Antique 1930s-40s Budd Lemon & Lime Soda Label 🍋 from Newport, NH

Remember Budd Lemon & Lime Soda? 🍋 Budd Lemon & Lime Soda, Newport, New Hampshire

Size: 4 1/4" x 3 3/4"

"The Taste Tells," says the cocktail glass in the middle, fizzing with little gold bubbles. This is an antique 1930s-40s Budd Lemon & Lime Soda label from the Newport Bottling Works of Newport, New Hampshire, New Old Stock, with only little to slight corner wear.

🔍 What's on it

Budd in big red script across the top, over a wide gold cocktail glass full of bubbles with THE TASTE TELLS across the bowl. Then LEMON & LIME SODA in green, ARTIFICIAL COLOR, and on either side of the glass's stem, QUALITY BEVERAGES SINCE 1916. At the bottom, Newport Bottling Works in red script, NEWPORT, N.H., and CONTENTS 1 PT. 10 FL. OZS. A thin gold border runs around the edge, and the back is plain.

🎳 Budd's Beverages

That "Since 1916" goes back to Alexander Budnitz, who started out with a grocery store serving Newport's Polish immigrant families. Newport's 1961 bicentennial book lists the business as founded in 1916 as A. Budnitz & Son on Sullivan Street, back in the horse-and-buggy days of soft drinks, with hand-powered machinery and deliveries by horse and wagon. In 1922 the Newport Bottling Works started making carbonated beverages, and the business came to be known as Budd's Beverages, Budd from Budnitz: Isaac Budnitz had his name changed to Isaac Budd in probate court between 1931 and 1933, so this script Budd label most likely dates from the 1930s or '40s, before the 1948 incorporation. Isaac was the "Son" in A. Budnitz & Son, one of the founding partners with his father. Before Budd, the house brand was Bud's Best: a 1924 ad told folks to drink Bud's Best Beverages bottled by the Newport Bottling Works, bragged about a sunlit factory, sterilized bottles and pure materials, and welcomed visitors to the plant. By the 1930s they had a whole lineup of brands, including Dartmouth Dry ginger ale with the Dartmouth College pennant on it, Fruit Bowl and Old Sol, and they distributed Moxie and Coca-Cola too, and Budd's was famous and sought after all over Vermont and New Hampshire. My favorite detail: winters in Newport were long and the soda business was slow, so the company put a bowling alley on the top floor to carry it through the quiet months, and Newport's town report for the year ending January 31, 1936 lists a bowling license paid by Isaac Budd.

In 1929 the business moved to Sunapee Street, in 1938 it added modern syrup and bottling rooms there, and from the repeal of Prohibition on it wholesaled beer as well. In 1948 the Newport Bottling Works was incorporated as Budd's Beverages, Inc., and in 1961, the company's 45th year in the beverage business, Isaac Budd was its President and Treasurer. Budd's Beverages stayed in business until 1972, and the New Hampshire Historical Society keeps one of its 1962 soda bottles, made by Thatcher Glass and printed "Bottled by Budd's Beverages Inc., Newport, N.H." and "Since 1916." Its front label carries a champagne glass with bubbles and THE TASTE TELLS, the very glass and slogan on this label. The Society also has a clear crown-top bottle embossed BUDDS BEST and NEWPORT BOTTLING WORKS.

Newport sits on the Sugar River in Sullivan County, in western New Hampshire, and a hometown bottler like Budd's supplied the stores, diners and kitchens for miles around. It's the county seat, and back then it was a mill town: Kenneth Andler, a Newport boy of about 1910 to 1920, wrote in the bicentennial book that three textile mills and a large shoe shop brought a considerable influx of immigrants, most of them Finnish and Polish, with a good many Greeks and French Canadians, and those Polish families were the ones the Budnitz grocery was started to serve. The town's Sibley Scythe Company, at work since 1842, made the scythes that helped clear the swamps and jungle for the Panama Canal.

Budd's sold its sodas across most of New Hampshire and part of Vermont.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this antique advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! It's a sharp little label framed alone, next to its Budd's siblings for a Newport set, or given to anybody with New Hampshire roots.