Thursday, March 16, 2017

Atkinson Williams New Showroom – March 1956

Ford has long been a popular automobile brand for Lorainites, even before the plant was built on Baumhart Road in the late 1950s.

And here’s an ad for a Lorain Ford dealership of yesteryear, announcing its new home at 1530 Kansas Avenue. The dealership: Atkinson Williams. The very stylized ad shown above ran in the Lorain Journal on March 5, 1956.

Previously, the dealership had called 1735 Broadway home since the mid-1940s. (It had started out briefly at 1803 Broadway in the early 1940s.)

Atkinson Williams lasted until around 1963 when the Ford dealership took a new name: George May Ford. ( I mentioned its car wash a few days ago here on the blog.)

By the 1970s, the dealership was Buckeye Ford. A change in automobile brands took place at 1530 Kansas Avenue in the early 1980s, when O’Malley Dodge moved into the vacant business.

The former dealership building was eventually demolished and is now part of the Emerson Network Power Energy property at 1510 Kansas Avenue.

Nowadays, Lorain doesn’t even have a new car dealership in its city limits. You have to head to Amherst, Vermilion, Sheffield Village, Avon or Avon Lake.

However, a forlorn image of the former Kansas Avenue automobile dealership remains on Bing Maps – for now.

1 comment:

  1. After it was O'Malley Dodge, it became Janos Dodge sometime in the late 80's or early 90's.

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