Brooklyn Waterfront Watch: Stacking coffee as high as an elephant's eye -- on the eve of Prohibition

"Coffee in Brooklyn," c1920 (click to enlarge). On the flip
side of the photo there's a link to Prohibition! Read on.

by Ken

Of course you know all about "Postcard Thursday" from the Inside the Apple team of Michelle and James Nevius, right? Well, they're not the only ones regularly sending out great archival pictures. The Brooklyn Historical Society dips into its overflowing archives for a "Photo of the Week," and for some reason I can't stop looking at this week's, titled "Coffee in Brooklyn." I don't know, maybe it's the coffee-hoisting getup of the gent on the right, from boots to hat, or maybe it's the totality of the fashion statement made by him and his partner in hoisting. Or maybe it's trying to figure out what exactly our power lifters are going to do with that coffee bag or whatever it is they've got in high-hoist mode.

The photo is presented by BHS digitization associate Tess Colwell:

Artisanal coffee roasters have been popping up everywhere in Brooklyn in recent years, but it might come as a surprise that Brooklyn has a long history of coffee roasting that spans long before it was considered hip. The photo of the week was taken around 1920 in a warehouse at Bush Terminal (now Industry City) and features two men lifting a large bag of coffee. To me, the most interesting part of this photograph is actually the verso (i.e. the text written on the back of the photograph). It speaks to the sentiment towards prohibition at the time and the opportunity for growth in the coffee industry. It reads,

“MORE COFFEE DRINKING WHEN NATIONAL PROHIBITION COMES — A STORY OF PRODUCTION. Stacking coffee in a big warehouse at the Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, N.Y. Coffee from Central America. Scientists say that every adult takes some kind of a stimulant, and coffee is the most widely used of all the stimulants. When all traffic in intoxicants is stopped, millions of people will drink more coffee. The consumption of coffee will increase greatly through the lunch room trade. Hundreds of thousands of people will go into lunch rooms and eat pastry and drink strong coffee instead of going to saloons for drinks, when prohibition puts an end to all saloons in this country.”

While it’s not entirely true that prohibition led to increased coffee consumption, it’s true that the popularity of coffee was on the rise. In the early 20th century, Brooklyn was roasting more coffee than any other place in America. John Arbuckle (1839-1912) is credited as pioneering the way we purchase coffee today—roasting and grinding beans onsite, packaging coffee in one pound bags, and marketing it to different consumers around the country. By 1909, Arbuckle was roasting about 25 million pounds of coffee a month. Arbuckle Brothers continued to roast and store coffee at the Brooklyn waterfront factory until 1930, when it was sold to General Foods.

BHS has teamed up with Brooklyn Bridge Park to produce a Brooklyn Waterfront History website, which promises "much more about the history of coffee in Brooklyn, as well as other interesting historical facts about the waterfront." You can begin exploring BHS's online photo gallery here. Finally, to receive BHS's "Photo of the Week" along with news about the society's rich assortment of public programs (the BHS building itself, on Pierrepont Street in Downtown Brooklyn, is a landmark and well worth a visit in its own right), you can sign up here.


IF YOU'RE CURIOUS ABOUT POSTCARD THURSDAY

Today's isn't. A postcard, I mean. It's a stamp.

On May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. To honor that achievement, the U.S. Postal Service issued the above airmail (or "air mail") stamp on June 11, just three weeks after the historic landing. That was the same day Lindbergh received the Distinguished Flying Cross, but five days before he collected his $25,000 prize from Raymond Orteig for making the flight.

[More about the flight, and a pic of Lucky Lindy, onsite.]

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THERE'S SOMEONE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT EVEN CRAZIER THAN McCAIN

Presidential candidate Gene Amondson (in the back)

...And even crazier than that McCain-like guy from Bananas. Our pals from Politics1 found him. For some reason he wasn't a candidate for the Republican nomination this year; he's running as the nominee of the Prohibition Party and he could take away another significant chuck of votes from McCain especially in... hmmm... Provo. Like many priests, Gene Amondson, has a serious problem with homosexuality. If you run into him on the campaign trail and he offers to give your young son some butter, I'd recommend calling the police at once.

Just when you think the Prohibition Party is only good for comic relief ... they go and prove you right. Prohibition Presidential nominee and pastor

Gene Amondson was a guest this week on The Weekly Filibuster political radio program in Maine and he offered rather, umm, unusual views on several topics. Here are his comments on what causes homosexuality and the sexual molestation of children: "I had a professor in college that said that the rising of homosexuality really came when our diets were changed, when they took out vitamin E, which was found in whole grains and real butter. You can change the diets of rats and remove vitamin E from them and rats can become homosexual. So, our diets need -- if you got kids, feed them whole grains, feed 'em real butter, none of this margarine -- [and] when I used to go home as a kid in college, I'd say to my folks, 'Pass the...pass the homo-margarin.' Well my dad didn't think that was funny -- but our diets need to be right and if we ... keep having drunk moms and dads...drunk dads molesting their children, that's where this homosexuality comes around a lot." Want to know what ruined morality, families and women? "Now see the Devil woke up and said 'How can I ruin America,' he says 'this is what I'll do, I'll go to the Catholic churches and the Protestant churches and I'll get all these women that used to do things like fight alcohol and I'll get them into Bible studies and they'll learn scripture, and scripture and they'll forget about fighting alcohol that hurts our children,'" explained Amondson. Yup ... everything went to hell in America when we started using margarine and women started reading the Bible for themselves instead on trusting their husbands to tell them what they needed to know.

Amondson prefers McCain over Obama because he feels McCain will make the kind of Supreme Court appointments he would and his first choice for a running mate was Newt Gingrich but he settled on Leroy Pletten. Amondson is younger than John McCain and he has a campaign ad: