The William Seher Company

After photographing the building at 12th Street and Reid (that I blogged about yesterday), I turned around in this driveway. I couldn't help but think that the 'S' on the pillars looked vaguely familiar. That's when I realized I was looking at part of Lorain's bottling history.

The 'S' stands for Seher, and the gates apparently used to lead to the William Seher Company bottling and distribution facility.

William Seher had been the manager of the Lorain Brewing Company (which was a branch of the Cleveland & Sandusky Brewing Company). From 1924 on, it appears that Seher went into the bottling business for himself with his self-named company.

1956 Phone book ads

A quick look through the city directories showed that Seher's company was originally at 330 W. 12th. By 1926, it was using the 304 12th Street address, which is the location for the two pillars and gate in my photograph.

Seher passed away some time between 1933 and 1937. But his company continued at the 304 12th Street address until around 1957, with his son and widow at the helm. A phone book ad reals that both beers (Genesee, Fort Pitt and Hudepohl) and soft drinks (Vernors, Hires Root Beer and Cotton Club) were distributed by the company.

Beginning in the 1959 book, the bottling facility had new owners and a new name: The T. J. Bottling Company. T. J. apparently stands for the first names of the company's principals: Jason J. Kallis (president) and Tony Palumbo (vice president).

1959 phone book ad

The T. J. Bottling Company continued to bottle and distribute the signature product, Seher's Old English Ginger Beer as well as a variety of other soft drinks and distilled water products.

Old bottles of Seher's Old English Ginger Beer turn up fairly frequently on Ebay.

Today, the gate with the distinctive pillars is the entrance to Geometric Forms .


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It's interesting that the William Seher Company distributed both Vernors and his own ginger beer product. I wonder which one was the bigger seller? Some Lorain friends of mine mentioned the Seher Old English Ginger Beer to me a few years ago, and I had never heard of it before. (I grew up on Vernors, which was one of the things my siblings and I were given to drink when we were sick along with 7Up. I can still remember the occasional coughing or sneezing jag that resulted if we drank it too soon after it was poured.)

Own one of the houses on the vintage postcard!

739 West Ninth Street

Although you can't see it very well on this vintage postcard, the house at the far right – at 739 W. Ninth – is currently for sale.

It's a real bargain too. A sign on the front door lists the terms: $300 down and $300 a month!

I did a little online research to try and find out how old it was. The Lorain County Auditor website has the year it was built listed as 1900, which usually means it was built before 1900.

At the library, I dug around in the available city directories. The oldest book that has listings by street is the 1912 edition. William H. Heyer, a foreman, was listed as the owner of 739 W. Ninth Street.

The pre-1912 books have different names for many, if not most, Lorain streets. W. Ninth Street used to be called Second Avenue. After cross-referencing some residents to make sure, I found William H. Heyer in the 1905 and 1903 books at 315 Second Avenue.

Going back even further to the 1891 book (the oldest at the library), I discovered that Lorain had a different house numbering system back then. It appears that someone just counted the houses (or lots) on the street and numbered them numerically from Broadway.

I managed to cross-reference about a dozen families who were in both the 1912 book on W. Ninth Street and the 1891 book on Second Avenue. And there in the 1891 book was William Heyer again, at 52 Second Avenue. (And indeed, his house was about the 52nd listing in the 1912 book!)

Anyway, 739 W. Ninth is a very stately looking home with a nice deep lot.

Sure would be nice if the right handy person bought it and gave it some TLC!

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Incidentally, while researching the above house in the city directories, I couldn't help but look up the William Seher (or the Slattery Motion Pictures) house at 329 Ninth Street to see how old it was. My research wasn't conclusive, but the earliest listing that I could find showing Seher living there was in the 1905 book – when the address was 223 Second Avenue.

In the 1903 book, Seher was living at 917 Reid.

Since there were no listings of addresses and residents by street, it would be a real scavenger hunt to see if the house was in the book before Seher lived there. However, according to the Black River Historical Society's Images of America Lorain book, it appears that Seher did build the house –  for the then-unheard of sum of $15,000.

Click here to read Alan Hopewell's reminisces about the Seher mansion over at his Pointing the Cannon blog.

Lorain Crystal Ice Company – Part 3

May 26, 1933 Newspaper ad

Above is a small ad for the Lorain Crystal Ice Company that appeared as part of a full-page of advertising for the opening of the Deutschof in May of 1933.

