Crowd surrounding Ardsley automobile and driver

View of crowd surrounding Ardsley automobile and driver; boy holds banner reading: "Sole survivor, you can't stop 'em from running, the Ardsley car." Sign on building: "Ardsley Motor Car." Printed on back: "Late April 1906. The New Yorkers captured here by the camera of F. Ed. Spooner have gathered to marvel at a charred but nowise daunted Ardsley -- 'sole survivor,' we are told, of an otherwise disastrous fire. A short four months before, an Ardsley better-groomed had earned attention at the New York auto show, not for its $3,500 price tag but for its float-feed, spray type carburetor. A measure of acclaim thus came to the car after one short year of life, the start of which had been recorded in a January, 1905 issue of the magazine Automobile: 'W.S. Howard, of Yonkers, N.Y., has designed a 30-35 horsepower touring car ... assembled it with the aid of ridiculously small equipment, considering the work turned out ...' An early advertisement carried this cryptic headline: 'The foreign type car without the usual improvements.' To those who read on it was explained that the car was 'quiet, powerful and dignified,' without styling or engineering excesses. The bannered boast, 'You can't stop them from running,' applied unfortunately only to the car. The company stopped running early in 1907. The Ardsley car was sole survivor of a disastrous fire in New York City in late April, 1906. See Auto Facts, November, 1954, for more details." Handwritten on back: "Ardsley."