The Pierce Arrow

Yes, another museum before we left Buffalo for points east.

The city has a small but very full Pierce Arrow Museum.  The factory was in Buffalo. 
Pierce Arrow started as a bicycle building firm, graduated to motorcycles, then to “high end” cars.  

 A Pierce Arrow started at $2300.00 in 1904, a lot of money at the time.

 They were a lot more expensive in the 1920s before the company went out of business in the 1930s

 

The centerpiece of the museum is the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed service station.  The station was never actually built.  Wright designed it and insisted that he be paid for each one built.  The oil company declined and that was the end of the story.  The one in the museum was build from the original plans.  Among other problems, the fuel tanks were on top of the station and a part of the roof.  Also there was dangerous leakage. The fuel was gravity fed and there was no shutoffs on the pumps. Apparently, leaking roofs, chimneys and such were not uncommon in FLW creations.  

The collection Corvettes had a special history but one we had no knowledge of.  Herb Caplan, known as the Jewish Kamakaize raced in The Kosher Corvette in the 1970s. 

 He was SCCA production champion in 1978.   Herb and his wife Alice lived in Sacramento.  We had no knowledge of them and Anna Lee had no knowledge that a local racer was racing in her favorite car.