Ornamental Store Front
A highly ornamental design for a store front for the Melville Shoe Corporation of New York. The inventor, Ward Melville, ran the shoe company and was involved in many philanthropic projects in New York. 1928

Sandwich Booth
An ornamental design for a sandwich booth featuring a burger roof and pickle supports. 1930

Chef building
A design for a building in the likeness of a chef, where the teeth are windows. 1930

Wise Shoes
A design for a store front assigned to Wise Shoes, Inc. of New York. 1930

Store front
An ornamental design for a store front, featuring a large number of display windows. 1930

Pig Parlor
A design for a store front or the like. We're not sure what the pig has to do with the design. This could easily be turned into a goat parlor, chicken parlor, ... 1931

Standard Oil gas station
A service station design for Standard Oil Company. 1935

Service building
A service building design for the  J. G. Brill Company. The company made streetcars, railroad cars and buses.  1932

Miniature refreshment bar
A refreshment bar that would fit in at a Masonic lodge. 1937

Beverage service counter
An ornamental design for a service counter. In the center sits a scale model that looks like the U.S. Capitol. 1939

Sterling Streamliner diner
A design for the famous Sterling Streamliner diners. Sterling bought the design from Roland L. Stickney in 1939. Several Streamliners are still in use and examples can be seen here and here. A Streamliner now sitting in Rhode Island was the first diner to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 1939

Callaway vacation home
A second view of W. C. Callaway's design for an octagonal vacation house. Another view of this house can be seen here. 1940

Callaway vacation house
A design for an octagonal vacation house with plenty of windows. Another view of this house can be seen here. 1940

Thomas Edison patents
We've added a new collection of patents by Thomas Edison. The first gallery covers 48 patents issued from 1869 to 1875.

Store front with clock
An art deco facade with time and temperature. 1940

Train restaurant
A railroad design for a restaurant assigned to the J.B. Judkins Company. 1940

Service station
A piano shaped design for a gas station with what appears to be a tiny bay. 1941

A holiday break
We're taking a Thanksgiving holiday break. But we don't want to leave you empty-handed, so we recommend you head over to the gallery of vintage bathroom design and find out how to pimp your potty 50s style. Anyone who is a fan of pink-pastel toilets (and aren't we all), will love this place. After our long, tryptophan-induced sleep we'll be back with more patents than ever.

Rapattoni car body
A rhino-nosed design for an automobile body. 1921

Oregon tread
An ornamental tread design for automobile tires. 1927

Dog automobile fender
An ornamental design for bumper hounds. The design was patented by the founders of Quickie Manufacturing Corp., makers of household cleaning products. 1927

Fender
A car front fender design assigned to Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia. 1928

Berman flying car
Gustave Berman of Holyoke, Massachusetts, patented this design for a flying car. 1929

Breer design
A design for an automobile assigned to the Chrysler Corporation by famed engineer Carl Breer. 1935

Breer automobile
A design for an automobile assigned to the Chrysler Corporation by famed engineer Carl Breer. 1935

Vehicle body
"Be it known that I, Giuseppe Russo, a subject of the King of Italy (having declared his intentions of becoming a citizen of the United States), and a resident of the city of New York . . . have invented a new, original and ornamental Design for a Vehicle Body." 1938

Steering wheel
A steering wheel for a "motor vehicle or the like." 1939

Dinette trailer
A portable diner for six tiny people. 1949

Automobile hood
Design for a combined automobile hood, radiator and head lamps. 1949

Fender ornament
Providing a prominent modern style for your automobile.  1951

Vendor vehicle
A vehicle for use by merchants, from the designer of the "ice cream car." 1951

Vanity
An ornamental design for an automobile vanity case. 1951

Exhaust pipe
An airfoil-influenced design for an automobile tailpipe. This looks like it could leave a wake in hot asphalt. 1953

Toy airplane
A rubber band-powered airplane with landing gear. 1930

Tinker train
A design for a child's train by Tinker Toy inventor and founder Charles Hamilton Pajeau. 1924

Aerial toy
Wings, spinner and a propeller. It's the uber-wind toy. 1924

Toy pool
A design for a play pool with seat and shower, assigned to the Hettrick Manufacturing Company of Toledo, Ohio. 1938

Toy animal figure
An ornamental design for a toy elephant by sculptor Peter Ganine. Ganine was born in Russian, studied at the Corcoran gallery in Washington, D.C. and settled in Los Angeles. 1950

Toy figure for cats
A design patent for a stuffed fish toy for cats. 1950

Toy boat
A design for a toy racing boat assigned to the Champion Plastics Corporation of New York. 1950

Tot's scooter-stroller
A toy horse scooter that can be pushed by a parent or foot-propelled by the tot. 1951

Splinter raft
A "float boat for children." Children can be safely strapped in and towed by a line attached to the bow. 1952

Horse skates
A nice roller skate design for the junior jockey. 1953

Clark's Twin T-Ps
The original Twin T-Ps Restaurant was opened in Seattle in 1937. Herman Olson, who registered this design for a "resort building", operated the original Twin T-P. In 1942 Walter Clark bought the business and established a chain of 22 restaurants. Col. Harland Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, worked on his Original Recipe in the Twin T-Ps kitchen. Learn more about the restaurant and see some photos at HistoryLink. 1937

Decorative store front
A highly-decorative design for a store front, perhaps for selling jewelry. 1931

Store front
This store front design is wonderful. You can imagine it full of merchandise and passersby stopping to take a look. 1928

Drink stand
Why couldn't I have been born a Centaur? This unfortunate design affixes a man's head and arms to an orange in the hope of selling juice. 1928

Airplane hangar
A new and ornamental design for an airplane hangar. The year this patent was issued Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. 1928

Portable refreshment booth
This doesn't look too portable, but that's what the patent for this churn says. 1927

Steam motive power
"It is an object of the invention to provide a novel motive power unit ... that is self-propelled and complete itself, and is comparatively simple in its construction and arrangement." 1946