Vintage Hackensack Supply No. 6 Jet Broom Label 🧹 Rampant Lion Crossed Brooms Hackensack New Jersey 1960s-70s

🦁 What Is a Rampant Lion Doing on a Broom Label From Hackensack, New Jersey?

Size: 6" x 4" ~ Little to minor wear on the top left hand corner.

In the 1960s and '70s 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.

This is a vintage broom label printed for Hackensack Supply and sold under the name No. 6 Jet. It measures 6 x 4 inches (about 15 x 10 cm) in portrait format, the size of a 4x6 photo print. It is a one-of-a-kind original, and it is the only one I have. No year is printed on it. The five-digit ZIP Code puts it no earlier than July 1963, and the styling fits the 1960s through the 1970s. I'll show you how I read that below.

The 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.

---

🧹 Hackensack Supply: What the Label Says and What It Doesn't

The 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. Maybe it was chosen for some Jet Age gloss, and it's easy to imagine that, but nothing printed says so.

A Hackensack Supply Co. is still in business today, selling restaurant and janitorial supplies, with listings on Orchard Street in Hackensack and on Route 17 in Paramus, and the directories put its start anywhere from 1950 to 1978. Whether it is the same house that once worked from 165 State Street is the kind of thing an old-timer would know. If you worked for Hackensack Supply, or remember it on State Street, I'd love to hear from you.

---

🦁 The Lion, the Brooms, and a Number: 111

In heraldry, rampant 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 strength, quality, built to last. It is not real heraldry. I have found nothing that ties this lion to Hackensack, to Bergen County, or to any family.

The 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 & 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 called the figure its Black Dragon, and Hackensack Supply put the same drawing under "No. 6 Jet." That is one drawing with two names. (This Johnson Products is not the Chicago hair-care company. Nothing has turned up yet on the Memphis firm.)

That pairing is why I read the 111 as a stock-design number. Broom houses appear to have bought a ready-made picture and had their own name printed into the panel. It is a strong hint, but I have found no printer's catalog to confirm it.

Here 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.

---

📮 Reading the Clues: How a ZIP Code Dates a Label

With 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.

Beside 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, which looks like a label caught in the changeover. That is my reading and not a proven fact.

The 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. The flat, saturated color on a glossy surface and the plain type fit the look of the 1960s and '70s. I give a range because nothing printed on the label gives a year.

---

🏙️ Hackensack, and the Street Called the "Back Street"

Hackensack 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.

Hackensack 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."

State 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 Hackensack – Heritage to Horizons. 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.

To 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.

Then 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. If today's Hackensack Supply Co. is the same firm, its Route 17 listing in Paramus follows the same road out of downtown. That is an "if," and I'm leaving it as one.

---

🌾 A Broom Label at a Turning Point in the Broom Trade

American 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.

The 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.

---

🖼️ Display Ideas

• 🖼️ Frame it with a cream or white mat that leaves room around the purple border. The sky-blue and red then read like a small vintage poster.
• 🧹 Hang it beside a real old broom in a mudroom, laundry room or pantry, with the lion over the broom it was meant to advertise.
• 🗺️ Build a Jersey shelf with a Hackensack postcard, a Bergen County map and this label as the commercial-art centerpiece.
• 🦁 Start a heraldry wall with lion prints, crests and other rampant-lion ephemera. This one has the added charm of crossed brooms.
• 📒 Slip it into a junk journal or scrapbook. At 4x6 inches it fits a standard photo sleeve.
• 🏪 Give it a place in a shop or studio for a cleaning business, hardware store or janitorial supplier.

---

🎁 Who Collects These

Broom-label and household-advertising collectors will recognize the stock-design story, and the Memphis sibling is a find in itself. Bergen County and New Jersey local-history collectors want pieces that name a real State Street address. Heraldry and lion fans get a rampant lion in saturated primary color. Mid-century graphic-design lovers will enjoy the flat blue, red and yellow. It also makes a good gift for a Jersey native who grew up with a 201 phone number, or for a housewarming where the host takes sweeping seriously.

---

❓ FAQ

If the lion was a stock design, how can this label be one of a kind?

The picture was stock, but the imprint is Hackensack Supply's own: the name, the State Street address, the phone number and "No. 6 Jet." I've never come across another copy of this imprint, and this is the only one I have.

Is this connected to the "Jet Broom" trademark?

No connection is documented. A "JET BROOM" mark (registration 1,081,081, tied to a 1976 filing) belongs to Jet Broom, Inc. of Houston, Texas, a different company. I keep it separate from this Hackensack label.

What does "No. 6" mean?

The label doesn't say. It most likely marks a size or grade within the dealer's line of brooms.

Does the label actually say "broom"?

No. The word isn't printed anywhere. The crossed brooms in the artwork tell you what it sold.

Can I still visit 165 State Street?

The address is still in Hackensack. Property listings give 1986 as the year the office-warehouse standing there now was built, so it is a different building from the one this label's era knew.