Wanamaker gets hip and other items from a 1970 Delaware County Scene

This advertisement for the John Wanamaker department store in Wilmington, Delaware, appears on the back page of the July/August 1970 issue of Delaware County Scene. Using a hip font, the advertisement declares 1970 to be "a new decade of young now fashions."¹

Wilmington's Wanamaker complex opened in 1950. The building was recently renovated and repurposed to serve as the headquarters of Incyte, a biopharmaceutical firm that, among other things, has developed a drug called Jakafi to treat a rare blood cancer.²

Delaware County Scene was a combination of tourist guide and history guide, filled with local advertisements for the southeastern Pennsylvania county and Delaware. This 24-page issue³ is perfect bound and printed on newsprint.

Silvia Barfield Shay was the editor and publisher of Delaware County Scene, which was published out of Wallingford in cooperation with the Delaware County Tourist Bureau. According to Page 2, its distribution locations included banks, real estate offices, libraries, hospitals, schools, beauty shops, "milk and fuel oil companies," motels and tourist information centers.

Here are some other interesting tidbits from this issue:

• You could rent a Ford Falcon for $9 per day, plus 9 cents per mile, from Drexel Fleets Inc. in Media.
• There is an advertisement for Snowden's, which billed itself as "Media's oldest and most complete department store," having been established in 1868. According to "A Brief History of Media: 1850 to 1900," Snowden's continued in operation until a fire destroyed the West State Street building in 1976.
• The follow is written about the Marrion Blackwell Trio in a section titled "After Dark Discoveries":
  

  "One of the delights of a visit to the Media Inn is the fine entertainment of the Marrion Blackwell Trio, who like 'the man who came to dinner' came to Media for a two weeks contract and has stayed year and year. Mr. Blackwell is a most versatile man on all instruments, and proudly relates to the days in Yankton, S.D. where he appeared with Lawrence Welk - the year 1932. Assisting at the piano is Bobby Jefferson with 'Streamline' Burrell on the drums. Fans came from the tri-state area week after week to enjoy the Marrion Blackwell brand of dance-forever music."

• Carroll W. Griffith Co., a Wilmington-based real-estate company offered: "Complete real estate coverage thru 'Realtron,' (IBM computer for finding homes quickly)."⁴
• Bethany Beach in Delaware was described as follows: "Quiet and picturesque Bethany Beach located between Rehoboth Beach and Ocean City, Md., is experiencing an influx of vacationists, but despite its growth has retained its family type atmosphere, free of crass commercialism, noise and traffic."

Footnotes
1. If you're interested in Wanamaker's history, check out the entries in Papergreat's Wanamaker Series.
2. For more on Incyte, see "Incyte to lease former Wanamaker building near Wilmington" (November 15, 2013, DelawareOnline.com) and "Incyte takes over reimagined Wanamaker building" (November 21, 2014, DelawareOnline.com).
3. The July/August 1970 issue was Vol. 4, No. 3.
4. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association: "The Realtron system was programmed so that members could ask it to produce homes from its memory bank to fit their prospects' needs. Within seconds after the question was posed, the computer would print out or speak to the member about appropriate properties." For more, here's a newspaper article from 1969 with the headline "Real Estate Board Will Use Computer To Locate Homes."

1910 advertisement for West Laurel Hill Cemetery (Wanamaker Diary)

This advertisement comes from the 1910 Wanamaker Diary that I've been blogging about throughout the year. It's for West Laurel Hill Cemetery, which is located in suburban Philadelphia.¹

West Laurel Hill opened in 1869 to serve as a companion rural cemetery to Philadelphia's Laurel Hill, a famous necropolis that is the final resting place of Peter A.B. Widener, David Rittenhouse, Phillies announcer Harry Kalas, Declaration of Independence signer Thomas McKean and Gen. George Meade (the victorious general at the Battle of Gettysburg), among other notables.

West Laurel Hill doesn't have quite the name power that Laurel Hill does, but it still has its fair share of celebrities, including:

• David Hayes Agnew (pictured at right), a noted surgeon who operated on President James Garfield's fatal gunshot wound
• John Cromwell Bell, whose claim to fame was serving as governor of Pennsylvania for three weeks in 1947
• Anna Jarvis, who "invented" Mother's Day and then spent the rest of her life fighting its commercialization

West Laurel Hill Cemetery was already doing pretty well by 1910. According to this advertisement, its fund for perpetual care was in excess of $174,000.

The prices for grave lots look like bargains by today's standards. But, make no mistake, this was a pricey cemetery. For $155, you could purchase 10 lots. That's the equivalent of a $3,600 price tag today.

You did get better bargains by bulking in bulk. If you bought 10 lots, you paid $15.50 per lot (the equivalent of about $370 per lot today). If you bought only three lots, you paid $19.33 per lot (the equivalent of about $460 today).

