I didn’t grow up in the frenzy and fascination of New York, but it seems written in stone that I didn’t really start to live until after I got there. It was the winter of 1960 and from the dirt and ...

For much of the 20th century the Automat was a destination restaurant – a gleaming, coin-operated self-service eatery, whose chrome doors opened to reveal comfort foods to match Mom's cooking.

The director Lisa Hurwitz discusses the history of the Horn & Hardart chain of restaurants, which offered comfort food in coin-operated glass boxes. By Nicolas Rapold What do Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ...

The first Automat offered Philadelphians sanitary, standardized food in a dignified, even ornate, environment when it opened in 1902. Scan of contemporary postcard View Slideshow 1902: Joe Horn and ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. An institution for nearly a century, the Automat – self-service restaurants operated by Horn & Hardart, in which food items were ...

1902: Joe Horn and Frank Hardart open the Automat at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. It's America's first coin-operated cafeteria. Customers would put nickels into slots, turn a knob and open a ...