BROOKLINE, Mass. There are many reasons to visit the Larz Anderson Auto Museum but certainly a key one is to see its collection of completely unrestored cars from the turn of the last century.

In other words, from the very first days of the automobile.

The collection — known as America’s oldest car collection and the oldest collection of one-owner cars in the world — was assembled by Larz Anderson who was born in Paris in 1866 to a wealthy American family from Cincinnati.

After graduating from Harvard, he served in the U.S. Embassy in Rome where he met Isabel Weld Perkins who had inherited an immense fortune — she was at one time the richest woman in the world — from her maternal grandfather who had made his money from clipper ships and railroad companies.

They married in 1897 and spent a life devoted to luxury, traveling widely and building a house, extensive gardens and a carriage house on their 64-acre estate in Brookline. The house and gardens are gone, but the estate is now a public park with the Larz Anderson Auto Museum housed in the old carriage house at its center.

The Andersons’ wealth allowed them to not only buy a new car every year at a time when they were very expensive — an 1899 Winton Single Cylinder, 4 Horsepower Horseless Carriage, for example, cost $1,000 — but also to store them after they became obsolete in the enormous carriage house they had built in the style of the Chateau de Chaumont in the Loire Valley.

Starting with the 1899 Winton, the museum owns 14 cars from the Andersons’ original collection of 32 cars.

The 1901 Winton Heavy Racer looks more like a car than a horseless carriage in that it has a massive hood. A version of the car became famous by becoming the first car to cross the United States.

Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson completed the journey from San Francisco to New York City in 1903. There were only 150 miles of paved roads at the time, no gas stations and limited maps.

He made the journey, which had became a sensation known as “Horatio’s Drive” by the time he arrived about three months later, with a friend and a bulldog named Bud. All three wore goggles to keep the dust from their eyes.

“(Horatio’s Drive) put the automobile on the map as a legitimate replacement for the horse-drawn carriage,” said the musuem’s deputy and acting director Tyler Burns, noting that Jackson had parts made for him by blacksmiths’ shops along the way to replace those that broke.

The car has solid rubber tires, as do the vintage bicycles that sit next to it in one corner of the lower level of the carriage house. They include an 1865 Boneshaker with wooden wheels and steel rims, so called for its discomfort, as well as a unique three-wheeler with one large wheel on one side and two smaller wheels on the other and a number of Penny-Farthings, or High Wheelers.

Round the corner sits a 1908 Bailey Electric car with a single backseat set behind the hooded carriage. “The in-law seat,” said Tyler wryly, although it was more likely for a footman.

A number of cars are French, including a 1900 Rochet-Schneider which is unusual in that “the passenger seat is in front of the steering wheel, which wasn’t going to last,” Tyler said.

The 1903 Gardner-Serpollet is steam driven while the 1906 CGV (Charron, Girardot et Voigt) is the gem of the collection, according to Burns.

The massive CGV — the chassis alone cost $11,000 — is a bus-like tourer that includes plenty of storage space on top for gear while the enclosed carriage compartment behind the driver has seats that fold down into beds and even a lavatory bowl hidden under one seat that is linked to a holding tank.

The collection of Anderson cars is not perhaps beautiful to the untrained eye. Drab browns and blacks dominate the color palette with signs of wear and tear everywhere. But they are absolutely original and to anyone interested in the early history of one of the most influential inventions of the 20th century, they are the equivalent of historical documents.

The cars remained parked away from view in the carriage house until 1927 when the Andersons became aware they had a collection of “ancient” cars and opened the carriage house for tours. Larz Anderson died in 1937, but Isabel’s interest in cars continued and she even bought a 1948 Ford Super Deluxe Wagon in the year she died. The Andersons did not have children and Isabel bequeathed the entire estate to the Town of Brookline.

The Veteran Motor Car Club of America (VMCCA) opened the Antique Auto Museum at Larz Anderson Park in October 1949 with 15 Anderson automobiles, 24 carriages, and six sleighs and hosted regular car events.

The museum, which is no longer directly associated with the Veteran Motor Club, is now a nonprofit that hosts events such as the Brookline Summer Festival and Bonhams’ International Motor Auction in the fall, rents out space for special occasions such as weddings and puts on some 20 events through the summer dedicated to certain marques or origins (including Cadillac Day, Tutto Italiano and Studebaker Day). It also reconditions cars in a small workshop and sells donor cars.

Burns pointed out a rare 1974 Volkswagen SP2 that was built in Brazil and donated to the museum by a member. He said he had sold it to a German buyer, but with the weakness of the dollar attracting European buyers, it would be at least a month before he could get it on a ship.

Burns is a recent appointment by the board headed by Michael Landoli that oversees the museum and together they are working on a number of renovations and innovations. The lower level of the carriage house has recently been cleared and a number of cars that were in storage in Gardner, Mass., have been brought in as exhibits. They have also overseen the opening of a cafeteria and plan to expand the gift shop.

And they plan to expand on the number of shows and rotating exhibitions that the museum is known for. For example, it is in the middle of a series of panel discussions that address the collectible car market, from buying and selling to memorabilia to vintage race cars.

And the current exhibit, “Design, Performance, Passion: The Art of Italian Style,” is dedicated to the role of design in Italian life, with Ferraris, Maseratis, Alfa-Romeos and other famed Italian high-performance supercars, plus motorbikes and even Moschino handbags, on display.

For more information, go to:

www.larzanderson.org

You can see aslideshowandmultimediapresentationfromthecollectonattheLarzAndersonAutoMuseumatprojocars.com

pelsworth@projo.com