Nice shot of one of my all-time favorite buses. Those folks are really dressed up for a ride on that Scenicruiser. Check out the boy with that red jacket; he looks like a junior waiter.
Here’s another angle of this scene:
But that sure doesn’t look like a bus station; looks like a school or such. Hmm; I wonder why they did that; there were some pretty nice Greyhound bus stations back then, which might seem surprising now.
Here’s a 1962 postcard of the Chicago Greyhound station, built in 1953. Wow; I must have missed that in my travels.
And this is the lobby of the Cleveland Greyhound station, built in 1948. Wow, again.
It was a different time, before airline deregulation in the 1970s changed everything.
That reminds me that Eugene’s Greyhound station closed down a couple of years ago (I took this shot in 2009). Now one just catches it at one of the major city bus stations. Makes sense, actually.
Here’s my CC on the classic Greyhound Scenicruiser:
Here’s another angle from the same photo shoot – both pictures were used as Greyhound postcards.
I like how the boy in the picture is dressed in a red jacket and a bowtie. I realize that folks used to dress up for vacations, but I’d hate to be the kid whose parents made him dress up like that!
Oh my; that’s almost scary.
I suspect that riders were dressed nicer in these promo shots than they were in real life.
No people actually dress with class not like trash up until the early 70s
You wore proper attire when you traveled you didn’t look like some disheveled bum in sweatpants and flip-flops.
I agree 1,000 % ! .
here in Sunny Southern California, land of fruits nuts and flakes, no one seems to care how they look anymore .
I get comments on my old beat up wingtip shoes when I’m working ~ I always wear steel toed and shanked shoes and used to keep them polished to a shine .
I see so many wearing pajamas and bedroom slippers out and about .
This is all quite separate from those who are simply filthy and don’t care or make a point of showing their “Plumber’s Cleavage” .
I don’t often dress up but I’m always neatly dressed .
-Nate
I started working for Greyhound in Miami FL at age 19. After 24 years I took a management by out in 1985. So sad to see where Greyhound is today.
I know what you mean I did the buy out also sad how things turned out. I can only imagine how bad the Hound is today
My Dad Bill Murray retired from Greyhound after 38 years accident free. The “Skinnycruiser”, as he called it, was his favorite to drive. He drove many charters from CA to the East Coast and back in them.
He would be appalled at what it has become.
I’m going to add that picture to the post. Thanks.
Great photos. When bus stations were almost train station quality. The Scenicrusier was possibly still in Greyhound service at least until the mid 1970s, as this pic from the collection of noted intercity bus photographer Paul A. Bateson may confirm. The photo is from January 1974 in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. Bateson has another photo from Atlanta, taken later in 1974. Buses in both pics, are in very good condition. Though both are in dated livery. Emergency exit(?) included at the rear, differentiates from earlier 1950s pics. St.Louis bus may not be active, as there are no plates at the front.
Many vintage US and mostly Canadian Greyhound pics here, at his Flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=60257481%40N04&view_all=1&text=Greyhound
According to Wikipedia, “200 Scenicruisers were still in service when Greyhound withdrew them around 1975.”
Atlanta, May 1st, 1974. Damaged nose, and missing trim on front door.
That Scenicruiser was converted to a combination passenger-freighter, where the rear third or more of the bus was blocked off and used just to haul freight. The access door is visible where the rear-most window used to be.
This is what was done to many or most of the Scenicruisers in their last years. I saw them come through Iowa City regularly like that. Express freight was a big business for Greyhound, in the days before Fed Ex and such.
It was a bit of an ignoble ending for these, but it was a good way to use them. I left Iowa City about the same time the last of these were decommissioned.
Thanks for that info! Explains why the door shows signs of being banged up.
“Express freight was a big business for Greyhound, in the days before Fed Ex and such.”
I remember this. My first office included a guy who was really into tech, and we used a multi-station mini-computer in the 80s (made by Fortune Systems) that was light years ahead of what most other small offices were using at the time. The downside was that when something went wrong with it the whole office went down. I remember making a couple of runs to the Greyhound station downtown to either drop off or pick up our computer on its way to/from a repair.
