Arriving in the United States in 1892 with $1.25 in his pocket and little English, Eduardo Cerruti, despite frequent setbacks, continued throughout his life to plunge into new challenges that made him a living legend in San Francisco. With liquor sales as his mainstay, Cerruti, shown here, founded cigar companies, ran a popular nightclub, and as a final plunge, built a large indoor salt-fed swimming pool that that operated until the 1950s.
Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1875 Eduardo “Edward” Cerruti was the son of Ambrogio Cerruti who was in his 50’s when he married the much younger Adelaide Sivori. The couple would have four other sons, all of whom would play a role in Eduardo’s career. At the age of 17, the youth took his first plunge, scraping together the money for passage to America that left him little cash for the voyage. Although the record is silent my surmise is that Cerruti went “Round the Horn” making his first American landing in San Francisco.
At the edge of going hungry, Cerruti quickly accepted employment in a local restaurant washing dishes for $15 a month. He had been on the job only eighteen days, however, when the establishment was shuttered by the sheriff for indebtedness. Back on the street he then went to work in a cannery at $1.25 a day, followed by several months selling flowers from an outdoor stand. Late on the year of his arrival, Cerruti found decent-paying employment in a sausage factory, staying two years and, by living frugally, saved $400.
Then Cerruti took his second plunge. Now 19, with a partner, he opened his own sausage company and store but soon switched to groceries. Although the store was relatively profitable, the national financial panic of 1907 combined with his falling seriously ill, led to the failure of the enterprise and saddled Eduardo with significant debt. He sought and received a loan from C. B. Levaggi and paid his creditors in full, thus preserving his reputation. [See my post on the Levaggis, Aug. 18, 2014.]
Forced again to working for others, Cerruti became a bartender in an Italian all-night restaurant in San Francisco, working the 4 A.M. to 2 P.M. shift. In the afternoons, he worked as a sales representative for a local macaroni firm, leaving in 1897 for a similar role with the Italian Swiss Wine Company, founded at Asti, California in 1881. Shown above is an artist’s concept of Cerruti’s activities, part of a 1914 San Francisco Chronicle illustrated story of his life.
During this period, Cerruti told the Chronicle, he ate “five cent lunches” and saved his money for a chance strike out on his own once more. That opportunity arrived in 1899 when with a partner, he organized the Lichenstein-Cerruti Cigar Company in San Francisco, serving as vice president.
Wanting sole ownership of a business, Eduardo then took another plunge. In 1903 he opened a general merchandise store he called Cerruti Mercantile Company at 1419 Stockton Street. Counting up his previous jobs at twelve, the entrepreneur told the Chronicle that this move was his lucky thirteenth. His new company sold a range of merchandise, including Italian Swiss Colony wines, olive oil, and liquors imported from Italy and France. A photo of the store shows the barrels and cases ready for delivery. That may be Eduardo himself second from left. No one seems to notice the missing “C” in the sign.
To assist in this enterprise Eduardo recruited his siblings. August, his closest brother in age, apparently had come to America earlier and was working for him. As Cerruti Mercantile grew “large and successful,” Eduardo put out a call for other brothers to join him. Peter, Victor, and Mario answered and emigrated. Apparently delighted to have family members around him Cerruti in late 1905 gave notice to the Trade: “It gives me great pleasure to announce that I have associated with me my four brothers and have incorporated the Cerruti Mercantile Co.” Under the articles of incorporation, Eduardo owned 255 shares of the stock with the remaining 245 shares divided among his four brothers. The Cerrutis are shown here in a card celebrating the incorporation.
This period of Cerruti prosperity was followed by another setback: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. When the fire seemed to threaten the Cerruti building, the brothers with friends removed all the merchandise they could carry and stowed it at a nearby intersection. As the Chronicle told it: “By a strange freak of fate the building from which the merchandise was removed was not damaged to any extent while the merchandise that had been carried away was destroyed by the fire, depleting the company savings nearly 90 percent.”
The brothers were undeterred by the fire losses. They began again with even greater vigor to rebuild the stock. Meanwhile, Eduardo, still a bachelor at age 33, had met a daughter from a well-known California Italian-American family, Norma Cassinelli. At 23 years old she was ten years his junior. They married in August 1908 at the farm of the bride’s grandfather. The couple is shown here on their wedding day posed in the common tableau of the time — bride standing, groom sitting regally in a chair. Over the next eight years they would have three children, a girl and two boys.
Meanwhile at the Mercantile, the Cerrutis were operating as “rectifiers,” that is, blending whiskeys obtained from distillers to achieve a desired color, taste and smoothness. The liquor would have been aged in barrels on the premises, shown above, then decanted into bottles, labelled and sold to saloons, restaurants and hotels. Shown here is an amber whiskey quart with the Cerruti monogram embossed in the glass. The company flagship brand was “Old Promotion,” a label Eduardo never bothered to trademark.
The reference was to a fully owned subsidiary of Cerruti Mercantile Co. called “The Promotion Wine and Liquor Company,” the entity engaged in the wine and liquor business. Shown here is a silver-plated serving tray that would have been given to saloons and other establishments using Cerruti products. It notes both companies and carries the Cerruti logo. The company warehouse is shown above. According to court records, the status of the Promotion spin-off was changed in 1916 when it was dissolved and all its assets transferred to Eduardo. He ran it as a single proprietor until July 1918 when he merged with a second firm and the name changed.
During the mid-1910s Eduardo, perhaps drawing on his earlier restaurant experience, opened an eating and drinking establishment on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco. Called the Club Lido, it was advertised as the “Leading Cafe on the Pacific Coast.” A postcard indicates that it was, indeed, a fancy restaurant with a spacious dance floor and elegant decorations. Liquor sales at both Cerruti Mercantile and the Club Lido, however, came to screeching halt in 1920 with the imposition of National Prohibition.
Denied the revenues from wine and liquor sales that had fueled his enterprises, Eduardo plunged again — this time into the water. He opened a saltwater natatorium he called “The Crystal Palace Baths,” and later renamed the “Crystal Plunge.” Opened in 1924 located at 775 Lombard Street, the pool held some 300,000 gallons of salt water that was pumped in from a pier near Fisherman's Wharf. The complex included a dance floor and served snacks and non-alcoholic beverages. The Crystal Plunge apparently never made a profit in spite of Cerruti’s efforts. Those included managing the operation personally, with wife Norma as a cashier and youngest son, Romolo, as the pool engineer.
Even so, Eduardo had sufficient resources to buy his family a spacious home at 3627 Webster Street, shown here, valued today at more than $2 million. It was there that his health declined as he entered his 76th year. A bout of pneumonia led to a heart attack. He lingered for several days before dying at the age of 76 in Notre Dame Hospital on January 23, 1951. He was buried in Cyprus Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, outside San Francisco.
A fitting closing thought on this immigrant San Francisco entrepreneur was provided by the author of the Chronicle article: “Edward Cerruti is the living embodiment of what a foreign boy can make of himself in this country, even if, as he did, at the start the capital is only a dollar and a half.”
Note: Much of the information for this post and three illustrations came from the 1914 San Francisco Chronicle article. Special insights came from a short piece that Courtney Cerruti, a great granddaughter, contributed to the pre-pro.com website of Robin Preston. She ended by saying she is “so proud to be a Cerruti.” And well she should be.
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