Visit us the 1st & 3rd Saturday of every month 10am-2pm
37974 Shinn St, Fremont, CA 94536
37974 Shinn St, Fremont, CA 94536
Mailing Address P.O. Box 601105 Sacramento, CA 95860-1105
Mailing Address P.O. Box 601105 Sacramento, CA 95860-1105
In our Pacific Bus Museume Archives, we have the Crown corporate photographs taken by Warren Bowen and Dick Whittington.
The photographer Crown used for several decades to document their products and innovations was Dick Whittington. Somewhere between the 1950s and 1960s their longtime employee Warren Bowen started his own photo studio in Los Angeles. He took the Crown account with him. When Warren retired in the 1980s, he gave Louk Markham his Crown photos and negatives archives. Louk then donated these to The Pacific Bus Museum in February 2024.
As you can imagine, we are still trying to figure out how to sort out what is in this collection. We do know that they have a unique filing/sorting system that is not by chassis number, as are the rest of the Crown Corporate records. So it will certainly take some time/effort for us to figure out how to cross-reference these. Keep an eye on our Crown Photo page for updates.
The Pacific Bus Museum has all the original records from the Crown Coach Corp.
These records are interesting because they contain a great many facts about these coaches, including when the bus was made, who it was sold to, etc.
These are very old-school paper records that will take some time to index and digitize. This process has only begun.
We have not started digitizing these yet, except for this one record:
To use these paper records, it is easiest to begin by noting the coach chassis underneath your front-right tire well. Alternately/additionally you can note the serial number printed on the body rails.
The next step is to find the sales/build records corresponding to your chassis/serial number. Within those column we’ll find records that look like this example from our Crown #4:
Crown Coach Corporation – Sales Records
Crown Coach Corporation – Sales Records for Crown #4
Crown Coach Corporation – Sales Records for Crown #4
Crown Coach Corporation – Sales Records for Crown #4
If the coach in question was built from the 1970’s onward, we can also find a folder in the “salmon” file cabinets. These folder have additional build/engineering details.
Crown Coach Corporation – Detailed Build Specification Files from 1970’s forward
Researchers can contact the museum for access to these archives.
Current Crown coach owners should note their chassis/serial numbers and contact the museum so we can look up your sales/build information.
For PBM members we are building some searchable indexes that will enable us to lookup this information. This is a work-in-progress. Contact the PBM Webmaster for access and assistance.