Today, single burial sites can cost anywhere from $400 to $10,000 per plot, according to TheFuneralSite.com. And that's just a small part of the overall costs associated with a funeral. A “regular adult funeral” these days will cost at least $9,000, according to the aforementioned website, which breaks down all the options regarding burial clothes, caskets, flowers, the guest register book², the hearse, the grave marker and more.

My personal thoughts about my eventual funeral and burial are that I want it, first and foremost, to be cheap. It shouldn't cost your relatives an arm and leg to dispose of your body.³ And, secondly, the focus should be on biodegradability. I think it's pretty dumb to stick a dead body inside something that's made of metal, fiberglass or treated hardwood and is hermetically sealed and designed to survive a nuclear strike. Give me something that will rot away as soon as possible — banana husks, wool, or (and wouldn't this be appropriate?) recycled paper.

So, there you go. I wasn't expecting this post to digress into a Mitford-esque discussion about modern funeral practices, but I guess it did.

Footnotes
1. The cemetery is located within Bala Cynwyd, an unincorporated community within the Welsh Tract of Lower Merion Township.
2. You can expect to be charged between $25 and $80 for the guest register book, according to TheFuneralSite.com.
3. If you think about it, though, that's the one time you could afford to pay an arm and leg — or two arms and two legs. You're not going to miss them at that point.

Saturday's postcard: Wanamaker's and the 1911 World Series

This postcard ties in nicely with this year's Wanamaker Series and gives us a chance to see a vintage illustration of the imposing Philadelphia department store I've been writing about sporadically.

The Daniel Burnham-designed 12-floor Wanamaker building, with its Italian Renaissance look, was constructed between 1902 and 1910 and dedicated by President William Howard Taft on December 30, 1911.¹

Today, it is the 157,940-square-foot shopping paradise known as Macy’s Center City.

Macy's offers daily tours; daily recitals on the famous Wanamaker Grand Court Organ; the intriguing-sounding "Macy’s Living Classroom" experiential program; and several events centered around the Christmas holiday, including a 6,000-square-foot Dickens village.

Getting back to today's postcard, it was actually mailed a couple of months before that Taft dedication ceremony. And the reverse side has something neat to offer.

It was postmarked on October 17, 1911, at North Philadelphia Station and mailed to an address in Norristown.

The punctuation-free² cursive note appears to state:

David [?] look for me when you go to Freeland down here to see series Harry

I don't think it's a great stretch to say that the "series" Harry is referring to is the 1911 World Series.

Everything fits. The series was between the Philadelphia Athletics and the New York Giants.

This postcard was postmarked the day after Game 2 of the series, in which Gettysburg Eddie Plank and Home Run Baker led the Athletics to a 3-1 victory in front of a crowd of 26,286 at Philadelphia's Shibe Park.

The Athletics won the series, 4 games to 2.

If Harry attended more than one game at Shibe Park, he had a longer visit to the City of Brotherly Love than he might have originally anticipated. There were six straight days of rain between Games 3 and 4. And so, after Game 2 was played in Philadelphia on October 16 and Game 3 was played in New York on October 17, there was not another game at Shibe Park until Game 4 on October 24.

Maybe Harry spent all that extra time in Philadelphia shopping at Wanamaker's.

Here's the complete back of today's postcard...

Footnotes
1. For a neat look at some of the building's long history, check out "Wondrous Wanamaker's: Magical Moments and Milestones" on PhillyStyleMag.com.
2. Has anyone ever done serious research into why people don't use basic punctuation on postcards? I can't believe how widespread it is — past and present.

Wanamaker Diary: Storing your furs, great old desks, witches and more

And now for some more fun stuff from The Wanamaker Diary from 1910:

Above: This is a full-page advertisement for the Wanamaker Dry Air Cold Storage Vault, which is described "up to date, scientific, capacious and unrivaled."

In addition to storing minks, the Wanamaker vault was open for the storage of mounted animal rugs.

And how did the Dry Air Cold Storage Vault work? According to an advertisement in the January 1911 edition of the Cold Storage and Ice Trade Journal, it was "five carloads" of Nonpareil Corkboard that did the trick at Wanamaker's and many other big department stores. Check out the picture in the advertisement. I see two full deer and a tiger skin among the animal carcasses.

* * *
The diary is filled with short news items and interesting articles, much like an almanac would be. Here are a couple of them:

AIRSHIP FOR THE POLE, 1911.A dispatch from Friedrichshafen, Germany, says that the directors of the Zeppelin Airship Arctic Expedition have decided to send to Spitzbergen in the summer of 1910 an advance party to prepare for the sending of an airship to the Pole. An improved Zeppelin airship will be ready for trial flights in January, 1911.¹

FEAR OF EASTER WITCHES.Strange observances, surviving from pre-Christian days, mark the celebration of Easter throughout Sweden (writes our Stockholm correspondent).

