Automat

A couple of years ago, a van pulled up in front of Steve Stollman's vintage goods store on Houston Street.

The van's driver, a scrap-metal dealer from Brooklyn, hauled out several cardboard boxes of what appeared to be vending machine parts and dropped them on Mr. Stollman's floor.

''How much do I owe you?'' Mr. Stollman recalls asking.

''Forget about it,'' the man replied.

The day before, the dealer had sold Mr. Stollman 85 rusted Automat machines for $100 apiece. Sorting through the mess of beveled glass and twisted metal, Mr. Stollman suddenly realized that he had the means to reconstruct what was once a great New York City tradition.

Indeed, for generations of New Yorkers, the Automat vending machine was the source of the archetypal workaday lunch. Throw your nickels in the slot, open the window, pull out the roast beef and the sweet potatoes, watch the coffee pour out of the lion-, dolphin- or duck-head spigot, sit down at a table with three other strangers, eat, bus your own tray and leave...

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