Browse Items (124 total)

1888-present
Mum was the first company to manufacture deodorant. Mum was the first company to manufacture deodorant. Invented in 1888, Mum deodorant targeted armpit and foot odor; sold in small tins, Mum advertised itself with the slogan “Mum’s…

1860-1932
Founded as John Wyeth & Brother Chemists in Philadelphia in 1860, Wyeth remains a giant in the pharmaceutical industry. John and Frank Wyeth set themselves apart by mixing medicinal compounds in large batches ahead of time, allowing the…

1857-1901
Whitall Tatum and Company produced glassware for well over a century, mostly prescription bottles, and was best known for its “flint” (colorless) glass. The company went through a few name changes since its 1806 start as a window glass…

1880s-1926
Walter B. Duffy, born in Canada in 1840, was one of the most prominent businessmen and distillers in Rochester New York in the late 19th and 20th centuries; his Malt Whiskey was one of the most popular nationwide at the height of the…

1886-1902
Cunningham & Co. Ltd. was just one iteration of the glassworks headed by the Cunningham family in Pittsburgh in the second half of the 19th-century. The family got its start with the Pittsburg City Glass Works (ad below) around 1845; this…

Henry W. Putnam was born in 1825 in Essex, NY and entered the glass business at the age of 34 with a patent for a wire contraption that held a cork in place in the mouth of a bottle. Putnam’s history is tied up in that of Charles de Quillfeldt and…

1900-1962
Edwin M. Knowles was born in 1869, the son of Isaac Watt Knowles, founder of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Co. (one of the largest American pottery companies at the turn of the 20th century). A graduate of Harvard, Edwin took control of…

1902-1964
The Hazel Glass Company merged with the Atlas Glass Company in 1902, forming the Hazel-Atlas Glass Company, which quickly became one of the largest glass manufacturers in the world iwth 14 plants across the country. In 1957, the company…

1875-1920
Started by Samuel H. Klein of the Klein Brothers distillery. Advertisements for the liquor (as the one below) were known to be scandalous for the time, often depicting young men in mortar boards reminiscent of the institution for which the…

1921-present
Founded in 1921 by Harry Soref, Master Lock still produces a wide range of padlocks today. An early innovator in padlocks, Master Lock patented the Laminated Steel padlock in 1924, the same manner in which bank vaults are protected, as…

1856-present
In 1849, a German immigrant named August Krug began brewing beer in the basement of his restaurant in Milwaukee; the next year, he would hire a 20-year-old German immigrant named Joseph Schlitz as a bookkeeper. In 1856, Krug passed…

1901-1932
A figure from the 1915 patent for a new design for the Coca-Cola bottle, created by the Root Glass Company. Established by Chapman J. Root in 1901, the Root Glass Company is best known for manufacturing bottles for Coca-Cola, beginning in…

1895-present
First introduced to the market in 1895 and marketed exclusively to dentists, Listerine quickly became a household name and became one of the first medical products offered over the counter in 1914. These two ads from 1917 advocate…

An advertisement for Katharmon Chemical Company, boasting Kathermon's uses as an antiseptic, prophylactic, and detergent.
RRH

A 1903 advertisement for the Streator bottle and glass Company in Streator, Illinois, boasting their wine and liquor bottles would not break in shipment (as their competitors’ bottles would).
RRH

A 1910 photograph originally titled "Noon hour. Illinois Glass Co., (Shop #7.) These boys all work in above glass company. Tuesday noon. Location: Alton, Illinois," taken by Lewis Wickes Hine.
RRH

The colorless glass base from a bottle of AbilenA Natural Cathartic Water found in 2010 at the Charnley-Persky House. A 1910 advertisement for AbilenA, a "cathartic water" bottled in Abilene, Kansas used as a laxative.

1893-1910
Roxbury Distilling Company produced liquor, most famously Roxbury Rye, from 1893 to 1910. The company’s founder, George T. Gambrill was convicted of fraud in 1910 and the company was shut down. Gambrill’s most famous product, Roxbury…

1881-1943
Andrew Scherer (pictured below in a 1941 Chicago Tribune article) opened his pharmacy on State and Division in 1886, five years after his first store. The pharmacy served many in the Gold Coast, and a bottle of Scherer’s was found at the…

August H. Heisey, born in Germany in 1842, immigrated to the United States in 1843, setting up home in Pennsylvania. In 1861, Heisey got into the glass business working as a clerk for King Glass Company in Pittsburgh. After fighting for the Union…

1880-present
Founded by Charles M. Higgins in 1880, Higgins Ink is still a top producer of ink worldwide. Just eight years after opening its doors, Higgins was providing ink for periodicals like Harper’s Weekly; this success allowed the company to…

1881-1946
Brothers Benjamin and Samuel Foster brought young pharmacist Malcomb Fairchild into their drug manufacturing partnership in 1881. The company mostly sold digestive products, a bottle of which was found at the Charnley-Persky House in 2015…

1884-1917
Price Baking Powder Company was established in 1884, nearly twenty years after Vincent Price and Charles Steele first started manufacturing baking powder in Chicago. The company was most famous for its baking powder, but it also produced…

1850-1953
Sharp & Dohme formed their pharmaceutical partnership in 1860, expanding to large scale manufacturing by 1865. Their Chicago branch opened in 1888, and an amber bottle made by Sharp & Dohme was found at the Charnley-Persky House in 2015…

1893-1928
Adelbert Merton Foster took over the the Chicago branch of Dean, Foster & Co. in 1893, naming the ten-year-old division after himself. A glass wholesaler, A. M. Foster was closely associated with Dean, Foster & Co. (referred to as “The…