Looking for a new single taxi design to replace the jumble of models now on the street, the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s “Taxi of Tomorrow” competition is down to three finalists chosen from a larger group of contenders. One is based on a Nissan van, another on the Ford Transit Connect and the third one a model from Karsan, a Turkish company. Factors to be considered in the final decision, says the mayor’s office and the commission, are space, safety, energy efficiency and access.
Taxi buffs and historians, however, are also looking to past taxis as inspiration and asking for a touch of romance: a roof with a view.
Before Ford Crown Victorias, before Chevrolet Caprices, before even the venerated Checker, from the 1930s on many New York city taxis offered views through the roof. Sliding panels or glass skylights provided glimpses of the skyline.
Of the three contenders only Karsan has a view upward through what the company calls a “panoramic glass roof.”
The idea of a roof window is more than simply an idle aesthetic frill. When the Design Trust for Public Space held a series of public forums as part of Taxi 07, a celebration of the taxi centennial in 2007, many riders asked for windows in the roof. Taxi riders, it was reported, enjoyed the dramatic vistas of the city’s skyscrapers.
For tourists and immigrants, the taxi is often the gateway to the city. A taxi from the airport is often from which people see New York for the first time. It can occupy the same place once held by the ocean liner sailing past the Statue of Liberty, but, of course, less romantic. Opening views through the roof could improve the trip.
The first taxis, like the first cars, had far less substantial roofs than later ones. A 1928 taxi is in the film “Speedy,” starring Harold Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd plays a taxi driver whose passenger is Babe Ruth, played by himself. There’s even a walk on by Lou Gehrig and footage of a real game at Yankee Stadium. A mad-dash, sped-up sequence shot through the windshield offers invaluable documentation of what Manhattan streets looked like at the time.
Films of the 1930s show how Chrysler’s DeSoto and Plymouth lines dominated sales. In 1936, DeSoto delivered the largest single order of automobiles in the company’s history to New York City, reported The Associated Press. “The order consists of 2,200 new-type taxicabs for the Sunshine Radio System Inc.,” said the report. “The new taxicabs are designed to incorporate many of the comfort features of convertible model cars.” Among the features was “a sliding auxiliary roof which opens to permit the occupants of the cab to enjoy the open sunlight while riding.”
A taxi of this type is in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 film “Saboteur,” in which the hero takes a taxi to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to thwart a bomb plot.
Many cabs of this era also had romantic roof lamps. The Sunshine Radio System company was known for its dramatic Deco or Moderne roof light. According to a detailed history at Coachbuilt.com, the light was designed by Frances C. Cohen and made up of a sunburst, plated in chrome, attended by a pair of smaller illuminated sunbursts. Its jagged imagery suggested the crown of the Statue of Liberty.
The SkyView taxi, with a glass roof, was developed by James Waters, an innovative San Francisco dealer who sold taxis across the country and had a facility in Long Island City. The taxi became popular after 1941. The photographer Elliott Erwitt took a photo of Skyview taxis in New York in 1947. The image is included in his book “Snaps.”
Also, a passenger waves from the open roof of a bright red and yellow taxi in a poster for the 1953 comedy “Taxi,” with Dan Dailey and Constance Smith.
Saul Steinberg, who painted the elaborate art deco sunburst roof lamps of the Sunshine taxis in several covers of The New Yorker magazine, was a big fan of the SkyView and later lamented its passing. When he arrived in New York, he wrote, “The taxis, much bigger than they are now, were built precisely to be taxis: six, seven, even eight people could fit in them; there was a sliding panel in the roof, so that from inside you could see the tall skyscrapers and at night the moon — it was something beautiful, which, as often happens all of a sudden ended without anyone protesting.”
Some of the designers of candidates for the Taxi of Tomorrow appreciated the appeal of the skyscraper view. “Everybody in the Unicab gets a great view of the city,” said the designers of an entry to the competition that was equipped with a huge roof window. (It did not made the finals.) Although it existed only in drawings, Pentagram Design’s 2007 vision of a future taxi, which channeled the spirit of the old Checker, also offered a generously large roof window.
The TLC and the Design Trust are polling taxi riders on the sort of cab they want. (To encourage entries, there’s a prize, sponsored by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation: $5,000 worth of taxi rides.) Under a section asking riders to rate potential taxi improvements, one of the categories is a “sunroof for better views of the city.”
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