In the collection at the Niagara History Center, there is a copy of a sepia colored photo showing a car dealership that was located in the former Bronson Carriage Company at North Transit and Park Avenue (where 7-Eleven is now). The first Ira Bronson had died in 1891 and the business was continued by his son, Ira A. He, in turn, brought his son, Sylvester Marvin, into the company in 1893. In 1904, the Bronsons began building car bodies for Covert Motors in Lockport. Father and son worked together until 1910, when Sylvester started an auto repair shop out of his home on West Avenue. Ira A. continued in the carriage business until 1916 when he retired. Sylvester moved his auto repair business into the old carriage factory and continued there until 1923. The building was used for a few years as a glove factory and in 1929 it became the Park Hotel, which later burned down in 1972. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the hotel rented out its storefronts to other businesses.
During a very short window in the history of the building, W. E. Pettit sold Marmon Roosevelt cars out of a first-floor storefront space. Wyllys Ethan Pettit was born in Lockport in 1880. There was a little confusion in tracking him down, as he usually went by W. E., and not Wyllys. There was also Walter E. Pettit, an insurance broker originally from Somerset, who also sometimes went by W. E. The two men were contemporaries, being only three years apart in age; however, Walter E. passed away in 1936 at the age of 58, and Wyllys E. was 95 when in died in 1975. A clear relationship between the two men could not be established, but they may have been distant cousins.
Wyllys E. Pettit apparently had a good singing voice. As a young man, his name was often featured in the Lockport Journal, and later the Union-Sun & Journal, appearing in recitals, musicals and church choirs. In 1903, Pettit married Emma Comfort of Newfane and the couple lived in the Ridgewood area in the town of Lockport. Like the other W. E. Pettit, Wyllys also worked as an insurance agent in the 1910s and early 1920s. In the middle of that decade, Pettit was in partnership with Charles Beers, who had a Chevrolet dealership, but within a few years, he had his own business, Lockport Oldsmobile Co., at 3 Park Avenue in the old Bronson Carriage Company building. This was the time when many automobile dealerships were opening up as the public was eager to trade their horse and carriage for a new, faster, more convenient means of transportation. In 1929, Pettit traded his Oldsmobile business for a Marmon car dealership.
The Nordyke Marmon Car Company of Indiana had its start in 1902 and was a major brand in the early days of car manufacturing in the first three decades of the 20th century. The company produced the first automobile with a V-16 engine, aluminum body and standard rearview mirrors on all its models. The Marmon Model 32, driven by Ray Harroun, won the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911 (speed was not listed). The business reorganized in 1926 as the Marmon Car Company. Both of these companies produced what were considered luxury cars, which sold well during the booming years of the Roaring 20s. By the end of that decade, even before the stock market crash in October of 1929, the economy was cooling off and Marmon introduced a new car with a straight 8-cylinder engine priced just under $1,000, called “The Roosevelt,” after the late President Theodore Roosevelt. It was advertised as “providing beauty and style heretofore unknown at or near that price.” The car was targeted at the middle-class driver who wanted a “luxury” car at an affordable price. The popularity of the late President was also part of the sell, with an image of TR accompanying the ads. Whether this was sanctioned by Roosevelt’s family is unknown. At the time, his much younger cousin, Franklin, was governor of New York. Several newspapers outside of Western New York also advertised the “Marmon-Roosevelt Program of History and Music” to be broadcast on a local radio station on a certain day and time. It couldn’t be ascertained if the program aired in Lockport, Niagara Falls or Buffalo.
Now back to Wyllys E. Pettit in Lockport. Pettit heavily promoted the Marmon Roosevelt in the spring of 1929. Six months later, the stock market crashed and although Pettit continued to sell the car at 3 Park Avenue through 1930, by 1931, used Marmon Roosevelts were showing up in the classifieds advertised for half their original value. Three years later, a 1929 Marmon Roosevelt sold for $99. Pettit gave up his car dealership in the early 1930s and again became an insurance agent. He stayed in Lockport until the mid-1950s when he moved to Florida and then later to North Carolina, where he died in 1975.
The Park Hotel eventually incorporated several of its storefronts into restaurants and lounges for the hotel. The New Radio Lunch, also in the picture, opened in 1928, as a second location of the Radio Lunch at 5 Locust Street, which had opened in the early 1920s. When the “new” one closed in 1931, the original continued on Locust Street until the Lincoln Building fire of April 14, 1950, destroyed it.