An eye-catching vintage automobile made its Henry Morrison Flagler Museum debut cruising around the grounds during the institution’s Easter egg hunt on April 4.
The “Red Bug” automobile is the newest item in the museum’s historic collection, a remnant of the early automobiles that had taken the island by storm during the 1910s and Roaring ’20s.
“This remarkable gift adds an important and engaging dimension to the museum’s interpretation of daily life in early Palm Beach,” Amanda Skier, director and CEO of the Flagler Museum said in a statement about vehicle.
The Red Bug was donated by Palm Beacher Diana S. Wister and her family. The automobile had been in Wister’s family since it was first purchased by her grandparents, Ethel Dorrance, and her husband, John T. Dorrance, who invented condensed soup and founded the Campbell Soup Company. The Red Bug was the Dorrances’ go-to way of getting around town when they visited the island in the early 1920s.
The Red Bug stayed in the family for five-generations, until longtime Palm Beacher Pauline Pitt, former chair of the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, read a Palm Beach Daily News article about the island’s short-lived obsession with the vehicle.
She connected the museum with Wister, leading to the family’s donation.
“This motorized vehicle has been enjoyed by five generations of the Dorrance family,” said Wister. “We are honored to return this Red Bug to its original home and are thrilled to know it will be displayed at the wonderful and historic Flagler Museum to be enjoyed by all its visitors.”
Additionally, to ensure the vehicle would remain operational for museum attendees, Wister established an endowment to support the Red Bug’s maintenance.
“We are deeply grateful to Ms. Wister and her family for preserving this piece of history and for her forward-thinking support of its future stewardship,” Skier said.
Reminiscent of a go-kart, the Red Bug was built with a narrow slatted non-spring frame attached to four bicycle-like wheels. It also sports two bucket seats, a steering wheel and a small motor. The vehicles were capable of traveling up to 25 miles per hour.
Red Bugs were often seen at The Breakers, the oceanfront hotel built by railroad-and-hotel tycoon Henry M. Flagler, whose Gilded Age mansion is the home of the Flagler Museum. According to lore, a visitor driving one of the vehicles “dodged people and pilasters” in the hotel lobby before coming to a stop in front of the resort’s manager.
The vehicles were so in fashion that a formally organized Red Bug race occurred on the Lake Trail in 1919.
References to the vehicles can be found in editions of the Palm Beach Post and Palm Beach Daily News from the era, with one columnist noting in June 1918, “What would the picnic be without the red bug?”
Red Bugs were even seen in a 20th Century Fox newsreel from 1920 about life on the island, in which Palm Beach visitors and Everglades Club members alike were seen driving the vehicles on the private club’s grounds.
Previous reporting by M.M. Cloutier contributed to this story.
Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at dlasa@pbdailynews.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Vintage ‘Red Bug’ automobile donated to Palm Beach’s Flagler Museum
Reporting by Diego Diaz Lasa, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