During Holy Week, and particularly on Thursday night, witches are supposed by country folk to hold high revels. Thus people are careful to hide hay forks, rakes, shovels, and broomsticks, which might be stolen by witches for a nocturnal flight, and cattle-sheds are marked with crosses to frighten them away.

No smoke must issue from chimneys after sunset on Holy Thursday, as witches have the power to strike a house of which they can smell the fire, and all through the week firearms are discharged at random in the air.

Notwithstanding these precautions, hordes of witches are supposed to assemble for their unholy orgies, which last till late on Saturday. But woe to the witch who is belated on her flight home on Easter Sunday, for one ray of sunlight is sufficient to burst her like a bladder! -- London Mail.

* * *

Above: Oh, they don't build desks like they used to. In fact, they don't much build them at all any more. That's usually left up to us, after we purchase a huge box filled with 400 desk parts (almost always particle board) and a mysterious set of instructions. Then we have to put the damn thing together ourselves.

Not that I'm bitter.

Anyway, the desk in this Wanamaker advertisement is a beauty. The drawers are solid and deep, and it's filled with compartments and cubby-holes. The perfect desk!

The "Quartered Oak or Imitation Mahogany" desk cost $42 (the equivalent of about $970 today), while the "Genuine Mahogany" desk cost $60 (the equivalent of about $1,380 today). Bet they were worth every penny.

Footnote
1. The Germans did not get to the North Pole in a zeppelin in 1911. In fact, it wasn't until Umberto Nobile's Norge in 1926 that an airship flew over the North Pole. The Germans didn't make it to the North Pole until Graf Zeppelin’s Arctic flight in 1931.

The General Dry Goods House at the Philadelphia Wanamaker's

I should have a new entry for the Wanamaker Series¹ posted with the next 24 hours or so. In the meantime, to tide us over, here's a fabulous old advertising card for the famed Philadelphia department store.² It's just slightly larger than a business card, measuring 3 inches wide by 2⅜ inches tall.

The front states: "A visit requested to the Grand Depot General Dry Goods House, 13th St. Philadelphia. John Wanamaker."

And here's the back of the card, which goes into more detail as it touts the hats, shoes, clothing, linens, hosiery, underwear and more that were available.

Footnotes
1. The Wanamaker Series is centered around all the great stuff I'm finding inside a battered copy of "The Wanamaker Diary" for 1910. Start here and then go through the first three installments.
2. I bought this card earlier this year at a New Oxford, Pennsylvania, antiques store. (But not the same store where I purchased "Famous Fairy Tales for Children," the slim 1930 volume that led me on a rambling tale involving laxatives, Littlestown and Ed Wood.

Wise sayings and more from the 1910 Wanamaker Diary

This pair of side-by-side pages from the 1910 Wanamaker Diary includes the journal space for March 14, 1910 (which was a Monday).

Each day's journal space includes a short saying along the lines of what one might find inside a fortune cookie. The slice of wisdom for March 14 is: "The silly man flings incense on a dung hill."

Here are some other daily sayings from throughout the diary:

• A hungry man scents kraut a square away.
• A wise man keeps salt on hand for all the advice he gets.
• Swearing at bulls is safest from a second story.
• A fence lasts three years, and a dog three fences.
• A man canna bear all his kin on his back.
• It is a sin to fell a tree unless another planted be.
• A man wears out his wedding shoes in running to his wife with news.
• Till Easter come no tree will bloom.¹
• Milk the cow which is near.
• To get a good melon or friend you may have to try a hundred.
• One aching tooth is enough to fret a whole mouth.
• The honk started with the goose and spread to the motor.
• Save your chips for kindling, not for wear upon your shoulder.
• Money makes the mare go -- but not the nightmare.
• To marry a dame with two daughters is three against one.
• Some of the finest prayers are said in thunderstorms.
• "If a cat licks her foot it is sure for to snow."²
• An old man's shanks are not for dancing capers.
• Choose your wife with her nightcap on.
• Our neighbors' eyes are the costliest things in life.
• A thoughtful chicken has no praise for chicken salad.
• It's hard to teach an old parrot to quit such language.
• Those who complain of cold feet should think of the North Pole centipedes.

Meanwhile, here's a closer look at the advertisements on the opposite page. They are for a trio of Philadelphia companies:

• Garrett-Buchanan Co., a "hustling house" that offers everything in paper and twine.
• Jules Wellens Sons, Ltd., which offers the new ramie and Roumanian linens
• The Reyburn Manfg. Co., makers of shipping tags, pin tickets, gummed labels, paper fasteners, and more

Footnotes
1. That is decidedly NOT true in Pennsylvania this year.
2. This is also decidedly NOT true. I have five felines that can attest to that this winter.

