
N: Yes, something like that and he had a lot of confidence that he passed on to people.
B: I can remember listening to him in Model Railroad Equipment Corp., and he would ask what gauge the customer was in and they would say HO and he said, "HO is for oats," he was primarily an O guager.
N: Yes, he liked O gauge.
B: And then he left you and went to work for Carmen Webster and was written up in many magazines.
N: I have a feeling he was working for Carmen while he was working for us.
B: He may have been moonlighting. I heard a rumor to that effect.
N: It didn't really much matter to us at that point. We were just moving fast.
B: That time in New York City, was Madison Hardware open?
N: Madison was a hardware store. Don't forget in those days hardware stores were the biggest customers of Lionel and Gilbert. Madison was in Lionel early, except their connection in Lionel was still not yet established. From the point of view of getting the parts of discontinued products.
B: Did you folks carry Lionel before the war?
N: Oh yes.
B: So you were dealing with them and Gilbert?
N: Yes, and Louis Marx, which is strange, because Louis Marx was strictly a toy oriented factory.
B: When did you move your store to Fifth Avenue?
N: We moved from 421 7th avenue., which was upstairs in the corner building, to the center of the block between 33rd and 34th right alongside Macy's. We occupied the second and third floors. We were above Bickfords Restaurant. We moved there first, and then we moved to Fifth Ave. in 1940-41.
B: I remember visiting the 5th Ave. store during the war. What did you folks do during the war? Could you get kits and things?
N: Yes, we got wood and cardboard and all surplus type of stuff, but we had a big problem with supplies. It was not easy because you couldn't get proper materials. Even the model airplanes we had had to use hardwood instead of balsa wood, because balsa wood was being used for rafts. So it was not fun. A lot of guys were making HO kits with lots of cardboard in them. That didn't suffer as much because they used hardwood for rods and floors. But it suffered from the point of view from castings, because we used all kinds of mixtures of so called lead, you know, which really fell apart.
B: You met J.L. Cowen on many occasions, didn't you?
N: Oh, yes. He thought that we were in such a different field, we were not the Christmas toy oriented people, for we talked to the customer and suppliers 365 days a year. So he thought that we were the people he should keep in touch with. Contrary to some of the people that he had working for him who didn't think much of anything about the hobby people. They were looking for the big buyers, Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, the catalog people and all that, and then General Electric, of course, GE had all these GE stores which were hardware and electrical stores.
B: Lionel prior to the war had a fairly decent representation in hardware stores?
N: They did. They were the biggest outlets and GE had their own stores which were all over the country. The hardware business generally, the hardware distributors, were their big customers.
B: Lionel had a tie with GE?
N: No. They didn't really have a tie but they were a good supplier to GE who sold a lot of trains.
B: GE also had, because you see it on boxes, a wholesale division?
N: They had a wholesale division to supply smaller stores, which were like what you would call franchises, to a certain degree, that was they could use the GE name and they bought their stuff from GE.
B: What about A.C. Gilbert? Did you have ties with him?
N: Yes, Gilbert was a kind of a guy who understood the home craftsmen a little more than Cowen did.
B: He had more educational toys.
N: He was a firm believer, he was the kind of a guy that when he said he first wanted to build up the muscle machine you know he was sincere about it. He really meant it. He felt that the kids should train their physical body and keep it in shape long before the fitness people came on the scene. And then after that he wanted to improve the mind of the young people so he started with this Erector business, although prior to that he was the agent for the British company.
B: Was he the agent of Meccano?
N: Yes, he was the agent for Meccano and he kind of knocked them off, not literally, but he knocked them off. In other words, he made his own rather than buy Meccano. But he could never mount a campaign with Meccano like he did with his own Erector business.
B: He was a promoter?
N: He was a promoter, but he had a reason and he was sincere about it. And he was no phony. He meant what he said. He though that these sets could build up mentality and build up those minds of the young people by doing this. And he was right. They could and he pursued that part of it. He didn't pursue it as a toy per se, he pursued it as a mental machine.
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