— what they're saying at the counter —
Glass & brass, hot food & cold milk, all by the turn of a key. Photographs from the company's 1930 promotional folio, displayed here for the curious.
A polished brushed-chrome wall stretches the full length of a Manhattan storefront, sixteen brass-framed windows arranged in tidy ranks of four. Each pane is etched with the bill of fare in fine art-deco script. Behind every door, a small lamp burns warmly, illuminating the food set within — a slice of cherry pie, a porcelain cup of coffee, a sandwich on rye. The sidewalk reflects light from the chrome; passersby slow involuntarily, pulling their gloves off.
A close study of one window's brass hardware. A narrow vertical slot, polished to a mirror sheen, sits above a small brass key the size of a thumbnail. A thumb appears in frame, just lowering a nickel into the slot — the coin is caught mid-fall, edge-on, catching the light. Above the slot, in raised relief: ½ DIME · PIE · TURN KEY ONCE.
Four office girls share a marble-topped table in the long dining room. One has just lifted the lid from a dish of beef stew; steam rises in a clean, vertical plume. A businessman two tables over reads the evening paper, a sandwich at his elbow. A boy of perhaps nine, brought by his mother, holds a nickel between thumb and forefinger and stares at the wall of windows with frank delight. No waiter is visible. No waiter is needed.
A cutaway engineer's diagram, drawn in deco line-work, showing the kitchen behind the wall. White-aproned cooks slide each finished dish into a numbered cubby; the cubby rotates on a vertical carousel; when emptied from the customer side, the carousel turns, and a new identical dish appears in the window before the diner has stepped two paces away. Annotations read: CAROUSEL · DUMBWAITER LINK · STEAM COIL · LIGHT.