The Greyhound shipping service was still operating until late last year. https://shipgreyhound.azurewebsites.net/closure-information-2/closure-information
As was the case with many Greyhound bus buildings in larger metropolitan cities they started very nice as stations but ended up as terminals (as in illness). The original Minneapolis station on 1st Avenue is two story semicircular Building. That building would later be put on the map by Prince in the film Film Purple Rain. To my knowledge the building remains largely unchanged except for the addition of the stage, dancefloor, and it’s famous black exterior with stars painted of bands that played there. My usage of the Minneapolis Greyhound bus terminal started in 1981. By that time they already moved out of the original building years prior and into a “modern” purpose built one. It had a typical 80s midwest brown tiled blaise interior. However it did have a section for high rollers with four or five plastic formed chairs and a built-in black & white TV in each. It took a quarter to operate and ran for twenty minutes or so. On a couple occasions my sister and I got lucky and we watched a few minutes of poor reception TV after a high roller left before the time ran out. That and it had the loudest, most distorted PA system I’ve ever heard. The high sulfur diesel fumes those screaming Jimmies put out still make me nauseous to this day.
Los Angeles travelers also had the option of in-seat entertainment + ashtray, per this 1969 photograph.
I remember these too but not at bus stations. Maybe a train station or airport, I don’t recall where. Streaming color TV to your smartphone or tablet more convenient, but the coin-op TV sets may still have the edge on screen size.
When I was a kid (1950s) our town had a nice Greyhound depot that was part of a family restaurant which was nice for those having to wait. Later the depot was moved to a small store front as Greyhound declined. Then all bus service to our town stopped. History repeats. A few years back the city introduced a city bus program (financed by tax dollars). Used it a few times😔. Took two transfers and 45 minutes to go 5 miles and needed to visit chiropractor due to seats 💺 and rough ride over city streets. Car was in repair shop. Now when needed, I rent a car. We haven’t had a TAXI system for years 😕. Greyhounds always were comfortable and clean ways to TAKE the BUS and Leave the Driving to US! 😉 As for dressing up, people don’t even do that for church or funerals! As with SO much, we are on a slippery slope! 🤔
I love these shots. I suspect that Greyhound’s stations were modeled on train stations, which hearkened back to a concept perfected around 1900 or so. Until air travel really got going in the mid 60s, I think both trains and buses operated as complementary services, with buses either completing routes or serving smaller areas. Certainly after the 70s, air became the norm and both train and bus stations withered – especially outside of the large east coast cities.
Medium and big cities might have a dedicated Greyhound station, but small cities and towns probably didn’t. From the flagpole, I’m thinking that it’s some sort of municipal building, a city hall or county court.
My bus riding days began in the 70s and by that time the Greyhound stop in smaller towns was usually a gas station with a big parking lot, and the clerk could sell you 10 gallons of Super, a pack of Marlboros, and a Greyhound ticket.
I`m old enough to remember when people got dressed-or at last looked presentable when they traveled. On land, at sea,and in the air. That is all gone now except maybe for business class travelers.On the many cruise ship vacations I had,there was not even ONE dress up night for dinner, and the travelers on airlines like ‘Jet Blue’ all look like slobs.
Loving this! The bus as much as those stations.
The longest bus trip (coach trip, actually) I ever took was around 320 miles, according to Google Maps – 41 years later in time. So running an errand, in US terminology. I’m quite sure the coach was a Bova, rolling on DAF underpinnings.
Yes, something like this, a Bova Europa. Even its color comes close. (photo courtesy of Schepers Tours)
Well in the EU we used to have long coach routes too. As a student in the 90s I was a regular passenger on Eurolines’ now defunct Bratislava-Vienna-Liege-London route. Nothing like those fancy American stations though, you boarded on a side street near Vienna’s Landstraße U-Bahn/train station. London’s Victoria coach station was not a particularly inviting place back then either. It was 22 hours of an almost non-stop trip but I was young and impoverished.
Never sat in one, but I see these more and more. Trans-European Greyhound, sort of.
San Francisco Greyhound station exterior, 1940s, with cable car in foreground. Cable car line was decomissioned and now is operated by buses. Greyhound moved to Seventh St. and this location is now occupied by a Financial District office tower.
Based on the parking lot striping, I suspect that was not a bus station in the top photo. There is no visible marked accommodation for the buses.
