Vintage 1950s Head Man Crate Label Rooster Art 🐓 Los Angeles Mid‑Century Produce Advertising NOS

Who Was the Head Man? 🐓 Vintage 1950s Rooster Crate Label, Los Angeles Produce

Size: 11" x 4"

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Look at this rooster. Top hat, gold cane tucked under his wing, one foot kicked up mid-strut, crowing his head off. He's the Head Man, and he knows it. This is an unused Head Man Brand crate label from a produce merchant at the old Terminal Market in Los Angeles.

🔍 What's on it

Big golden-yellow HEAD MAN letters with red-orange edges across a deep purple ground, the rooster strutting right between HEAD and MAN, and BRAND in small type under it. FRUITS & VEGETABLES runs in light blue along the lower left, and a green strip runs along the bottom. At the lower right is a silver-gray swallowtail banner with an interlocked SL monogram and STANLEY LEVINSON, Bonded Commission Merchant, Terminal Market - Los Angeles, Calif. The back is plain.

A bonded commission merchant didn't grow anything or pack anything. He sold growers' produce on consignment at the market and took a commission, and the bond was there to protect the farmers who trusted him with their crop. So this label went on crates of whatever Levinson was selling that day, fruits and vegetables both, which is why no single fruit is named.

🚂 The Los Angeles Terminal Market

The Terminal Market opened in the fall of 1917 at the end of the Southern Pacific line, as the city's wholesale fruit and vegetable market. Architect John Parkinson designed its first buildings and kept adding to them until 1923, and they're known today as Alameda Square. At one point, the story goes, ten percent of the nation's fresh food passed through that market. From the 1920s to the 1980s, Los Angeles had two big wholesale produce markets, this one on Seventh Street and another on Ninth, until the new consolidated Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market opened in 1986.

Stanley Levinson's company also put out a second rooster label, the Gay Cock brand, and the label dealers who've handled both put them in the 1950s. Same strutting rooster attitude, different bird.

📏 Details

• Vintage 1950s Head Man Brand Fruits & Vegetables crate label
• Stanley Levinson, Bonded Commission Merchant, Terminal Market, Los Angeles
• About 11" x 4", unused
• You'll get one label like the ones shown

🖼️ That rooster looks great framed in a kitchen, a farmhouse dining room, or anywhere you want a little swagger on the wall. It's a natural gift for anybody from Los Angeles or anybody who collects crate labels.