The Lorain Crystal Ice Company suffered a loss in May 1935 with the death of William Seher. As reported in the Sandusky Register of May 15, 1935, "William Seher, 67, native of Sandusky and president of the Lorain Crystal Ice Co., died Monday at his home In Lorain." It noted that he moved to Lorain from Sandusky in 1895, and became manager of the Cleveland-Sandusky brewery at 330 12th Street in Lorain until Prohibition. His obituary also stated that in 1919 he started the Seher Bottling Co. of which he was president and manager, and that he entered the ice business in 1898.

This ad (below) for Lorain Crystal Ice Company appeared in the Lorain Journal and Times Herald on July 26, 1939.

For many young people today, it's probably hard to believe that before today's modern refrigerators became the norm, families had to have a block of ice delivered to their house by the "ice man" and placed in their "ice box" to keep their food fresh.

My mother remembers that her family's ice box was located in a little shed built on to the rear of their house on Sixth Street. The outside location worked out well because the ice man could deliver the ice without coming into the house. Also, the melting ice necessitated draining the ice box occasionally, and it was easier to do it outside.

The fascinating Ice Box Memories website has a whole page devoted to ice cards. What were ice cards? As the website explains, "Ice Cards were placed in windows so the iceman had a visual indication of the amount of ice to bring to the ice box."

Here is the card from the Ice Box Memories website for the Lorain Crystal Ice Company (below).

Courtesy Ice Box Memories website

Get-Up Soft Drink Debuts – April 1955

June 2, 1958 Lorain Journal ad

Lorain County has a rich history of soda pops, bottling companies and distributors: Sickles Bottling Company (Ma's Old Fashioned Root Beer); Whistle Bottling Company (Whistle, Brownie); The William Seher Company (Seher's Old English Ginger Beer); Canada Dry Bottling Co. (on Colorado Ave.); T. J. Bottling Co. (Dodge City Sarsaparilla, Quiky); Dr. Pepper at 2215 Lake Ave. in Elyria; and both Pepsi and Coca-Cola bottling facilities still located in Elyria. And leave us not forget perhaps the most beloved soft drink of all, Wild West Sarsaparilla, distributed by World Trade, Inc.

Well, here's another soft drink to add to that fizzy legacy: Get Up, a lemon drink apparently not unlike 7Up. It was launched in our area by the Get Up Beverage Co. at 2215 Lake Ave. in Elyria – the same address as Dr. Pepper.

Get Up was introduced to Lorain Journal readers via a full-page ad (resembling a typical newspaper page) that ran in the April 7, 1955 edition.

The main selling angle appears to be that Get Up had fewer calories than other other soft drinks, as well as being available in king-size bottles – making it ideal for families.

There's not very much information about Get Up on the internet. I'm not sure, but it appears to have been an Ohio-based, regional beverage, because all of the existing bottles and marketing items for sale on eBay are located in cities in the Buckeye State.

Mentions of Get Up in grocery store ads in the Journal seem to fizzle out by the early 1970s. 

Perhaps the whole field of lemon-lime drinks competing with 7Up (Get Up, Bubble Up, Sprite, Teem, etc.) was just getting too crowded. 

7Up was never one of the Brady household favorites anyway. Mom and Dad may have liked it, but for my siblings and me, it was something Mom gave us to drink when we were sick. Consequently, I still associate it with not feeling well – thus rendering it an unlikely choice for me to enjoy on a normal basis.

Abandoned Brewery – July 16, 1926

Last Friday’s post mentioned how Prohibition resulted in non-alcoholic or “near beer” versions of products such as Old Dutch Beer.

But in many cases after Prohibition began, bottlers simply switched to bottling soft drinks in an attempt to stay in business. William Seher, who had operated the Lorain Brewing Company, did just that – opening a new business in a new facility that focused on soft drinks.

Seher’s new venture was quite successful. But the original brewery, located nearby at 330 W. 12th Street, would never be used again, even after Prohibition was repealed.

Today the former brewery's location is a vacant lot.

The article below, which ran in the Lorain Times-Herald on July 26, 1926 provides a poignant look at the shuttered brewery.

Ask the Blogger: Name that Lorain Bottling Plant

While having dinner with some friends over the weekend, I was surprised to find out that some of them actually read this blog! They also had a question for me: Did I remember a Lorain bottling plant that in the 1960s was somewhere around 14th or 15th Street. They thought that the company bottled soda pop, including Seher's Old English Ginger Beer.

Well I didn't remember any of this (especially since I'm more of a Vernor's drinker), but a trip to the Lorain Public Library revealed that in 1968, there was a company called the T. J. Bottling Company, Inc. at 318 15th Street. Their November 1968 ad (shown above) shows that besides the ginger beer, they handled Dodge City Sarsaparilla, Quicky (a grapefruit and lemon soda), and Clicquot Club Beverages.

