A piece of glass that says "prune syrup", a thimble, half a clay pipe, pottery shard, more marbles, and another glass vial:
The best find was this small bottle from a pharmacy owned by Otto C B Cromm. The address is 365 Van Brunt which is the same as one of favorite restaurants in the area called Fort Defiance.
The best find was this small bottle from a pharmacy owned by Otto C B Cromm. The address is 365 Van Brunt which is the same as one of favorite restaurants in the area called Fort Defiance.I ran it over to show the owner and he says he's heard that Cromm was a bit of a surly German man fond of scaring the neighborhood children. He also told me that the pharmacy was supposed to have beautiful cabinets lining the walls, and that they were the only place in Red Hook for many years with a telephone, --so it was a big destination for anyone needing to make a call.
This other bottle was found in a pile of dirt on the neighbor's lot after the house was knocked down. It's from McDonough and Co in Jersey City, at Henderson and First Street...but no idea what might have been in it.
This other bottle was found in a pile of dirt on the neighbor's lot after the house was knocked down. It's from McDonough and Co in Jersey City, at Henderson and First Street...but no idea what might have been in it.
Hi Alexandra,
ReplyDeleteI came across your blog (and beautiful home) via Design Sponge, and just happened across a couple of these posts about found items while trying to get a sense of the extent of the renovations you'd done. I'm actually an archaeologist (well, grad student), so it's been very interesting to see what's been turned up! I thought this website MIGHT be of interest to you in case you had any more bottles your were curious about (http://www.sha.org/bottle/), but I think the one you have here looks like it might have been a bottle for some form of non-alcoholic, carbonated beverage, water or otherwise. It's hard to tell in a photo, but the shape doesn't look like beer, wine, or other spirits bottles that I've seen from around the occupation period, and the glass seems pretty hefty.
Anyway, thanks for sharing all of your photos--I hope you're enjoying your wonderful 'new' home!
Thank you so much Catie for the link! I tried to do a bunch of research on the bottles but was only successful with a few of them. It's amazing that there were breweries (the addresses of which are on the bottles) and I can't find record of them anywhere!
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the archeology! I would have loved to study...but too awful at math and science....
I do love to dig, though!!