Western Wheel Works was founded in Chicago one year after the end of the Civil War, in 1866. Their Crescent bicycle was known for quality and affordability, outselling the competition by streamlining the manufacturing process. John Boyd Dunlop's pneumatic tires, first available in 1888, quickly replaced the rough-riding hard tires on every make of bicycle. While the hard-tire high wheel bicycles were often preserved for their novelty, the outmoded safeties, losing every race to the pneumatic-equipped bicycles of the late 1880s and early 1890s, were tossed on scrap piles. Today they are rarer than the surviving high wheels, known as ordinaries, which garner a lion's share of attention in modern parades and exhibits. Still the elegant Crescent bicycle you see here, chain-driven with wheels of equal size, pointed the way to the future.

The only suspension available to the rider of this Crescent came in the form of the leaf and coil spring saddle.

Note the peg mounted on the left rear dropout for mounting the bicycle from the rear, a holdover from the grandfather step of the high wheel days.

One brake lever for the front plunger brake did not provide much stopping power without applying backward pressure to the direct-drive pedals.

The foot rests on the front fork of the direct-drive bicycle allowed the rider to get his feet out of the way of swiftly moving pedals on the downhills.

1889 Crescent Hard-tire Safety ©Daniel Dahlquist