I'm going to have to do some more research, because apparently there is much more to this story. According to the Images of America book on Lorain published by the Black River Historical Society, William Seher was the owner of the Lorain Brewing Company, which began producing the popular ginger beer bearing his name during Prohibition. So I guess I'll have to find out the relationship between his company and the T. J. Bottling Company.

If anyone else has suggestions for future blog topics, feel free to email me! And by all means, be sure to post a comment regarding any of the entries if you feel like it. It's easy! Just click on the word 'comments' at the end of the entry. A box will pop up that will allow you to type your comment into it. Then, use the pull-down menu to select 'Anonymous' (if you prefer) and hit the 'Post Comment' button!

More late afternoon Lorain shots

On the same day I photographed the former library, I also grabbed a shot of the progress on the former Gel-Pak building on Broadway (above). It's looking great.

Hard to believe it looked like this (at left) back in October 2010.

(According to this online story, last week was move-in time for Lorain County Health & Dentistry.)

While driving around, I also grabbed a shot of the former William Seher mansion (also known as the Slattery Motion Pictures house) on Ninth Street. Just like when I photographed the former library, the sun was just right to give the scene a nice, warm glow (below).

The Lorain Whistle Bottling Company Part 2

Looking south across the tracks at where Lorain Whistle Bottling Co. was located at 1138 Lexington 

Sometime in the mid-1930's or so, the Lorain Whistle Bottling Company became The Forrest Distributing Company Inc. It remained at the 1138 Lexington Avenue address, but the Zurcher family was now joined by the Forrest family in the running of the company.

The 1937 city directory ad now described the company as 'wholesale distributors of the finest beers, ale and porter. The business would continue at that address right up into the early 1980's.

1958 Lorain Phone Book ad

Around 1983, the listing for 1138 Lexington Avenue changed to the RKK Distributing Company. By 1988, however, the Prie-Fit Machine Corp had taken over that address, and apparently that was the end of decades of bottling and beverage heritage at that location.

That area by the railroad tracks had really been a hotbed of bottling and beverage distribution in the old days. The William Seher Company, and later, the T. J. Bottling Company, had been located just up the street at 304 12th Street.

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One of the beers pictured in the Forrest Distributing Company ad above is none other than the traditional Brady family beer of choice while I was growing up: Old Dutch.

Stop back here next time for a look at this beer that was our family favorite.

Rainbow Golf Gardens Ad – July 4, 1930

During the summer, many people think of heading out to play a round of miniature golf – perhaps in Vermilion at Romp’s.

I had always thought that miniature golf (what we sometimes refer to as Putt-Putt) was something that first became big in the 1960s and 70s. Well, here’s an ad that shows that it was popular in Lorain much earlier than that.

The above ad for the Rainbow Golf Gardens ran in the Lorain Times-Herald on July 4, 1930.

According to this Wiki entry, miniature golf courses had become quite popular by the end of the 1920s, thanks to the development of suitable artificial greens. The sport became so popular that rooftop courses became very common.

In Lorain, the Rainbow Golf Gardens had two locations: 1520 West Erie (just east of Lakeview Park) and 710-14 Broadway.

The business was owned by Frederick A. Koegle and William Seher.

As the Wiki article indicated, the Depression wiped out most of the early miniature golf courses in the U. S. by the end of the 1930s. It looks like Lorain’s mini-golf courses were victims of bad economic times as well.

Available city directories at the Lorain Public Library indicate that the Rainbow Golf Gardens (at West Erie only) was still open in 1933, but had closed by the time of the 1937 edition.

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Speaking of miniature golf, I happened to drive by the former Putt-Putt on Route 57 near Route 2 recently. The sign is still in great shape, but it looks like windmills would be the least of a golfer’s problems on that course today.

1937 Brookside Yearbook Ads

I bought this 1937 Brookside High School yearbook – officially called The Leader – on Ebay a few years ago from a seller in Michigan.

While flipping through the book, I found an old black and white photo of some very young children, imprinted with a Christmas greeting and a family name. What was unusual was that I recognized the family's name on the photo, as well as one of the kids as a girl that I had gone to school with in Lorain.

From there it was easy to find the girl's parents in the city directories (I was happy they were still around, and in the same house) and send them back the Christmas card they had mailed about 50 years earlier.

Needless to say they were very surprised and grateful, and sent a very nice thank-you card to me.

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Anyway, also in that same yearbook were a variety of interesting ads in the back. (I continue to find that old yearbooks provide a great snapshot of local businesses at the time of their publication.)

