J.T. Cantrell & Company

Station wagons, also known as depot wagons or depot hacks, give an accurate depiction of the body style and function of the vehicle they represent. Horse-drawn wagons were used to deliver people to train stations and depots before the invention of the motor car. Almost immediately upon its invention, the automobile would see commercial application for businesses that needed to move products, goods, and people. Station wagons would shuttle people and their luggage primarily between hotels and train stations, but it was soon realized that they could also be useful to transport goods and larger families and their belongings much easier than a less spacious car.

One of the most prolific builders of station wagon bodies was J.T. Cantrell & Company of Huntington, Long Island, New York. As a successful iron worker, carriage maker, and boat designer and builder, Joseph T. Cantrell adapted his business and skills to become a premier designer and “maker of Suburban bodies,” which we now view as the wooden-bodied station wagon. In all the company’s advertising up through the early 1930s, it never