Pennant Westfield Mass 1920

Chainless bicycle from Westfield Manufacturing Co. one of oldest and most famous American bicycle manufacturing companies, created by Albert Augustus Pope. Many of the bicycles sold by the Sears Roebuck and Co. were manufactured by Westfield (although not exclusively). Their in-house brand name was Columbia, but they also owned many other brands (see Westfield Mfg. History). This Pennant bicycle was most likely built in 1920-1921. Other example of Westfield bicycle in this collection is chainless Monarch 1905.

"The bike is one of the later chainless bikes that Westfield made. The badge says "Westfield Mfg" so that puts it from 1916 to 1922, the last year they made a chainless bike. I would put a date of 1920 or 1921 based on the pictures. Other than the badge this is identical to any Columbia badged chainless of the same year. These chainless bikes were made by Pope starting in 1898 and 1922 was the last year for producing them.

The Pennant name was used by Westfield for a long time, at the very least up through the 1950's. I don't have any hard documentation on when the Pennant name was acquired. It could have been part of the ABC breakup but I have a list of the 15 brands that Pope got out of that deal and Pennant is not one of them. I think the name was acquired later, possibly around the time your bike was made. Unlike some of the brand names that Pope got from the ABC, Pennant was never a separate line of bikes for them. Westfield used these badges to sell bikes in places that already had a Columbia dealership to avoid violating exclusivity contracts." from correspondence with Mr. Columbia, www.vintagecolumbiabikes.com