Bedlam with Corned Beef on the Side Part IV
Written by Barry Kessler. Originally published in Generations 1993, reprinted in Generations 2011 – 2012: Jewish Foodways.
Part IV: A Decade of Deli
In 1907, of the eight delicatessen shops identified by the City Directory, two were in West Baltimore and six in East Baltimore. Harry Caplan, Harry Goodman, and Frank Hurwitz were joined by Charles Norberg on Central Avenue and Adolph Rothman on Bank Street. Wolf Salganik, a butcher who had been in East Baltimore since at least 1899, was listed as the owner of a delicatessen at 925 East Lombard Street.[1] L. Strauss and Company, near Lexington Market, appeared as a delicatessen only in the alphabetical listing. Given the name and location, this business was probably owned by, and catered to, German Jews.
In 1909 – 1910, the Baltimore City Directory listed seventeen delicatessens, thirteen of them in East Baltimore. Harry Caplan, Harry Goodman, Frank Hurwitz, Herman Buderak, Joseph Edlavitch and the Salganik Meat Products Company were clustered in four adjoining blocks of East Baltimore, Lombard and High Streets, while Joseph Amdur, Margaret Flum, Philip Resnick, Abram Linder, Ellen Jolden, Jacob Wollwich, and Kalman Lapides ranged further east. Two new delicatessens were located in the growing Jewish area near West North Avenue and two were near Lexington Market.
One of the delicatessen owners in 1909 – 1910, was Kalman Lapides. Lapides, a tailor, had a grocery on a South Baltimore corner in 1900. Perhaps the shop failed, since two years later he was again listed as a tailor, now on Little Gough Street in East Baltimore. From 1906 until 1919 he had a delicatessen at 1427 East Baltimore Street between Eden and Caroline.
By 1912, several non-Jewish establishments were among the fourteen delicatessens listed in the City Directory, including Louis H. Rettberg, R. Welforth and Son, John E. Schaninger, and Max Votel. Votel’s advertisement described him as a “wholesale and retail dealer in German produce.” The word “delicatessen” had expanded beyond the immigrant community and was being applied more generally to fancy groceries.
Continue to Part V: Heyshe Cohen and a Place to Sit
Notes:
[1] Salganik, an immigrant from Kiev, was listed as a delicatessen owner, but most likely his business was largely in raw meat. In the early 1930s Salganik went in to manufacturing delicatessen products and selling beef and pork at wholesale. From a large plant at Lombard and Exeter Streets he supplied numberous retail delis and groceries with corned beef, pastrami, rolled beef, salami, bologna, frankfurters, meat loaves, and sausage, as well as cured, smoked and cooked hams and bacon. Later he developed an extensive business as supplier to the Army and supermarkets. (Interview with Gordon Salganik, August 1993.)