Philip Lobe Sounded a Ram’s Horn Over Baltimore

In the Bible, at the orders of their leader, Joshua, the Israelites marched seven times around the walls of Jericho, then the priests blew their rams horns and the walls of the city fell.  When Phillip Lobe introduced “Ram’s Horn Rye” on the streets of Baltimore, nothing quite so drastic occurred, but the city’s drinking public definitely took notice.

The whiskey man who named it such, Phillip Lobe, was born in Hesse-Kassel, Germany, in April 1851 and emigrated to the United States at an early age.  Shown here in maturity, the 1870 census found him at 18 working for a Baltimore butcher named Gompright and living with the Gompright family.  Over the next ten years, Lobe apparently decided that liquor, not loin chops, was his real meat.   In the 1880 census he was listed as “keeps liquor store.”

The answer lies in Lobe's 1874 marriage to Mary Goldheim., a woman who had been born in the Prussian part of Germany. She was the daughter of an established Baltimore liquor dealer named Lazarus Goldheim, a man who had come from Germany with his family in 1847 and already was selling a whiskey he called "Ram's Horn."  He hired his son-in-law and he and Lobe worked together until 1878 when Lazarus retired and Phillip took over the business.

Lobe initially did business at 278 West Pratt Street, the address where Goldheim had established himself in 1871. With the success of his liquor trade, Lobe was forced about 1882 to move to larger quarters down the block at 220 West Pratt.  When that space proved too small within two years he moved to 204 West Pratt.  That address would be his corporate home for the next 18 years.

Much of Lobe’ success was due to his Ram’s Horn Rye.  A ram’s horn had played an important part in his Jewish heritage.  In the earliest Biblical reference, Abraham finds a ram caught by his horn in a thicket and sacrifices it to Yahweh.  More commonly a ram’s horn was played as a trumpet, called a “shofer.”   It is referred to 72 times in the Old Testament, including its sound crumbling the walls of Jericho.  Applied to rye whiskey, Lobe’s Ram’s Horn attracted widespread attention, although he never bothered to trademark the name.  A photo from the Maryland State Archives shows a horse-drawn Lobe van rumbling down a Baltimore street delivering his whiskey to local saloons and restaurants.

He sold his whiskey to those establishments in large quantities, usually in gallon size ceramic jugs with his underglaze label on them.  Note that he was requesting that customers “return when empty.”  A frugal man, Lobe would clean, refill and sell them again. 

He marketed his retail whiskey in glass as with the “LFS Special” quart bottle shown here. Smaller quantities were sold in flasks, including an amethyst pint and a clear half-pint.  All bottles contained his embossing.  

Lobe’s popularity was enhanced, no doubt, by the quality of his items gifted to favored customers buying his products.  Of special note was a label- under-glass back of the bar bottle with a color image of his Rams Horn label.  He also gave away a well-designed shot glass with an outline of a ram’s head etched in the glass, likely to both wholesale and retail customers, as well as a corkscrew with Ram’s Horn advertising.

Some good luck also attended Lobe’s business career.  When the Baltimore fire of 1904 burned out a large part of Baltimore’s downtown and many of its liquor dealers, Lobe’s Pratt Street address was just outside the burned area.  He likely was able, at least for a time, to take advantage of lessened competition to increase his base among both wholesale and retail customers.

  

He also was fortunate in having two sons who were interested in  following in his footsteps.  As they matured both Henry and Ferdinand Lobe, the latter shown right, were brought into the firm, eventually becoming managers.  They assisted their father with a final move in 1913 to 9 North Howard Street.  The company name became Phillip Lobe & Son.

Their business history was not without its problems.  In November 1911, the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, acting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, seized and confiscated 10 cases of Royal Crest Buchu Gin that the Lobes had in their possession.  The charge was that while the tonic was 38.8 percent alcohol that fact failed to be listed on the label as required by the Pure Food and Drug laws.  The labels clearly noted that Philip Lobe and Sons were the distributors.  The family was found guilty and fined $200 (equivalent to $5,000 today.)

As he aged, Phillip increasingly turned his business over to his sons. He lived until April 1920, dying just after his 69th birthday, and long enough to see National Prohibition enforced, causing his sons to shut down the liquor business of 36 years and move on to other occupations.   With his family grieving at his burial site, he was interred in Oheb Shalom Cemetery.  His gravestone is shown below.

I was particularly attracted to this story by Lazarus Goldheim's use of the Biblical symbol of the ram’s horn to name a whiskey and then Lobe's ability to market Ram’s Horn Rye actively and attractively.  As Phillip Lobe was lowered into his grave, I hope that a ram’s horn “shofer” appropriately was sounded over the Hebrew burying grounds.

Note:  This post has been updated as the result of an extensive article by Susan Helen Adler entitled "From Goldheim Bitters to Phillip Lobe & Son," that appeared in the July-August 2018 edition of Bottles and Extras, the magazine of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC).  Ms. Adler's excellent piece filled in gaps in my research and provided a photograph of Lobe, for which I am very grateful.

Over the Jumps with the Lanahans of Baltimore

William Lanahan Jr., shown here, was the master of hounds for a Maryland fox-hunting coterie -- a highly prestigious post for the scion of a whiskey making family.  Not that the founding father, William Sr., was shanty Irish when he founded the business. While there is scant information about his life, the elder Lanahan is said to have achieved considerable wealth and influence as a confectioner before the Civil War. During the early 1850’s he began producing and selling a whiskey he first federally registered in 1855 as "Hunter Pure Rye" and, afterward as "Hunter Baltimore Rye."  The brand would make the Maryland city almost synonymous with quality rye whiskey.

