Recent COALs have covered a good number of Cadillac models from the ’60s and ’70s. All that Caddy content got me thinking that so far, I had yet to put together a vintage gallery from products of the “Standard of the World.” Let’s deal with that omission today with this series of snapshots, postcards, and promo shots of old Cadillac dealers.
As usual, locations have been noted where known. And of course, the prominent Casa de Cadillac in Sherman Oaks already has its own post at CC.
Nolan-Brown Motors, Miami, FL.
Darby Everest Cadillac (also featured in the lead pic), Oklahoma City, OK.
Casa de Cadillac, service waiting area, Sherman Oaks, CA.
Everett H. Corson, Hyannis, MA.
Brown-Harter Cadillac, Hempstead, NY.
C. J. Murray Cadillac, Sioux City, IA.
Cadillac Showroom in NY.
Les Bierk Cadillac, Elmhurst, IL.
Les Bierk Cadillac, used car lot, Elmhurst, IL.
Neil Lehr Cadillac, San Fernando, CA.
Buddy Braun Chevrolet-Cadillac, Ft. Myers, FL.
I don’t believe you cannot buy a new Cadillac here, but you can get some pretty good Mexican food and a margarita when in Houston.
Love the photos. Obviously, all Cadillac dealers were not in showy buildings. The one labeled “NY” is probably in Brooklyn and might be on Flatbush Avenue. However, we need a Brooklynite to determine this. I can say that the dealership is in Brooklyn because outside we see a trolley car passing by. Only Brooklyn retained trolley cars by this time in New York City. Check out the couple with the salesman at the Series 62 at Darby Everest Cadillac. That man looks the role of “I have prospered and now I am ready for my Cadillac – or second Cadillac.” The wife is aside of the salesman. Properly repositioned for lighting, these two are the ideal advertising photo for Cadillac.
I didn’t have a Cadillac showroom anywhere nearby as a kid, so they always seemed very exotic—a world I’d never know. Thanks for including the used-car side of things—the dealers surely wanted repeat sales and trade-ins, etc.
I agree. The Cadillac dealership near where I grew up was in an ordinary building, but it certainly had a hard-to-define exotic aura to it. Maybe it was the impeccable landscaping, or the showroom chandeliers, etc… but it was clearly classier (or stuffier, depending on your viewpoint) than, say, the Ford dealer next door.
The bottom photo…reminds me of when Don Draper bought his 1962 Coupe de Ville (Season 2, Ep 7).
First impressions:
– Darby Everest & Nolan-Brown look more like period downtown department stores than a car dealer. What goes on the 3rd or 4th levels?
– Brown Harter – that’s not a car dealer, that’s a mid-century suburban house – a small house at that
– C.J. Murray interior is elegant in a way no modern car dealer is; this would make a nice expensive restaurant
Les Bierk – today that building would be a small independent retailer in an older part of town selling offbeat goods to locals. As for their used-car lot – that’s a motel sign, not a car dealership sign
– Both the old and new Neill Lehr showrooms appear to be gone. The latter became the Picture Car Warehouse that rented old cars to filmmakers (maybe including that Pinto from earlier this week?) before being sold for redevelopment about 8 years ago.
– Impressively prescient for Baddy Braun (great name!) to use the current CADILLAC font on the showroom’s back wall rather than the script logo used in the 1960s
The Braun dealership was actually called Buddy Braun – though “Baddy” would have been a great name.
That was one of the very few combined Chevrolet-Cadillac dealerships, and I wonder if the showroom divider in the photo above separated the Chevys from the Cadillacs? Braun purchased an existing dealership (Hough Chevrolet-Cadillac) in 1967 and then built a new facility, which opened in ’69.
The new facility was considered huge, and state-of-the-art in 1969 – it was on 7 acres, had a full body shop, and a 24-hour service department. The building is still standing (Victory Layne Chevrolet) – and although the main building was reskinned in modern corporate Chevy architecture about 12 years ago, the whole site is laid out just as it was in 1969, so that proved to be a remarkably useful design.
One surviving feature that’s unmistakably ’60s are the round shade structures shown in the StreetView image below. I’m not quite sure of their purpose, but they’ve survived for 55 years!
