Vintage Lima Ohio Beer Whiskey Bottle Display ~ Collecting Lima

My Lima Bottle Display 

A few photos of the display I did at the 2010 FOHBC National Bottle Show.

It's just some of my Lima Ohio bottles. But only ones that are embossed with the word Lima. And excluding medicines and milks. So it is a group of Beers, Booze, and Sodas, with a fruit jar tossed in. 

Click-the-pix to enlarge.

This is just a group photo post. Eventually I will do posts on the individual bottles and breweries, with history and ephemera. 

The bottles are all embossed. The white paint is temporary/removable, just to help with seeing the embossing.

• Fred Romer / Lima Bottling Works / Lima Ohio -- qt.
• T. Sullivan / Lima, O. -- qt. & 12oz.
• G. Geiger / monogram / Lima, O.

Various Lima Brewing Co. embossings, bottle colors and styles, and sizes.

Various E. Christen bottle sizes, styles, and embossings.

• Rare Lima Department Store fruit jar
• The Quilna Brewing Co. / indian face / Lima, O. -- amber qt.

C. Purtscher & Co / Lima O.

I broke this one setting up the display -- so it's on my MOST WANTED list!

4 different hutch embossings -- too blurry to make out: Christen / Consolidated / Harmon / ??

Consolidated Bottling Co. -- these are clear bottles that were ''nuked'' to become this deep royal purple. Relatively common ''available'' bottles, so no harm. I like them better this color. 

Here's an artsy shot of some of my other Lima bottles, not from my display:

And here's a couple of rare paper labelled Lima whiskeys:

• Brook Club Whiskey
• National Standard Private Stock  / Bottled by National Wine Co.

Sign of the Times - HUDDLE Restaurant Lima Ohio Neon Sign SOLD - Building Torn Down

The Huddle Fine Food Coffee Shop Restaurant

Lima, Ohio

After 62 years in business, the restaurant closed in 2007.

David McClain was the founder of the Huddle Restaurant and was owner and operator until 1980, when he sold it to his daughter Kay and her former husband, Jim. (Info as per David McClain's obituary.) The iconic Lima landmark closed for good in 2007 after more than 62 years in business. Then owner Jim Wende, who operated the business for 27 years, tried unsuccessfully to sell or rent the building.

Below, you can see that someone bought the cool vintage neon sign off the old HUDDLE Restaurant (on Metcalf, in Lima, Ohio). 

Here's the truck parked by the building. They were getting ready to take the sign down. Too bad it was a cold day, or I'd have hung around to get some action shots.

Apparently the property was transferred back to the bank on May 9, 2010:  Huddle Restaurant and Sheriff Samuel A. Crish to Citizens National Bank of Bluffton, 134 N. Metcalf St., $50,000.

Here it is without the sign...

I confess I never dined there, but I have always enjoyed the sign, and I have a couple of neat old restaurant-ware dinner plates in my Lima memorabilia collection.

According to this photo from Bill Stauffer, Lima Senior Class of 1957, The Huddle was a neat-o drive-in/diner:

Here's a couple vintage matchbook covers:

According to the above matchbook, there was a member of the Huddle restaurant chain in Lima, called The Paddle, on Northern Ave [Northland Plaza]. 

Oddly, the Lima 'Huddle' location is not listed. 

Compare the above building photos, and the different design of the 2 matchbooks, and you can see that the Lima Huddle's faux-Colonial architecture did not share the same mid-century-modern/space age/googie style design aesthetic of the rest of the Huddle buildings, like the ones in Los Angeles, California.

However, I found a comment on a site discussing old Lima businesses, that says: "[in] Northland [Plaza], near West Street, was the “Paddle” Restaurant. A great example of “googie” architecture of the era." 

Photo of a west coast Huddle shows Googie style architecture.

Here's a 1974 Help wanted page with ads for both Lima's The Huddle and The Paddle restaurants.

Here are my vintage restaurant china Huddle plates found in Lima:

UPDATE -- here are some more pix of the HUDDLE Restaurant building -- torn down, in rubble... - pix taken on 11-29-2010

Here's an article from the Lima News about what happened to the sign:

Sign Sealed, Delivered

Huddle sign rescued from demolition

October 06, 2010 / Bart Mills

LIMA — The sign stood over Metcalf Street for at least a half century, a blend of neon and oversized iridescent bulbs promising fine food to generations of passers-by.

