Louis Bergdoll’s Bleriot XI
In the Dutchess County, New York Town of Red Hook, on the eastern side of the Hudson River, is the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, a wonderful museum of vintage airplanes of the early decades of the 20th Century. For a while, it was home to Louis Bergdoll’s 1909 Bleriot XI airplane.
Aviator and aviation mechanic Cole Palen organized the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, and in the early 1960s (about 1963), Palen heard from his fellow aviation enthusiasts that the Bergdoll Bleriot was still sitting in a barn on the Bergdoll country estate in Broomall, Pennsylvania. Through Hamilton “Dick” Upshur of West Chester, Pennsylvania (Historical Car Club of Pennsylvania member), Palen arranged to see the old Bleriot through Seth Pancoast, Jr. of Broomall. Seth lived near the Bergdoll’s farm, and his father had been a chauffeur for the Bergdoll family. Then, reportedly through Erwin Bergdoll’s son, Erwin Jr., Palen purchased the Bleriot for an undetermined amount of cash. At the same time, Pancoast purchased an old Hudson automobile that was also rotting away in the Bergdoll barn, a separate building from where Grover’s airplane and Erwin’s race car had been stored years earlier. The production year and model of the Hudson car are not understood.
It’s another case of the Bergdolls’ historical artifacts being removed from or sold out of the family under dubious circumstances.
Palen arrived at the Bergdoll farm with a vintage 1950s sedan and a U-Haul trailer attached to a bumper hitch on the car. He folded the large wings of the Bleriot and slid the airplane into the trailer with the plane’s tail projecting forward above the top of the car. It must have appeared as a spectacle as he drove it across the Delaware and Hudson Rivers to reach the Aerodrome in the lower Hudson Valley of New York State.
Palen restored the Bergdoll Bleriot to “displayable condition” but he reported that it was never flown again (Palen had another Bleriot XI at the Aerodrome which has flown many times including a flight display for me in 2018. It’s considered the 2nd oldest airplane in the world today still flying). Interestingly, the 3-cylinder Anzani engine from the Bergdoll Bleriot had been removed/stolen from the airplane (by unknown characters) but later resurfaced and was displayed at the Franklin Institute for several decades. When the display was closed, the engine was returned to its owner, a Delaware County Pennsylvania man who sold it to a Delaware County family who donated it in 1970 to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. It remains in storage there today.
Cole Palen later sold the Bergdoll Bleriot for display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, Garden City, Long Island, New York with a gift from retail magnate Alan Fortunoff. It remained on display at the museum as of 2023.
Interesting facts about the Bergdoll Bleriot XI:
The Bergdoll Bleriot was originally purchased by Rodman Wanamaker of Philadelphia, the first airplane imported to America, and hung on display at the famous Wanamaker Department Store leading up to Christmas in 1909.
The Bergdoll Bleriot suffered severe damage when heavy snow collapsed the roof of a shed where it was stored at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome.
After the shed collapse damage, the Bergdoll Bleriot was quickly restored and trucked to New York City where it was displayed atop a building as a promotional event for the 1965 movie Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines.