Abe Trattner and his Pennsylvania “Wet” Hotel

During the early decades of the last century the sale of liquor was being attacked  by prohibitionists in many ways and on many fronts — nationally, statewide, and in hamlets as small as Delta, Pennsylvania.  Located in York County, 30 miles southeast of York City, Delta and its Auditorium Hotel had attracted the attention of the Anti-Saloon League — regrettably for Abe Trattner, liquor dealer, realtor, and co-owner of the hotel.

Tiny Delta was a site for hotels primarily because it was a railroad crossing. The Peach Bottom Railway entered the hamlet in 1876 and ran its line to Red Lion and York City. From the South, the Maryland Central Railroad reached Delta in 1883 and began operating trains in 1884 from there to Bel Air, Maryland, and Baltimore  Catering to travelers and licensed by the county, the Auditorium Hotel, shown here, featured a bar and restaurant where whiskey and other alcohol were readily available.

In the Spring of 1914, prohibitionists staged a large rally in Delta and submitted  a petition of 345 names, mostly from women, demanding that the Auditorium and another hotel be denied liquor licenses.  Three hundred protesters, likely abetted by the Anti-Saloon League, chartered a special train and filed into a York City courtroom to make their point:  “They brought overwhelming proof that both proprietors had violated the law,”  according to “The American Issue,” an organ of the League.  Things looked bleak for Trattner and his partners.

In a sense, Abe had been heading for a conflict with “dry” forces for some years.  Born in 1868 in Galicia, Austria, he was the eldest child of Isaac and Bella (Durst) Trattner.   With four younger siblings his parents brought him, about age 15, to the United States, settling in York, Pennsylvania.  There Isaac ran a grocery store.  Although Abe’s early employment is lost in the mist of history, he likely began his career working for his father.  The 1900 Federal census lists his occupation as “traveling salesman.”

Apparently tiring of life on the road, by 1905 Trattner had established an office at 38-40 East Market Street in York where he dealt in real estate and insurance, as well as providing small loans, as indicated by an ad in a local business directory.  York teemed with real estate offices and Abe may have found it difficult to crack the market,  By 1909 he was listing himself as a general merchandise “broker.”

The following year in March, his mother Bella died.  Several months later Abe, a bachelor of 42, in York married a woman seventeen years his junior  She was Esther Bauer, an immigrant from Hungary.  Apparently their marriage was childless.  His nuptials may have persuaded Trattner to seek a more profitable occupation.  By 1911 he was advertising as a “Wholesale Dealer in Beer, Wine and Liquors,” located at 144 South George Street.  The real estate business now was “in the rear.”  Abe and Esther lived above the store.

Instead of the crowded real estate field, Trattner had emerged as one of only two liquor wholesale houses in York.  He was buying whiskey by the barrel from Pennsylvania distilleries and decanting it into gallon and larger ceramic jugs with his label and selling them to local saloons and restaurants.  There the liquor  would be poured into smaller containers to be sold to customers, either by the drink or in glass flasks.

As shown here on his billhead, Trattner had been designated by the Anheuser-Busch brewery of St. Louis as its local agent, signing him up as a member of its network of dealers across America.   Having purchased the appropriate machinery,  Abe was able to bottle Budweiser and other beverages on site. A Trattner labeled bottle is shown here along with a detail of its embossed label.

Continuing to expand his enterprises, Abe looked to Delta and the Ambassador Hotel that recently had come up for sale.  The family already had a hostelry in York, appropriately named “Trattner Hotel.”  It was run by Abe’s younger brother, Harry.   Partnering with Theodore Helb, characterized by prohibitionists as “the big millionaire brewery boss of York,” Trattner invested heavily in the hotel, sharing a mortgage of $10,250  — equivalent today to about $205,000.

Now Trattner found the Ambassador’s liquor license under heavy attack.  According to the opposition, Abe was overheard talking to his attorney about how much the hotel would be worth if the court refused the license.  His response was quoted as a curt, “Not a damn.”  This response seemingly defined the stakes as the crowded courtroom was hammered to order in York City in February 1915.  Local judges Wenner and Ross presided.

After several days of testimony, the judges rendered their decision, noting:  “If this were a mere question of majorities, we would, of course, be obliged to refuse this license, but the law does not permit the case to be decided on that ground alone.”  On the other side was the need to accommodate travelers by rail who regularly stopped overnight in Delta.  The only other hotel in town was dry, the court noted, and evidence existed that “…a large majority of the strangers and travelers stopping there prefer a licensed hotel, where liquors can be procured, to the temperance house.”  With that justification, the judges awarded the Ambassador Hotel an extension of its liquor license.

The Anti-Saloon League, having targeted the situation in Delta, was outraged.  Its American Issue publication trashed the Ambassador Hotel as “an old frame shell” without any substantial value if it was denied alcohol sales and suggested that financial interests and political influence had leveraged the decision.  Trattner was fingered as exerting “a mighty political influence in the county.”

Whatever lay behind the decision, its effect was short-lived.  Although the Anti-Saloon League had been bested in Delta, five years later it triumphed when National Prohibition was enacted.  The Ambassador Hotel went dry. Trattner was forced to shut down his liquor house.  After initially concentrating again on real estate, by 1931 Abe was listed in business directories owning and operating a storage company.

Trattner lived long enough to see Repeal but did not revive his liquor business, dying in 1939.  Following a Jewish funeral service, he was buried in in the South Hills Hebrew Cemetery in York, the grave shown here.  Abe’s confrontation over the Ambassador Hotel with the Anti-Saloon League was only a small blip on the prohibition screen but it reveals the lengths to which the Drys would go, even in tiny Delta, Pennsylvania.