Louisville’s Greenbaums Were Grandpa’s Guys

In profiling whiskey men I find it was common for a father to bring one or more sons into his business as the young men completed their education, often before they turned twenty.  The three Greenbaum Brothers were unusual in having a father who seemingly rejected dealing in liquor while they themselves embraced the Louisville, Kentucky, whiskey business their immigrant grandfather had founded.  They honored grandpa by dubbing their flagship whiskey, “Old Joe Gideon.”

Joseph “Joe” Gideon was born in 1817 in Baden-Wittenberg, Germany.  Of his early education and occupation little is recorded. When Joe was in his early twenties, he married Mina {Minnie) and their only child, Mary, was born in 1844 in Germany.  Almost ten years would elapse in their homeland until the family arrived in the United States in 1853.  Soon after they moved to Louisville, Kentucky.

With Louisville the epicenter of the Nation’s liquor trade, Gideon appears to have spent the ensuing several years learning the business, working for one of the many liquor houses located there.  Listed as a “merchant” in the 1860 Federal census, by 1870 Joe Gideon was heading a household that included his wife, daughter Mary, her husband, Herman Greenbaum, and five Greenbaum grandchildren, a total that later would grow to eleven.

Having saved his money and waiting for an opportunity, about 1877 Gideon was able to strike out on his own. He opened a liquor business at 63 Sixth Street, near Main, wholesaling whiskey to the many saloons in Louisville.  If Gideon, now 53, had wanted his son-in-law to join him in his liquor house, Herman Greenbaum was more interested in selling haberdashery, as a partner in a Louisville clothing store.  Joe continued to operate the business for the next dozen years before dying in May 1890.

Enter the Greenbaum boys — Isaac, Joseph and Samuel.  Having known and revered their grandfather, they decided to follow in his footsteps and opened a liquor house in 1902 they called Greenbaum Brothers.  Their flagship brand of whiskey was “Old Joe Gideon” and their slogan “From grandfather to grandsons.”  A saloon sign issued by the partners emphasizes the importance they placed on the generational link.

A key to their marketing success was making a presence at national expositions with displays of their whiskey.  Shown here is the Old Joe Gideon exhibit at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon.  Company representatives sent out circulars to saloons and retail whiskey dealers up and down the Pacific Coast urging their visit to the Greenbaum display in the Agricultural and Horticultural Building. The flyers also promised guide service:  “Please do not fail to call on us, as we will be in a position to tell you how to see the Exposition to advantage.”  A year earlier the Greenbaum Brothers had sponsored a similar exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis.

Aiming for a nationwide market for Old Joe Gideon, the Greenbaums were rewarded when the whiskey was given gold medals at both events.  Copies of the awards are shown above, left from St. Louis, right from Portland.  The brothers wasted no time capitalizing on their good fortune, placing a neck label on every bottle of Old Joe Gideon that broadcast the awards. They also embossed the message in the glass of their bottles and flasks.

With sales of their whiskey expanding, the Greenbaums soon needed more space and moved in 1907 to 123-125 East Main Street, and relocated again two years later to 115 East Main, their final location.  This site was in the heart of Louisville’s “Whiskey Row” and indicative of the brothers’ success. They advertised by issuing shot glasses with their brands.

By this time the Greenbaums were featuring whiskey labels beyond grandpa’s.  Those included “Elmhurst.” “Midvale,” “Shannon,” “Stratford.” "The Buffalos,” and “Wicklow."  They never bothered to trademark any of them, not even Old Joe Gideon.

Thoughout this period of growth, the Greenbaums were demonstrating the closeness of familiar ties.  The 1900 Federal census found Isaac, Joseph and Samuel, along with other seven siblings living with their widowed mother on Breckenridge Street in Louisville.  Isaac, 36, and Joseph, 33, were still umarried and would remain bachelors all their lives, living with their mother until she died.  Samuel, 27, also was single but would marry later and have three daughters.

Not everything the Greenbaum’s touched turned to gold.  Like many liquor wholesalers, the brothers saw profits in marketing a highly alcoholic medicinal nostrum.  They called theirs “Vigor-Lux, the Drink for Tired People.”  Sold as a “tonic beverage,” they trademarked the name in 1914.  By this time, however, the Food and Drug laws had been in place for eight years and federal authorities increasingly were scrutinizing alleged remedies like Vigor-Lux. 

In June 1915, the Greenbaums’ tonic appeared on an FDA list of dozens of concoctions as: “Alcoholic medicinal preparations…held to be insufficiently medicated to render them unfit for use as a beverage….”  A special federal tax was slapped on Vigor-Lux and the other potions, reducing substantially any hope of profits for the Greenbaums.  The brothers continued in the wholesale liquor business together until shut down in 1920 by the coming of National Prohibition.  They then proceeded to other occupations. 

Today in Louisville’s Temple Cemetery, a substantial granite monument marks the location of the Greenbaum family plot.  Of the three brothers only Isaac is buried there.  To be seen at the rear left with an old weathered gravestone lies Joe Gideon, the man who sparked such devotion by his grandsons.  As the Greenbaum brothers proved over and over, they were grandpa’s guys.