Get your Wanamaker office supplies

Today's installment in the 1910 Wanamaker Diary series (see the initial post) focuses on advertisements for Wanamaker-brand office supplies.

This Criterion Office and Library Paste¹ is touted as being good for "mounting photographs, general office and home use."

(As an aside, I must point out that pasted and glued items are much harder for historians and ephemeraologists to salvage and preserve.)

It's also noted that the paste "dries very quickly and will not discolor anything."

The 1910 price for one quart of the stuff is 50 cents. That might not seem like much. But it would be the equivalent of $11.55 in 2010 dollars, according to The Inflation Calculator.

These Wanamaker Criterion Lead Pencils aren't cheap, either. The price is 50 cents for a dozen. (Again, $11.55 in 2010 dollars.) Or $4.50 for a gross of pencils. A gross is equal to "a dozen dozen" -- or 144 pencils. The cost for those 144 pencils is indeed gross -- in 2010 dollars it's $103.96!

I guess we can be happy that pencils are among the few things that have gone down in relative cost over the years.²

Finally, here's an advertisement for Wanamaker Commercial Fluid.

The copy states: "It writes a Beautiful Blue, changing to permanent Black in a few hours, and is absolutely free from sediment."

The cost for a whole quart is just 30 cents, which would be a reasonable $6.93 in 2010 dollars.

The fluid came in the following sizes: quarts, pints, half-pints, four ounces and two ounces.

I hope the Wanamaker Series can bring back a lot of memories for folks throughout the coming year. Papergreat reader Dianne left this great comment after the first entry:

Wanamaker's was a fabulous place! I worked in the toy department one Christmas for my first post-college job, 1971. Children and parents could ride a monorail that ran around the entire ceiling of the 8th floor toy department. Kids often spit out the windows of the monorail.³

Tours were given of Wanamaker's well-hidden office. Even though he died about 1922, it was kept much as he left it. The office had large windows overlooking downtown Philly while most of the store was windowless.

The store had a post office and a furnished model house in the furniture department. People would joke about spending a weekend in the model house. Wanamaker's in-store bank was on a lower level. We carried cash to the bank before checking out.

The Wanamaker Christmas show was a treat with a multi-story display of flashing lights and the Wanamaker organ music. We watched from the balcony cafe (3rd floor) or the Crystal Tea Room on the 9th floor. The organ was built for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Wanamaker purchased it in 1909, but the installation took 2 years with nearly 10,000 pipes.

Strawbridge & Clothier had the brass wild boar, unimpressive in comparison to the Wanamaker eagle in the Grand Court. The eagle was THE place to meet in the store.

Thanks for sharing those great memories, Dianne!

Footnotes
1. Note how "Criterion Office and Library Paste" is printed on the side of the jar, but "Photo and Office Paste" is printed on the lid.
2. One example of many: 144 pencils for about $15 on Amazon.com.
3. That's a wonderful detail! Also, "Ewwwwwwwwwwwww."

New occasional series: The Wanamaker Diary 1910

This is a battered, falling-apart-at-the-seams copy of "The Wanamaker Diary" for 1910 that I've been wanting to write about for a year. But the problem is that it's too interesting. I could never figure out where to start or conceive of how to fit all of the cool stuff from its 400-plus pages into one blog post.

I mean, this thing is PACKED with goodies. Vintage advertisements, diagrams of Philadelphia's sports and theater venues from a century ago¹, poems, recipes², household tips, pet names for a baby's fingers³, song lyrics, news reports of telepathy, some family information scrawled in pencil by its former owner, weather-forecasting guides and much, much more.

So I'm turning it into a series!

I can imagine churning out a dozen or more posts on this gem of a 102-year-old book during the next year. I have created a Wanamaker Series label to organize the posts as they accumulate.

For today, we get no further than the inside covers.

This is the inside front cover:

The advertisement for the Underwood Typewriter Company touts the No. 5 Underwood Retail Bill and Charge Typewriter: "For entering charges and making entry on weekly or monthly bill at one operation, this machine is incomparable. Typewritten Records, Time Saved, and Underwood Satisfaction."

Meanwhile, the inside back cover touts the Philadelphia Wanamaker's (which I'll write more about in coming installments):

Footnotes
1. Including Franklin Field, Adelphi Theatre and the Chestnut Street Opera House.
2. Including this recipe for Meat Tea: "Cut a pound of lean meat into thin slices, put into a quart and half a pint of cold water, set it over a gentle fire where it will become gradually warm. When the scum arises let it simmer gently for about an hour, then strain it through a fine sieve or napkin, let it stand ten minutes to settle, and then pour off the clear tea. An onion and a few grains of black pepper may be added."
3. Thumbo, Lickpot, Long Man Ling, Side Finger Ring, Lit-tle ducky duck-y ducky duck-y darling, Thumbkin, Pinnikin, Long Man Gray, Ring Man and Peezy Weezy, of course.