Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967) was a Manhattan born, American realist painter, who liked to capture both urban and rural scenes. His clever oils, watercolours, prints and etching were his personal reflections of modern American life.
Automats were considered an American phenomenon, but as the name might suggest, the origin of these cafés were Germanic. The first automat restaurant opened in Berlin, in 1895, the idea being that you simply feed your money into a glass-enclosed kiosk, remove a steaming plate of freshly made food, and carry it to your table. The name is literally just an abbreviation of ‘automatic’. The last automat closed in New York city in 1991 however the trend had pretty much died out by the late 1960s. But during their peak, automats served hundreds of thousands of customers every day.