As one of those passers, Jim Gideon couldn’t bear to see the old Huddle sign lost to history. So when he heard the former restaurant was on the verge of being torn down, he did what any other slightly obsessive man with access to cash and a boom crane would do. He went and got it.

“We understand they’re going to knock the building down so we called around, found out who we needed to pay for it, and spent Sunday taking it down. We have no particular end in mind except to preserve it,” Gideon said.

The Huddle closed its doors in 2007 after more than 62 years in business. The sign itself has been up since at least the 1950s.

The building was sold last month for $78,000 to Shree Lakshmi LLC, which, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office, is owned by Rajendra Patel, who also owns a Knight’s Inn motel in Bluffton. Patel was unavailable for comment on his plans for the property.

Gideon said he was told the new owners planned to tear the building down. He contacted the real estate agent selling the property and made an offer on the sign. He and his son, Brendon Gideon, pulled Brendon’s in-laws, Rob and Dave Frost, into their scheme. Gideon owns Lima Equipment Co. and the Frosts own Fidelity Builders. Between them, they had the equipment and know-how to remove the sign.

Even with the right equipment, the job was no easy one. It took the four men about three hours to move the 10-foot-by-10-foot sign.

“I’d estimate it weighs close to 1,000 pounds. It was no trivial undertaking,” Gideon said.

The crew moved the sign into a warehouse for storage. What they’ll do with it next is still up in the air.

“For now, it’s in the warehouse. We just wanted to make sure it was preserved. We haven’t decided what to do with it beyond that,” Gideon said.

________________________

Currently the lot is scraped flat. But it will be a long time before whatever goes up will evoke the nostalgia that the Huddle does.

Update: they put up a Subway sandwich restaurant in the former Huddle space. Subway didn't last long and that new building sits empty now (2026).

Metropolitan Block Building / Vortkamps Drug Store / Vintage Bottles and Postcard ~ Collecting Lima Ohio

This vintage postcard, circa 1910s, pictures Lima, Ohio's Metropolitan Block Building, erected in 1890. Click the photo to enlarge.

You can see: 

• The Metropolitan Cigar Store
• The HF Vortkamp Drug Store
• ''The Fair'' (no info yet)
• The Republican Party Headquarters.

• HF Vortkamp bottles -the top one belongs to a friend.
• The next two are my Vortkamps medicine bottles.
• The one says German Apothecary, with the Met Block address.
• The second bottle has 2 locations, and tells us Vortkamps was now a Rexall Store.

"In 1902, Louis K. Liggett persuaded 40 independent drug stores to invest $4,000 in a retailers' cooperative called United Drug Stores, which sold products under the Rexall name.  (The "Rex" in the name came from the common Rx abbreviation for drug prescriptions.)"

• Professor Vortkamp seems to have retired around 1920, according to an entry in the 1921 National Association of Retail Druggists Journal (NARD). 

Metropolitan Cigar Store token/advertising premium. 

Proprietor was a Mr. McCoy, but no other info found yet.

• A b&w view of the old Metropolitan Block Building morphed with the colorful 21st century modern stores on the ground floor. 
• Photo created by MotoMedia as seen on the Downtown Lima Facebook page.
• Read a short article about the beginnings of the Metropolitan Block Building. 
• The building was later called the American House, and the Stippich Hardware, and is now called the Met Block.
• It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, along with several of Lima's other noted buildings.