 

From the beginning,  the Lanahans’ whiskey exhibited aristocratic pretensions:  The label and ads featured a man formally dressed in fox-hunting garb astride a horse, both set to gallop with the hounds   Subsequent branding featured a horseman with top hat and the slogan:  “The American Gentleman’s Whiskey.”  This “timber-topper” image clearly was attempting to appeal to the upper classes or people aspiring thereto.   After his father’s death in 1868,  William Jr. took over the business and vigorously expanded whiskey-making operations. 

In 1870, according to the earliest city directories, Wm. Lanahan & Son was doing business at 20 N. Light Street. The company was located there in 1904 when the Great Baltimore Fire destroyed its building. It relocated at 205-207 Camden Street shortly thereafter, but obtained permission to rebuild at its old location after the widening of Light Street. 

In 1906 the firm resumed business in a newly constructed building at 20 Light. Its three story facility, known as the Lanahan Building, loudly announced its purpose with the word “whiskey” in prominent letters on its face. It also proclaimed Wm. Lanahan & Son as “distillers.” Jim Bready, the noted expert on Baltimore whiskey, insists that the Lanahans actually were “rectifiers,” who took alcohol distilled by others, mixed it with other ingredients, bottled, labeled and marketed it. Although the firm sold other whiskeys, among them “365,” "Bodega", and "Hunter Bourbon,"  Hunter Baltimore Rye was its flagship brand. 

When the young Lanahan took over management of the firm, he embarked on a major advertising campaign in newspapers and magazines. He also directed painting the Hunter Baltimore Rye logo and a mounted fox hunter on a wide range of locations. Its signs graced outfield fences in major league baseball parks in New York and Chicago as well as in Baltimore. Several years ago when a building was torn down at Broadway and 64th St. in Manhattan, as shown above, uncovered was a colorful ad for Lanahan’s whiskey on a wall eight stories tall. 

 Unusual for the time, Lanahan employed a sales force of six men who traveled the country marketing the whiskey and signing up local distributors. As was common with brands seeking national attention, Lanahan issued a wide range of advertising items. Among them were a celluloid pin depicting a fox hunter, shown here. The company issued at least several varieties of paperweights. Most carried the waving horseman. Never shy about extolling the virtues of his whiskey, Lanahan advertised Hunter Baltimore Rye as “The Perfection of Aroma and Taste...the Leading Whiskey of America.”

Perhaps recognizing that its appeal as a “gentleman’s” drink might have a negative effect on potential female customers, the whiskey also was touted as "particularly recommended to women because of its age and excellence.” All this hype worked. Hunter became the largest selling rye whiskey in America. 

 A 1912 book entitled "Baltimore: Its History and Its People"  extolled the firm thus: “There is no article made in Baltimore that has done more to spread the fame of the city as a commercial centre than has Hunter Baltimore Rye.” Having conquered America, Lanahan looked abroad to expand his market. In London the program of a performance of “Sherlock Holmes” Hunter Rye was advertised as “The Popular American Whisky.” (Brit spelling). It was the lone Yankee booze sold at the Duke of York Theater that season. 

 In 1902 the firm tried to get a concession from the imperial court of China. Letters to that effect exist from Wm. Lanahan & Son to Gen. Thaddeus S. Sharretts in Shanghai. Sharretts had been appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 to negotiate with the Government of China on increasing imports of U.S. goods. Lanahan’s plea may have paid off. A Hunter sign in Chinese recently sold at auction. Another Asian port in which the whiskey found a place was in Manila, the Philippines. A photo exists of American soldiers of the 8th U.S. Infantry, in the islands to put down an insurrection, swigging down quarts of Hunter Baltimore Rye during their off-duty hours. 

With success came competition. Many other whiskeys began to call themselves Baltimore rye -- even products made hundreds of miles from the Maryland city. In reaction to these presumed copycats, Lanahan registered “Hunter Rye” with the government as a trademark in 1890 and again in 1905; and “Hunter Baltimore Rye” in 1898 and in 1908. Wm. Lanahan & Son and its brand operated for 59 years, a extraordinary corporate life in the turbulent history of Baltimore whiskey-making. 

The Lanahans never forgot their ancestral Maryland home, above.  By the time the doors to the operation finally closed in 1919 with the coming of Prohibition, however,  Lanahan family members had moved into the world of banking and high finance. One Lanahan became a governor of the New York Stock Exchange. Another achieved a measure of fame by marrying Scottie Fitzgerald, the only child of author F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Those Lanahans moved to Washington, D.C., where they were a glamour couple during the 1950s and 1960s. 

The Hunter Rye brand survived Prohibition. The name eventually was bought by Seagrams, one of the big whiskey cartels out of Canada. About the same time Seagrams purchased the Wilson Distillery in Baltimore. It merged the two operations and began making Hunter Rye at its Calvert distillery in Baltimore. When that facility subsequently was shut down, the Hunter-Wilson Distilling Company was relocated to Seagram’s Louisville plant. Apparently because “rye” was losing popularity, Hunter became a Kentucky bourbon. It did not give up its “Tally Ho!” image, however. Its advertising featured a man on horseback clearing a jump with the slogan: “The first one over the bar.”