{"product_id":"hackensack-supply-no-6-jet-broom-label-rampant-lion-crossed-brooms-hackensack-new-jersey","title":"Vintage Hackensack Supply No. 6 Jet Broom Label 🧹 Rampant Lion Crossed Brooms Hackensack New Jersey 1970s","description":"\u003ch2\u003e🦁 What Is a Rampant Lion Doing on a Broom Label From Hackensack, New Jersey?\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 6\" x 4\" ~ Slight to minor wear on the top left hand corner.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C9Pma27ORBc\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn the 1970s every kitchen, stockroom, church hall and back stoop had a broom leaning in a corner, and somebody had to supply it. This label carries that somebody's name. It is a sky-blue and purple Jet broom label for Hackensack Supply, 165 State Street, Hackensack, N. J. A golden lion stands up on its hind legs in the middle of it, guarding a pair of crossed brooms as if sweeping were a royal matter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a vintage broom label printed for Hackensack Supply and sold under the name \u003cstrong\u003eNo. 6 Jet\u003c\/strong\u003e. It measures \u003cstrong\u003e6 x 4 inches\u003c\/strong\u003e (about 15 x 10 cm) in portrait format, the size of a 4x6 photo print. It is a one-of-a-kind original. No year is printed on it. The five-digit ZIP Code puts it no earlier than July 1963, and a dated copy of the same stock design puts it in the 1970s. I'll show you how below.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe upper-left corner is the one place this label shows where it has been handled, and it is pictured in close-up so you can judge it for yourself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🧹 Hackensack Supply: What the Label Says and What It Doesn't\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe label names its owner and says very little else about the business. It does not say who made the broom, and it credits no printer beyond \"PRINTED IN U. S. A.\" \"Jet\" is the brand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAnd Hackensack Supply really did trade from this address. A 1986 New Jersey employer directory lists HACKENSACK SUPPLY CO at 165 State St, Hackensack, N J 07601, word for word the address on this label. In May 1979 Congressman Andrew Maguire's Bergen County district office paid Hackensack Supply Co. $14.60 for paper supplies for a district health fair, and the bill is still there in the House of Representatives' printed expense record. One local, writing in 2002, remembered that the Hackensack-named supply house \"used to be on State Street\" before it took over a bigger warehouse in Bergenfield, and by 2010 the directories had Hackensack Supply Co. in Bergenfield. A Hackensack Supply Co. still sells restaurant and janitorial supplies today, from Orchard Street in Hackensack and Route 17 in Paramus, and says it has served the trade for over 50 years. If you worked for Hackensack Supply, or remember it on State Street, I'd love to hear from you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🦁 The Lion, the Brooms, and a Number: 111\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn heraldry, \u003cem\u003erampant\u003c\/em\u003e describes a beast in profile, standing upright on its hind legs with its forepaws raised. The lion is the traditional \"king of beasts\" and stands for courage, nobility, royalty, strength and valor. Two objects crossed diagonally are said to be \"in saltire,\" the X-shape of the St Andrew's cross. On a broom label this is borrowed coat-of-arms styling, a way of saying \u003cem\u003estrength, quality, built to last\u003c\/em\u003e. It's nobody's family crest, just a lion hired to sell brooms.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe art was a printer's stock design, and I can show you the sibling. The same rampant beast on a red disc between crossed brooms appears on a label for Johnson Products Company of Memphis, Tennessee, \"Quality Brooms \u0026amp; Mops,\" marked \"Now 31 Years.\" The Memphis label reads \"Ask for a Black Dragon Hotel Broom.\" It has the same blue field, the same purple border, and the same small number 111. The Memphis firm sold its broom as the Black Dragon, and Hackensack Supply put the same drawing over \"No. 6 Jet.\" That is one drawing with two names. (Not the Chicago hair-care Johnson Products, by the way.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat pairing is why I read the 111 as a stock-design number. Broom houses bought a ready-made picture from the printer and had their own name set into the panel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHere is a word-history aside that has nothing to do with this label's design. \"Broom\" was a shrub before it was a sweeper, and a sprig of that shrub was the badge of England's Plantagenet kings. A heraldry glossary even lists a Welsh coat of arms with broom sprigs and a golden rampant lion. It is a coincidence, but I never tire of a lion and a broom turning up on the same shield.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📮 Reading the Clues: How a ZIP Code Dates a Label\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith no date printed, the small print does the work. The five-digit ZIP Code is the floor. The Post Office began ZIP Codes on July 1, 1963, so a label carrying one cannot be earlier.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBeside it, the state is still spelled \"N. J.\" with periods. That was the Post Office's official abbreviation in its lists of 1831, 1874 and 1943, until the two-letter \"NJ\" replaced it in 1963. This printer took the new ZIP but kept the old spelling.