{"product_id":"rare-antique-no-1-priscilla-broom-label-hamburg-pa","title":"Antique No. 1 Priscilla Broom Label 🧹 Hamburg Broom Works 1920s — NOS Art Nouveau Lithography, Hamburg PA","description":"\u003ch2\u003eNo. 1 Priscilla Broom Label 🧹 Hamburg Broom Works, Hamburg, Pennsylvania\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 4\" x 4\"\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\/uB3BFWZ4GAA\" 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\u003cp\u003eLook at her! A little maid in a big frilly bonnet with a bow on top, puffed white sleeves, a crisp white apron and black stockings, holding her broom up like she just won the cleaning contest. She stands in a bright red circle inside a swirling blue-and-teal Art Nouveau frame, with a pale yellow circle at her feet and NO. 1 PRISCILLA across the top banner. The bottom banner reads HAMBURG BROOM WORKS, Hamburg, Pa., and down in the corners, in tiny type, R.J.K.\u0026amp;CO. and 937. Never used, plain back. I have a stack, so you'll get one just like the one shown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🏭 Wilson Schmick's Broom Works\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWilson E. Schmick started making brooms in 1894 under the name Hamburg Broom Works, first over in West Hamburg, just south of the P\u0026amp;R railroad station - the station sat on the west side of the river, about half a mile from town. In 1911 he put up a $25,000 two-story building at 2nd and Pine Streets, on the lot where Hamburg's electric plant had burned down that same year, and in 1921 he sold that one to the Burkey Underwear and Hosiery Company and kept the building across Pine Street for the brooms. A 1912 catalogue of theirs was titled \"The Most Modern Broom Manufacturing Plant in the World\" - these folks were not shy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a family outfit, too. Wilson's younger brother George E. Schmick went on the road as the broom works' traveling salesman right out of Hamburg High School in 1901. About a year later Governor William A. Stone gave him a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia, where he took the illustrating course, and by the fall of 1904 he was back selling Hamburg brooms all over Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and New York City. Their father, Elias, worked for his son in the broom business as well.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSchmick guarded his labels, too. In 1917 he brought out his Puritan and Eclipse brands, and when West Reading Broom Works copied his bands, sewing and labels, he took them to court - in 1922 the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ordered the copying stopped. The Puritan had white velvet bands on a polished natural-wood handle, the Eclipse was banded in blue velvet and sewn with blue cord, and the court found they had won \"an enviable reputation and wide demand for the Hamburg brooms.\" The copycats were his own people: in 1919 a group of his employees walked out and formed West Reading Broom Works, with his former salesman John H. Hoffman as president, and Walter Hess, his foreman of more than ten years, went with them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1918 he bought out every other shareholder and owned the whole thing himself; Hamburg Broom Works was publicly held again from 1923 until 1999 and ended up part of Hamburg Industries. Hamburg Industries was still in town in 2011, when Nexstep Commercial Products of Springfield, Ohio bought its assets and moved the work to Paxton, Illinois and Springfield. The old broom works building on Pine Street was sold in 2013, and the EPA lists the old broom works ground as a removal-only cleanup site.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrooms were good to him. In 1908 he built himself an imposing brick house at 63 N. Fourth Street, just off Fourth and State, with stained and leaded glass and souvenirs of his travels in Europe - and folks called him Hamburg's broom king. The house is still there; today it's The Bismarck, a bed and breakfast run by the borough's own mayor.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🏞️ The Town\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHamburg sits on the east bank of the Schuylkill River at the foot of the Blue Mountains in northern Berks County, some sixty miles northwest of Philadelphia - about 4,300 people today. Martin Kaercher Jr. laid out the first town lots in 1779 - in everyday talk folks called it Kaerchertown - and an act of April 3, 1837 made it a borough. The name is likely a twist on Bad Homburg in Germany, because the Blue Mountains looked like the Taunus range back home. Hikers know it for the Appalachian Trail, Hawk Mountain and Pulpit Rock, and railroad folks know it for the Reading Railroad Heritage Museum - fitting, since the broom works got its start right by the P\u0026amp;R station.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e👒 Why Priscilla?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePriscilla was THE housekeeping name back then. Priscilla Mullins, the Plymouth Pilgrim girl at her spinning wheel, was everybody's picture of a good homemaker, and The Modern Priscilla, a needlework-and-housekeeping magazine out of Massachusetts, ran from 1887 to 1930 and had about 600,000 readers by 1922. Put that name on a broom - right next to Schmick's Puritan line - and every housewife knew just what you meant.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePriscilla had company on the shelf. A 1920s Hamburg Broom Works ad shows their No. 7 Lady - a maid in a green dress and white apron, sweeping the floor - and there was an Indian Queen ad for the broom works, too. Another of its old ads put a Reading Railroad locomotive right in the picture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🖨️ The Tiny Print in the Corners\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eR.J.K.\u0026amp;CO. is the printer's mark and 937 is the design number. Those initials match R.J. Kittredge \u0026amp; Co., the Chicago label printers, whose stock labels carry a design number the same way - one of their corn can labels reads \"R. J. Kittredge \u0026amp; Co., Chicago #330.\" My Acme No. 6 from the same broom works carries the same R.J.K.\u0026amp;CO. with 930.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e📜 The Stories\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe story goes that visiting salesmen from other broom regions would come to town and find the whole place - lodging houses, lunch counters and all - running on the broom trade. The trade's other story is that the artists who drew labels like this were very good, signed nothing and got paid very little. And what finally did in the old broom trade is no legend at all: the vacuum cleaner and plastic bristles. Broom factories across the country peaked at 1,034 in 1919.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe picture of the old Hamburg Broom Works building, and the same spot today, is just there for the history - you get the label, not the photos.\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\/rare-antique-rex-8-broom-label-amsterdam-broom-co-ny\"\u003eAntique Rex #8 Broom Label 🧹 Amsterdam Broom Co New York NOS Chromolithography Advertising Ephemera\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-acme-no-6-broom-label-hamburg-broom-works\"\u003eAntique Acme No 6 Broom Label 🧹 1910s 1920s Hamburg Broom Works Hamburg PA Crown New Old Stock Advertising Art Ephemera\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-elk-broom-label-unique-americana-treasures\"\u003eAntique No 6 Elk Broom Label 🧹 Hamburg Broom Works Hamburg Pennsylvania NOS 1920s Buck Chromolithograph New Old Stock\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":40769763311781,"sku":"VAG-7034829373605","price":11.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.3274456822_3a01.jpg?v=1785354178","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/rare-antique-no-1-priscilla-broom-label-hamburg-pa","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}