Whoever was in charge of selling ads did a good job. This book is loaded with ads of well-known Lorain businesses, including The Lorain Journal, Heilman's, the William Seher Company, the Wickens Memorial, Kutza's Pharmacy, Dusky Brothers and H.P. Nielsen. Some have nice little pieces of artwork accompanying their ad copy.

I particularly like the beautiful line art of the Central Bank Company. Does anyone do that sort of rendering today? I doubt it.

Click on each of these for a larger view.

Lorain Crystal Ice Company – Part 1

I found this old Lorain Crystal Ice Company ice pick in my father's workbench, and it brought back some memories.

My parents had long told me about having ice delivered to their houses when they were kids in the 1920s and 30s, and how it was a treat to get some small ice chips to suck on from the back of the truck in the summer (if the delivery man was a nice guy). My mother also remembered going down to the company's Oberlin Avenue plant with her father and buying it there from a sort of vending machine. There was a slot to put your coins in, and then the block of ice would clunk its way down a chute so that you could take it home.

Anyway, here's some history about this iconic Lorain company.

A Standard History of Lorain County Ohio Volume II by G. Frederick Wright (1916) includes information about the people behind the Lorain Crystal Ice Company, as well as information about the early days of the business.

The entry for Albert A. Plato reads, "That he is not lacking in the mature judgment and resourcefulness implied in his classical family name, is shown by the position which Mr. Plato holds in connection with the more important industrial activities of the City of Lorain, where he is the general manager of the Crystal Ice Company, engaged in the manufacturing of artificial ice on an extensive scale. This company was organized in 1907 and was incorporated with a capital stock of $65,000, which was increased in 1914 to $75,000. The personnel of the company official corps is as here noted: William Seher, president; John S. Dorn, vice president; August Kuebeler, secretary; Edward A. Brown, treasurer; and Albert A. Plato, general manager. The plant of the company occupies a substantial modern building 130 by 150 feet in dimensions, a portion of the same having a height of three stories and the remainder of two stories. The establishment has a capacity for the output of fifty tons of ice daily, and a storage capacity for 3,000 tons. Employment is given to an average force of thirty men and the enterprise virtually represents one of the most important public utilities of the thriving City of Lorain.

The listing for Mr. Plato also explains why there seems to be a discrepancy as to when the Lorain Crystal Ice Company was founded. (The online History of Lorain, Ohio Chronology states that the firm was founded in 1904). It explains that in May of 1904, Mr. Plato "assumed the position of collector for the Lorain & Elyria Ice & Coal Company. Upon the reorganization of the corporation in 1907, as the Crystal Ice Company of Lorain, Mr. Plato was made general manager, of which responsible office he has since continued the efficient and valuable incumbent."

Here is the company's listing in the 1912 City Directory (below).

Dodge City Sarsaparilla

Lorainites must have really enjoyed their sarsaparilla in the old days – because the city had not one, but two different hometown western-themed sarsaparillas, pardner.

I’ve written several times about Wild West Sarsaparilla, and included a few images of its distinctive can. But I’ve never included a shot of Dodge City Sarsaparilla until I saw these bottles (a brown one and a green one) on Ebay recently.

I did post the story behind Dodge City Sarsaparilla here back in 2013. Apparently its creation was tied to Lorain’s 125th anniversary celebration back in July 1959.

Dodge City Sarsaparilla was bottled by the T. J. Bottling Company, which I wrote about back here in 2010. 

T. J. Bottling Company (also known as T & J Bottling Company) began its operations at the old William Seher bottling works at 304 Twelth Street around 1958. The company remained at that address until around 1967, when it moved to 318 W. 15th Street. It disappeared from the city directory listings around 1975.

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I think it’s amusing that the old west seemed to be a popular cultural theme in Lorain and the surrounding area (as opposed to a more logical nautical one). Besides the two Western soft drinks, there was Heilman’s Ranch House, the Westgate Shopping Center, the Tonopah Tavern in Sheffield Lake, and Avon Lake’s Saddle Inn.

Ninth Street Then & Now

Here's a vintage postcard showing the view looking east down Ninth Street from Long Avenue. It's where Ninth makes a dogleg as it heads towards Broadway.

Driving over there this past weekend to photograph it (since there wasn't any snow on the ground), I wondered if the homes would still be there. I was surprised to see that the whole block was still intact.

I was even more surprised when I realized that I go down this very street each week on the way home after picking up my Selenti's Pizza every Friday night, and didn't recognize the homes on the postcard.

Here's the current view, complete with a dismal, colorless winter sky that makes the whole proceedings depressing.

On the same side of the street as these homes, a little further down Ninth Street just before Reid Avenue, is the former mansion owned by William Seher, who owned the Lorain Brewing Company (below).

Photographed January 2, 2012