Then and Now: Modern Automobile Schools
At their busiest, the school claimed it only took eight weeks to train a mechanic. Many early students were young men from farms who took the training then went back to farming.
Section:Gallery
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1918: E.M. Robinson and Claude H. Messer founded the Modern Automobile Schools in 1917 in an old welding shop, then built this school a year later. The school’s enrollment increased dramatically because of the military’s demand for mechanics during World War I. It stopped operating around 1925, though others like it continued in other cities.
Photo Courtesy Of Arloine Browne
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Present day: A Rosauers grocery store sits on the 1800 block of West Third Avenue, the former location of a World War I-era trade school that trained thousands of young soldiers to work on cars, trucks and armored vehicles for the military. The school closed down around 1925, but the building was used for automotive businesses and as a dairy plant before the Rosauers stowas built in 1949.
Jesse Tinsley The Spokesman-Review