_______________

H. F. VORTKAMP, pharmacist, whose place of business is
at No. 300 North Main street, Lima, on the corner opposite the Court
House, belongs to the city's representative business men.  He was born
in 1858, at Senora, Preble County, Ohio, and is a son of Bernard
Vortkamp, long deceased, who was a faithful soldier in the Civil War.
   H. F. Vortkamp was reared and educated in Cincinnati and was
graduated from the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy in 1880.  He had
previously creditably passed through the parochial high school at
Cincinnati and before entering the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy had
read medicine in the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery.  After
his final graduation in pharmacy, he engaged in the drug business in
Cincinnati until 1886 and then removed his interests to Milford, Ohio,
where he continued until 1893, when he came to Lima.  He has continued
here in the drug business ever since and has the confidence of the
public; his experience and medical knowledge make his establishment
regarded as the leading one in the city as to reliability.  He is
secretary of the Allen County Association of Retail Druggists and has
held every office in the Association except that of treasurer.  He has
held every office in the Ohio State Pharmaceutical Association from the
lowest to that of vice-president, and has on many occasions been a
delegate to national and State pharmaceutical conventions.  He was
chairman of the Ohio delegation at the national pharmaceutical meeting
held at Boston in 1905.  At present he holds no official relation with
that body, having felt compelled to resign on account of many pressing
private matters of business.
   Mr. Vortkamp is a Democrat and has always been more or less
interested in politics.  He was a delegate to the State convention that
nominated Pattison for Governor, and was the only delegate that remained
all through faithful to his convictions.  He is a member of the Lima
Progressive Association and has served in the Lima City Council.  He has
other business interest in addition to those in Lima, namely: Stock in
the Hollister Drug Company, of Madison, Wisconsin; stock in the Sterling
Remedy Company, of Kramer, Indiana; and stock in the United Drug
Company, of Boston, Massachusetts.
    In 1880 Mr. Vortkamp was married to Carrie F. Fleischman, of
Cincinnati, a member of a distinguished family of that city, and they
have three sons and two daughters, viz:  Harry F., who has just
completed a six-year course at Niagara University, New York; George J.,
who is a graduate of the Ohio Normal University at Ada and has passed
his examination before the State Board of Pharmacy; Charles, who is a
student in St. Rose Parochial School, Lima; Henrietta, who is a Sister
of Charity, now teaching in Denver; and Elizabeth, who is a student in
St. Rose Parochial School.
    The family belong to St. Rose Catholic Church.  Mr. Vortkamp is a
member of the Catholic Knights of Ohio and is vice-president of Branch
No. 23.  His portrait accompanies this sketch.

Living In Vintage Cinderella Homes in Southern California

My old home, in Costa Mesa, artistically interpreted.

I lived in Costa Mesa, California for many years, and now watch eBay for collectibles. Here is an item advertising "Cinderella Homes", which I had never heard of, even though they were located just a couple of miles from where I lived. Apparently it was a big deal in the 1950s.

The autobiography of the Jean Vandruff, the designer/builder, has the scoop. It's a pretty cool story.

I love how antiques collecting is always fun and educational, and you just never know where it will lead you, or what you'll see.

 Excerpt from the builder's biography:

One day Shannon said, "Jean, instead of building custom homes, we really should be building tract homes. Individual building sites are becoming terribly hard to obtain, and the "boxes" that are presently being sold as tract homes are a disgrace to the profession." I heartily agreed, and we started plans for mass development of "Cinderella Homes."

We planned to have 4 floor plans and 20 elevations. They would be ranch style, wide and low, with clipped ceilings, long roof overhangs, rounded rafter-tails, shake-shingle roofs, lots of brick wainscoting and brick planters, brick fireplaces 8' wide and floor to ceiling, big wide windows with custom shutters and garage doors that tied in with the rest of the architecture.

They would be excellent open-space plans, where the wife was still in constant touch with her husband and children - instead of being isolated - when she was working in the kitchen. Every home that I ever designed has incorporated this concept, because I have always believed that "communication" is one of the primary keys to a successful marriage and a happy family.

Shannon was able to tie up about 40 acres of land in the west side of Anaheim, California, and went out to try to obtain a construction loan for 168 homes. Most everyone thought we were crazy dreamers. One lending institution after another said, "If you were going to build 10, 20, even 50 homes, we might go along with you, but 168? No way! But the Lord intervened, and he found an old gentleman who ran Hollywood First Federal S&L. He said, "I like your designs, I like your perfect credit record, I like your past performance, and I'm going to go along with you." We closed the deal on the final day of our being able to retain the land. Why does God sometimes test us right up to the last minute?

As we were under construction, we had hundreds of people stopping by to ask when the homes would be for sale. These houses were revolutionary. No one had ever seen anything like these, except in custom homes well above $20,000. These were going to be available for $14,000, with 4% VA loans.

