MOUNT VERNON — Browsing the Knox Time collection of photographs on Facebook, I noticed a picture that had been posted asking for estimations of the date.
The picture featured a young man with his bicycle in front of a painted window identifying the Mount Vernon Post Office. But it’s not the current post office, a structure built during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The first post office for the newly established town was started in 1809. Postmaster Gilman Bryant was also the entire roster of employees for this early operation, which was located in Bryant’s general store at the corner of South Main and Gambier Streets.
Over the years, the post office drifted from store to store as different shopkeeps took on the job of postmaster. Later, it stayed for longer periods in various other host buildings.
In 1897, the post office moved into the Masonic Temple Building on the square, where it remained for almost 20 years. From 1916 until the current structure was built, the office was at the intersection of West Gambier Street and Plum Alley, at the rear of the building which held the A. A. Dowds Dry Goods Company, which later moved and became the Dowds-Rudin store.
Later, a new building was built on this original site, becoming the Kresge Store.
So we know some of the potential earlier locations. This picture must date from before 1933, when the new post office opened at the corner of West High and Mulberry.
What about that bike? Guesses on Knox Time chimed in with everything from the 1890s to the 1950s. The lamp on the front of the bike, though, is a carbide lamp, the sort of lamp that was popular before battery-operated lamps.
Carbide lamps fell out of favor in the United States following a mining explosion in 1932 caused by the lamps, which actually burned acetylene gas emitted by calcium carbide pellets chemically reacting with water. That confirms this picture as almost certainly preceding the 1930s.
Additionally, many bicycles made from 1920 onward begin to feature more curving framework, reflecting the Art Deco style of the times. High speed bicycles, however, keep much of this classic design today.
The young man in this photo may have needed to move fast, and this bike would do it. But by the 1930s, even most straight framed bikes had curved supports. Again, that pushes this back into the 1920s, at least.
Perusing vintage bicycles at length proves that it’s hard to say for sure what the bicycle’s make is. The vehicle is definitely in the style of the popular Pierce Bicycles that were made in Buffalo, New York, from around 1890 to 1930. That was the company who started an even more successful branch building Pierce-Arrow automobiles.
Their vintage bikes are often mistakenly identified on the Internet as “Pierce-Arrow” bikes, but as far as I could determine, there never was any such thing. The Pierce bicycle logo did feature an arrow, but only the automobiles were specifically branded “Pierce-Arrow.”
But this bicycle doesn’t look exactly like any of the Pierces I examined on an admittedly limited search of sources. A number of other companies made knock-offs of the Pierce bikes. One such company was Racycle (“Race-cycle,” get it?) which was based in Middletown, Ohio.
While their design in the early 1900s was similar to Pierce, they featured an unusually large gear to operate the chain, which doesn’t match this bike. Another company, Triumph, made a similar bike, which they then used as the basic frame for their first motocycles, which became their main activity. The bicycles named after and made in Shelby, Ohio, are in the same general mode.
Examination of this bicycle’s crank gear led me to the closest match I could find: Ranger, a bicycle manufacturer in Chicago, Illinois. Their bikes featured similar diamond-shaped spokes on the gear that we see in this photo. But it’s not the same. And perusal of literally hundreds of vintage cranks did not turn up one identical to what is seen in this photo.
A local specialty?
Very possible. It’s also possible that this young man mixed and matched parts to create his perfect bike. If there are any bicycle experts out there who wish to chime in, please do.
I know little about vintage bicycles and am purely approaching this as a learning exercise.
In the end, the combination of carbide lamp, early frame style, and the style of the young man’s boots, trousers, shirt, and hat lead me to estimate that this photograph dates from between 1900 and 1920. But the brick seen on this post office building does not match the grand stone of the Masonic Temple building, where the post office was from 1897 to 1916.
Additionally, look closely at the reflections in the window. You don’t see the trees of Public Square, you see the reflection of another building across the street, in this case, most likely the Mount Vernon Candy Kitchen, a dark brick building with white trim.
Therefore, I propose that the most accurate date we can estimate for this picture is 1916 to 1920, and that it was taken in front of the post office located on the corner of West Gambier Street and Plum Alley, in the rear of the Dowds Dry Goods store, ironically in more or less the same spot where Gilman Bryant had Mount Vernon’s original post office just over 100 years earlier.