Greyhound Canada was based in Calgary, and dominated long routes from Northern Ontario to the Pacific Ocean. Voyageur Colonial dominated from Southern Ontario eastward. Calgary Tower in the background, from July 1975. MCI MC-6 shown, beside a sweet Econoline.
Effective May 13, 2021, Greyhound Canada ceased all service across the country.
Since we’re on the subject of people dressing up for bus rides, here’s another group of Scenicruiser riders looking a bit dressier than travelers today:
The styles where fantastic I usually dress for work on Wednesday in suits and dresses from the 1960’s I have over forty.Like how we dress in public and travel in a dignified manor are gone because of costs greyhound does not want to maintain bus terminals on land which is attractive to developer for condos. The smartphone is the difference no more agents order your tickets on line and wait for your bus at publicly funded bus terminals
Riding dogs, I had a few dog trips in Aussie it was a convenient way to get around they towed single axle trailers with mail or parcels aboard or newspapers leaving major cities
When I was a kid, one of the neighbours was an interstate coach captain (as they called them then, here) for Australian Pacific tours. Not quite up there with an airline pilot, but a highly regarded occupation then – by my parents anyway. He was quite a character – guess you had to be.
The only experience I had of anything like this was the occasional school outing that took us outside the city limits, but a coach like this would have been several levels beyond.
Reminds me of the Oakland Greyhound Station. Beau Arts building circa 1926 on San Pablo Ave. Greyhound abandoned the building in 2021 which is no surprise seeing as how they were bought by a hedge fund known for destroying newspapers. Now a graffiti mess and broken into for rave underground venue. Yeah, I could live without them.
Looks so inviting wonder if they leave passengers places they don’t know anybody!
Wow ;
I began riding the Hound in the mid 1960’s, things weren’t great but by the 1990’s it was like a rolling freak circus .
I’d still ride it if ever I was in a pinch, it’ll beat walking / hitch hiking anyways .
-Nate
Do any of you remember Greyhound Package Service? You could send a parcel via Greyhound so that you received it rapidly. Sort of a latter-day Railway Express Agency. Then the service got poor. Attached (AHEM!) is what is purported to be a legitimate Greyhound ad. I’ll believe it if one of you vouches for having been the model!
I was going to say you don’t need to ‘remember’ Greyhound Shipping/Greyhound Package Express as it’s still a thing, but I see the service was discontinued only a half year ago. https://shipgreyhound.azurewebsites.net
It was good for shipping large items on the cheap but it was much slower than USPS, UPS, or FedEx, using extra space in the outdoor passenger luggage bins to ship items where slow speed wasn’t a problem. I thought it wasn’t a point-to-point parcel delivery service like UPS but rather shipped only from one Greyhound station to another; you needed to drive the package to the bus station and the recipient had to go to their local bus station to retrieve it. Apparently they did have arrangements with intercity transit companies to get the package the last few miles though, and also offered delivery directly to recipients as long as there was an always-open or scheduled place to receive the package.
That ad doesn’t look real – when is the dude ever the one with skimpy swimwear?
They are quite nice inside. My son and I rode one from Munich to Garmisch-Partenkirchen and back one weekend last summer.
Retired Greyhound Bus Driver
Creating high quality advertising photos were often day-long endeavors involving multiple “behind the scenes” people besides the photographer. It often involved staging different perspetive views, close-ups, telephoto shots, and different people.
For Greyhound to close down a terminal or parking area would be difficult, so it’s likely the advertising agency handling the photo shoot would select various locations that would resemble bus terminals. I suspect the first 2 shots were taken at a generic commercial location where they can control public access as well. Viewers will automatically assume it’s a beautiful terminal setting.
While not the same company size, in 1989 when my vintage limousine service needed an updated postcard photo, I wanted a large parking lot with an impressive building in the background. My first choice was a nearby Catholic boarding school headquarters building, a very elegant ivy covered brick edifice. However when I checked with the Dean and found out they wanted a $2.500 donation to the building fund, we went to my second choice, a large Unitarian church who were delighted to have their location featured, and welcomed us as long as we didn’t do it on a Sunday or if there was a Saturday wedding planned.
That photo shoot took all day and involved multiple drivers and a bucket truck to raise the photographer up in the air, but it’s one of my favorite shots of the fleet. And the choice of the church building added a nice level of upscale quality, without disclosing it’s religious background.