When the houses went on the market, they were sold out in three days, and in a short time we had over 1,000 people on a waiting list who wanted a Cinderella home. The impact of these homes caused several local builders to go into bankruptcy, and others had to stop, in the middle of development, to redesign their homes.

At this time, we had what the advertising agency said was the world's largest sign. It was 200' long and 40' high, beside the Santa Ana Freeway - impossible to drive the freeway without seeing it!

After we started the second development, containing 701 homes, we didn't have enough to meet the desires of over 1,000 people, so we decided to separate out those who really wanted a Cinderella Home from those who weren't quite so motivated. We notified the people that there would be a 4:00 am grand opening. When the sun came up, we had sold over 200 homes.

This was an $11 million development. It would be a $200 million operation today. At the peak of construction, at the very end, we were producing 16 homes per day; a huge operation. Normally, this would have been an impossibility in one single locality, but housing starts were in a deep slump, and there was an abundance of tradesmen and material available. We had the largest building operation in Orange County in 1956.

During construction of those homes, the lending market had changed radically. Money became extremely tight, and we were unable to procure permanent loans (VA & FHA) for our buyers. Many builder-developers went into bankruptcy. This continued for months, and when we did find a permanent lender, we had to pay 9 points (9%) to obtain the loans. We had about 10% profit figured in, so this ate up virtually all of our profit. We barely skinned through in the black, and Shannon said he would never build again.

There were many builders who wanted to use our plans, especially in the San Fernando Valley, so we started a franchise program, licensing other builders to use our copyrighted plans, specifications, lumber lists, hardware lists, color schemes, advertising formats, contract forms, and the name, "Cinderella Homes." This operation lasted about six years before the appeal dwindled away. Altogether, there were over 6,000 Cinderella Homes built from those plans as far away as Houston, Texas and Wichita, Kansas.

 Updated 10/2013 -- Mark writes in:

I live in one of the early franchised Cinderella tracts (Cinderella Estates, Canoga Park CA) which was franchised to & built by the same builder as the Costa Mesa tract, Roven & Spiegel Construction Co. I was raised in a tract adjacent to a Cinderella development in Sylmar, CA. I am currently doing a period "restoration" of my Cinderella home. These homes were built in many areas, including (but not limited to): Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Pomona, Claremont, Goleta, Lodi, Stockton, Sylmar, Mission Hills, Northridge, Chatsworth & Canoga Park (2 tracts). I have been in contact with Mr Vandruff. His designs still look good to this very day... I also provide consulting services for anyone wishing to restore their Cinderella back to it's period beauty. - mark van cleve 

Collecting Vintage Palmer Cox Brownies Advertising ~ Featuring A Rare Brownie Tobacco Jar

Thought I'd share this interesting item I sold on eBay back in 2009.

It was this Palmer Cox Brownie Character Head Tobacco Jar Humidor

• So interesting --sharp strong features -- from a great mold -- does justice to Palmer Cox's Brownie character.
• Unusual piece -- I guess you'd call it chalk ware -- if you rub the inside a little white does come off on your hand. But the top of his hat seems to be glazed - not cold paint.
• No makers mark or number -- approx. 6" tall
• Sold price, was around $50 -- I think it should have gone for more, but it didn't. C'est la vie.

Palmer Cox's little Brownie characters have always been favorites of mine. Here's a little history on the little guys...

The excellent toonopedia site says:

• THE BROWNIES
• Original Medium: Magazine stories and cartoons
• Appearing in: Wide Awake magazine
• First Appeared: 1879, or 1881
• Creator: Palmer Cox

• The Palmer Cox page on wikipedia
• The Brownie Empire of Palmer Cox article on the Winterthur Museum's website.
• I'm sure you've seen their images on advertising for Kodak Brownie cameras.
• 
  

The assorted images (above) are from antique advertising tradecards, cigar labels, and bowling pin toys, as well as google image search screen shots (below). And these are just a miniscule drop in a huge bucket -- the Brownies were really popular, and well merchandised.

Aren't they cute?! Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

And of course there were lots of BOOKS!

And toys, games, dolls, figurines, dishes and tea sets, and... well, so much more. Just start googling, and enjoy!