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe phone number is printed in plain digits with its area code. The 201 area code is one of the original 1947 codes, and at first it covered all of New Jersey. Hackensack never left it, so it gives no end date. What settles the decade is that Memphis sibling. Johnson Products started making brooms and mops in 1944, so its label marked \"Now 31 Years\" dates to about 1975, and this Hackensack printing of the same design 111 belongs to the 1970s with it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏙️ Hackensack, and the Street Called the \"Back Street\"\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHackensack is the seat of Bergen County. The city's own history says its name honors Oratam, a Lenape chief born in 1577 who deeded the land to settlers in 1664. The township went by \"New Barbadoes\" until a 1921 referendum.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHackensack also has a Revolutionary War chapter that is easy to love. On November 20, 1776, Washington led his retreating army into what was then a small village around The Green. The troops camped there while he decided to keep retreating, which set up the victory at Trenton the next month. That stretch of the retreat is sometimes called \"The Great 1776 Hackensack Foot Race.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eState Street has its own line in the town's story. George J. Ackerman recalled the 1840s and '50s in writing published in 1902, reprinted in the city's 1976 history \u003cem\u003eHackensack – Heritage to Horizons\u003c\/em\u003e. He wrote that \"Main Street was known as Front Street and our State Street was the Back street,\" and that the two joined at the Courthouse. It's easy to imagine a supply house settling on the working side of town. The same book records the police moving into a new State Street headquarters, No. 225, in 1958.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTo see the heart of town, the Library of Congress holds a panorama of Court House Square, Hackensack, by Haines Photo Co., taken about 1913 (item 2007662578). It predates this label by decades, but it shows the civic center the street ran to. The county's Beaux-Arts courthouse is the work of architect James Riely Gordon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThen the shopping map changed. Before the malls, Main Street was a destination for Bergen County shoppers, with movie theaters and department stores. Garden State Plaza opened in Paramus on May 1, 1957, and Bergen Mall on November 14, 1957. Downtown then entered a decline that lasted decades. This label was printed into that changed world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🌾 A Broom Label at a Turning Point in the Broom Trade\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAmerican broom-making has a famously specific starting point. Levi Dickinson of Hadley, Massachusetts, began making brooms from broomcorn, a kind of sorghum, in 1797, and the Shakers later invented the flat broom. Legend credits Benjamin Franklin with bringing broomcorn to America. It is repeated wherever brooms are discussed, and I pass it along as the legend it is.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe years this label comes from sit at a turning point. Broomcorn was still grown in the Midwest in the 1960s, but production was moving west and then into Mexico. A U.S. International Trade Commission report and a broomcorn trade timeline both describe it. Mexico shipped its first 2,400 tons in 1965, and between 1965 and 1975 the industry switched over from U.S. to Mexican broomcorn. The brooms drawn here are classic straw brooms, the kind that era was built on.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🦁 About these\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe label never says what No. 6 means, but the broom trade did: brooms were sold in a numbered series, and a 1960 Chain Store Age buyers' guide puts No. 6 as the light grade, 18 to 20 pounds to the dozen and 12 to 13 inches in length, under No. 7 medium and No. 8 heavy. The word broom isn't printed anywhere on the label; the crossed brooms do the talking. The JET BROOM name went on the federal register as a broom trademark on January 3, 1978 (reg. 1,081,081, first use November 1976), registered to Jet Broom, Inc. of Houston, Texas, a different company from Hackensack Supply. The supply is finite in the plainest way - there's just this one, and once it's gone, it'll be very difficult to acquire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/alcor-supply-no-2-warehouse-broom-label-nos-eagle-miamisburg-ohio\"\u003eVintage 1970s Alcor Supply No. 2 Warehouse Broom Label 🦅 NOS Eagle, Miamisburg Ohio\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1950s-liberty-broom-label-paper-and-chemical-supply-co-sheffield-alabama-nos\"\u003eVintage 1950s 🧹 Liberty Broom Label, Paper and Chemical Supply Co., Sheffield Alabama, NOS\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-broom-label-no-830c-all-corn-penna-dutch-broom-makers-hamburg-pa-nos-ephemera\"\u003eVintage 1960s Broom Label 🧹 No. 830C All Corn, Penna. Dutch Broom Makers, Hamburg PA NOS Ephemera\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67832062378216,"sku":"VAG-15360277872872","price":11.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.8667883111_9c4s.jpg?v=1791075380","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/hackensack-supply-no-6-jet-broom-label-rampant-lion-crossed-brooms-hackensack-new-jersey","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}