Otto Kuhler

Otto Kuhler (July 31, 1894 – August 5, 1977) was an American designer, one of the best known industrial designers of the American railroads. According to Trains magazine he streamstyled more locomotives and railroad cars than Cret, Dreyfuss and Loewy combined. His extensive concepts for the modernization of the American railroads have repercussions onto the railways worldwide until today. In addition he was a prolific artist of industrial aesthetics and of the American West in general.

Kuhler (pronounced "Cooler") became a US citizen in 1928. Eight years before he had married Simonne Gillot, daughter of a Belgian doctor. They had one daughter, Winona (married name: Zabriskie), and one son, Renaldo, who became known as a natural-history museum artist.

Kuhler was born in Remscheid near Essen, Germany the only child in an anvil casters' family. He was determined to study electrical engineering, but returning from an early school exchange with Belgium he showed a conspicuous drawing talent. At age 19 he was commissioned to illustrate a catalog of steam locomobiles. He served in the German Army during World War I, was suspended because of an automobile accident, but called up again to command a logging railway troop in Belgium, where he met his future wife.

His automobile body design sent in to Kathe & Soehne for a Mercedes chassis won a gold medal in 1913. Employed as a stylist with N.A.G. Berlin he designed movie sets for William Wauer's silent film "The Tunnel." He became associate editor of "Der Motor" magazine, and then styled car bodies for Snutsel Père&Fils (Brussels) and European automobile producers. Influenced by the art of Pennell he learned etching after World War I and enrolled at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf. After emigration to the US in 1923 he worked as a commercial artist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His works centered on industrial landscapes, steel works and locomotives.

Kuhler opened a Manhattan studio in 1928 and using the media promoted streamstyling of the antiquated railroads for more passenger appeal, only to be quashed by Black Friday (1929). Three years later he got an assignment at J. G. Brill and Company for Union Pacific Railroad's competition leading to the streamliner M-10000 and won by Pullman. For Brill he also styled their PCC trolley prototype for Chicago and later the "Rebel" power cars for Gulf, Mobile and Northern Railroad. Parent company American Car & Foundry used Kuhler to style its growing line of motorrailers throughout the 1930s culminating in the double-ended rail motor cars for the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway in 1940 and for Boston's Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1946.

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