The first motorized taxis, at the turn of the 20th century, retained much of the look and feel of horse-drawn hansoms, including the privacy of having the driver outside the cab. A promising beginning.

During Prohibition, taxi drivers learned to cruise by the speakeasies instead of the hotels.

In 1922, the Fifth Avenue Association, as an act of “civic statesmanship,” presented seven of these bronze traffic-signal towers to the City of New York. They cost $125,000 and helped make that thoroughfare synonymous with elegance and wealth. Taxi drivers were required to wear a cap, jacket, and tie.

Sunroofs were standard in Europe by the time DeSoto brought out this version, in 1936. New Yorkers called them “sunshine cabs” because the largest fleet of them was operated by Sunshine-Radio Systems.

During the Red Scare of the 1950s, many cabdrivers looked suspiciously at any passengers who sounded too well educated. They would engage them in conversation to see if they were Commies or pinkos, and then give them a piece of their patriotic mind.

After the war, smaller, less expensive vehicles were allowed to serve as taxis, and gradually they replaced the five-passenger models. By the mid-1980s, the spacious Checker was just a memory. And this is where we are now—all dressed up and ready to get scrunched into the back seat of a vehicle that gives all the legroom to the driver. Only old-timers remember the roomy Checker cabs with two jump seats in the back.

Taxi Driving

An illustrated history of the New York taxicab recalls the glory days of early motorized cars and spacious Checkers

By Edward Sorel

In the fall of 1982, my wife, Nancy, and I moved back to New York City from Putnam County, where we had moved 16 years before. For me, the most unfortunate change was the disappearance of the roomy Checker taxis, which had two additional jump seats so five passengers could ride together. The company that made Checker cabs, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, went out of business in 1982. Now there were only two taxi models to choose from: uncomfortable and unbearable.

To protest this diminished comfort in transportation, I went to New York magazine and asked to do a short history of New York taxicabs to show what we had lost, and they gave me three pages for it. Years later, Richard Snow, the editor of American Heritage, asked me to do a more historical approach to the American taxicab. Here it is.

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Taxi Driving