We had (still do) “Kelly Chevrolet Cadillac” in my hometown. Now a days, they sell “Hyundai’s, Mitsubishi’s” too.
The dealership moved from the city to it’s current locartion, 3 miles south of the city, just about the year I was born. “60”.
The old one got torn down, replaced by a “mo dern, bank branch” in the late “1960’s”.
The Nolan-Brown building in Miami was interesting. It was built in 1928 as a Cadillac dealership (Nolan-Peeler at first) at 2044 Biscayne Blvd. Apparently, Biscayne Blvd. itself was built during the 1920s by the developers of Miami Shores, which is 10 mi. north of Miami. The developers wanted a prestigious boulevard to link their development with Miami’s downtown. Biscayne Blvd. became lined with art deco commercial buildings such as this one.
In the late 1970s, Nolan-Brown was sold to Norman Braman, a self-made millionaire and Philadelphia native who later became owner of the Philadelphia Eagles. Braman owned a Tampa Cadillac dealership at that point, but used his acquisition of Nolan-Brown to greatly expand his business. In the late 1990s, he demolished the 1920s building. The building was only 65 years old at that point, and few people in Miami considered it worth preserving.
The Braman dealerships are gigantic now, but there’s still a Braman Cadillac (and about a zillion other brands). But it all started with the acquisition of this art deco building.
Why is the sky so dark over the Nolan-Brown building?
High-contrast black and white film. The white building and clouds make the blue sky look dark.
We would occasionally stop at golf resort town Pinehurst NC going to and from Grandma’s in ’66-8 when I was 6-7, usually in a ’63 Impala wagon. I went to look at a used STS at the Cadillac/Chevrolet dealer there in 2013 and immediately knew I’d been there before, so we must have had car trouble. The original building has a crenellated top like a castle, but I can’t find a good picture of it online, and it’s been repainted a garish white so it won’t look its age.
Here you go. Opened in 1923.
Another view.
Agreed about the whitewash paint job it’s received since making it look garish. Never paint brick! When you paint brick you turn a surface that will last 100+ years with almost no maintenance into a surface that requires cleaning and repainting every 8 years or so it won’t start peeling off and expose the darker color beneath it.
Thanks. I think it had already been stuccoed when I saw it in the 60s.
What great pics to take me back in time.
Interesting note: I almost took a sales job at Casa De Cadillac in Sherman Oaks. But then I didn’t.
The building in the “Miami pic” looks like it belongs in the “northeast”. I’d venture as far “over” as “Miami OH”..lol
Love the “Eldo” in the final pic! (also in FL)
My dad bought his Cadillacs from Prentiss Cadillac in Wyandotte Mich. I have the placque they gave him thanking him for his business. He retired in 1962 bought the 62 then 63,64,65,67 and 1968 before he died.
I just love that black and white nocturnal photo of Darby-Everest Cadillac. Gives it a cool ‘film noir’ look that would seem right at home in a 40-59`s made crime film.
Don Lee Cadillac in San Francisco, 1912 photo.
Don Lee was a major Los Angeles car dealer, custom body shop and radio broadcaster. He expanded to San Francisco and in 1912, built this Cadillac dealership, which included studios for his AM radio station KFRC. He had bought the automotive design and body business of Jaocb Earl, renaming it Don Lee Coach & Body Works when the chief stylist, Jacob Earl’s son Harley (yes, THAT Harley Earl) left to join General Motors.
Don Lee became the exclusive West Coast distributor of Cadillac but also functioned as a Cadillac retail dealer.
In 1934, Don Lee died. His distributorship was taken over by the Cadillac Motor Car Division of General Motors. Cadillac and Lee’s son Tommy ran it for decades, opening a branch in the Stonestown shopping center. After Tommy’s death, Cadillac divested itself of the operation, which was reorganized as two separate dealerships, Kohlenberg Cadillac in the 1921 facility, and Fazackerly Cadillac in Stonestown.
The 1921 structure survives today. The newer Stonestown building was demolished and its location is now a Citibank and Pet Food Express. KFRC was sold in 2005.
The Don Lee Cadillac building was later George Olsen Cadillac, and later became a cinema, which survives today. They’ve still kept the original Cadillac coat of arms at the entrance. https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/8114