California Bicycle Museum

The safety problems of the high-wheel machines forced the invention of a better option, and the bicycle that emerged from England in 1885 soon became known as the “safety bike.” The safety bike forced the high wheel to extinction, and through the 1890s most high wheel bikes were unused and would later serve as scrap metal to support World War I. Aside from small changes in materials, the safety bikes of the late 1800s are very similar to modern bikes. With equal size wheels and a chain drive, the new bike allowed the rider to sit low enough to touch the ground with his or her feet. For racers, the smaller safety bike was as fast as the high wheel, because the new chain-operated drivetrain incorporated gears, ending the problematic 1:1 pedalstroke to wheel circumference ratio limit. Major innovations of the early safety bike included the chain, which had become cheaper to manufacture, the pneumatic tire—invented in 1888—and the diamond-shaped frame, also from 1888. For women, the new safety bikes were socially liberating because they provided a practical means of personal transportation that required women to adopt—and men to accept—less restrictive clothing. Corsets and long dresses gave way to bloomers and eventually trousers.

John “Pop” Brennan began his metal working career as a chandelier maker. He learned the fine art of tube bending and joinery while fabricating exquisite chandeliers for grand theatres in New York and other major cities. Later in his Newark, NJ workshop he used this skill to bend steel for handlebars and frames. As a master frame builder, Brennan built some of the most beautiful frames of the time and many consider his work to have led the way for handbuilt American frame making. He understood the mechanics of the machine and the needs of the rider. Each frame was built specifically for road, track sprint events, or six-day racing. Brennan frequently built multiple forks for riders to change the handling of the bike by simply changing the fork.

The machine pictured here was built for New Jersey racer Charley Logan in the 1930’s. Charley Logan was a six-day racer from the late 30’s to the late 40’s. Logan’s bike was built in the style of Willy Honeman’s machine with the design effort focused on delivering a lightweight machine that could withstand the extreme use of a professional six-day racer. Willy Honeman was the 1924 junior national champion and the pro sprint champion in 1934, 1935, and 1936. Inducted to the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1996, Honeman was the first American to wear an actual stars and stripes jersey. His only surviving jersey (denoted as jersey “1”), is part of the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame collection.

Brennan used the Honeman machine as a platform for marketing his bikes and created a brand identity of bikes built in the Honeman style (see the Honeman magazine advertisement). Having been raced hard by Logan in many years of professional racing, this bike was severely damaged when it was acquired by Jeff Groman in 1997. The down tube and top tube were broken so a complete restoration was in order. The paint was originally applied by Howard Rupprecht of the Irvington Paint and Varnish Co. in Irvington, NJ and the restoration paint is a very close duplicate of the original paint color, design, and execution.

The exquisite lug work shows that Pop started with heavy cast lugs and then thinned and hand sanded them to a light and functional weight. He handcut the head lugs to reveal bands (painted black) in a style was often copied by other custom frame builders who followed the Brennan legacy. His “sweet bend” fork was a work of art with a masterful effort to flair the fork ends out and forward. This result is shown on the photo of Jimmy Walthour’s machine as viewed head-on. All the Brennan fork tips were cut from Brown and Sharp steel that was thicker and stronger than stock fittings (see template photo) to provide durability and increased stiffness and secure wheel mounting for high-speed sprinting. When assembled with state of the art components and wooden rims, Brennan track cycles could weigh as low as 16 pounds. In this way of creating functional art that passed the performance demands of top professional racers, John Brennan along with frame building greats Oscar Wastyn, Willy Appelhans, Lance Claudel, Alvin Drysdale paved the way for generations of American frame builders.

The past few years have brought a return to the art and craft of the steel bicycle. Fortunately, a dedicated group of American frame builders has kept the fires burning and the art of steel bicycle frame building has seen a recent resurgence. With this resurgence, builders can once again look at the old frame details from master builders such as Pop Brennan for inspiration and guidance.

The restored Charley Logan machine is now fully functional with period-correct components and an original set of very rare wooden rims brought from Europe by Willy Honeman. Although Brennan built frames from the 1920’s to the late 1950’s, he did not use serial numbers so the exact number of frames that he built is unknown.

Jeff Groman: Jeff Groman is the owner of Classic Cycle, Bainbridge, WA and producer of the book and DVD titled: Six-Day Bicycle Race: America’s Jazz-Age Sport. A New Jersey native, Jeff has extensively researched the history of six-day racing in the United States. Jeff was asked to provide a bike of the month for the May 2009 California Bicycle Museum email newsletter. He provided the background details and photos for the Charley Logan machine and selected the machine to help recognize the role of the New Jersey frame builders in influencing the legacy of American handbuilt frame manufacturing.

Manufacturer: John "Pop" Brennan

Location: Newark, NJ

Private Party

Jeff Groman

Bike has been owned by Jeff Groman since 1997 and was restored with a combination of period-correct and new old stock components.