Lot 454

Original Butte Montana Trolley Bendix Broadside

Estimate: $200 - $400

Bid Increments

Price Bid Increment
$0 $5
$50 $10
$100 $25
$500 $50
$1,000 $100
$2,000 $250
$5,000 $500
$10,000 $1,000
$25,000 $2,500
$100,000 $5,000
This lot includes an Original Butte Montana Trolley Bendix Broadside sign, circa 1937. Broadside says, "BENDIX automatic Home Laundry washes rinses damp-drys ALL AUTOMATICALLY! SAVES WATER... SAVES SOAP... SAVES YOU... COME IN... Let us demonstrate the modern work-free way to wash clothes cleaner, sweeter, whiter... THE BENDIX does it all... all by itself! The Hub Convenient Credit Terms BALTIMORE-CHARLES- FAYETTE" with an illustration of a young girl pictured looking into the viewing glass of a new washing machine. A very nice piece of Butte Montana history! Public transit in Butte started with horse-drawn railroad cars, but by 1888 steam-driven locomotives traveled around Butte and a cable car went up the hill on Main Street to Walkerville. William Clark and his Deer Lodge banking partner Samuel Larabie were the forces behind the street railway company. From 1889 to 1891, a competing company, the Metropolitan Railway, ran a line down Granite Street to Wyoming then south and east to South Butte and Meaderville, but that company was merged into the Butte Consolidated Street Railway Company in 1891, and all the lines were electrified about that time except the cable car to Walkerville. That last line was electrified in 1894. The city electric trolley system came to an end in 1937. Like many such operations across the country, they were abandoned in favor of bus lines, and the new owner, National City Lines, brought 24 modern buses to Butte from the East Coast. Many of the original tracks for the old street rail system still lie beneath uptown’s paved streets today. This Bendix advertisement trolley sign features the first domestic automatic washing machine with full wash, rinse and spin cycle. Bendix Home Appliances Inc (later known as the Bendix Corporation), was the first company to market such a technologically advanced washing machine for the home, coming fourteen years after being the first company to create the first electric automatic washing machine. Mass transit signage during that era was the most effective mode of marketing as both radio and television were in their infancy of usage. This Bendix trolley broadside sign is in good overall condition, some pencil markings on the face, edge creasing and peeling noted, soiling noted and left edges staining also noted. Ink colours are amazingly still bright, minimal age tanning and foxing noted. Approximate measurement is 11"W x 28"L.