Purity Above All

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

This is a story of a business whose success literally ran dry. In early 1900, downtown Elmira was abuzz. There were over 35,000 people living in the city and 54,000 in the county.

Water Street under water

While a year earlier, the city’s commercial area had flooded, the spring now saw the area recovering and prosperous. Business opportunities were growing. One business looking to expand into the area was Salzman & Siegelman, a wholesale wine and liquor store based out of Brooklyn, New York. Their Brooklyn store had been so successful that they’d been able to add stores in Albany, Amsterdam, Syracuse, and Troy. Now, in the spring of 1900, they were opening a sixth shop at 108 East Water Street in downtown Elmira.

The turn of the 20^th century saw a rise in the trend of drinking at home. It was a change from the past, when liquor and wine were mainly purchased and consumed in bars and saloons, often dark and smoky places. Leading up to the store’s May 5^th opening day, Salzman & Siegelman had been getting the store ready and advertising for weeks aiming to attract modern men and women interested in purchasing alcohol to drink at home. 

The Elmira store would be well stocked with the largest selection of wine and liquor in the area. It would carry the very best products and gladly refund customers if anything was found wanting. Because they’d learned from experience, they hired saleswomen to attract more women customers. Women, they found, were the primary customers when it came to purchasing liquor this way. Finally,  for an open and family-friendly atmosphere, the store’s walls and large shelves were painted white and well lit. Another draw was that for weeks ahead of its May opening, Salzman & Siegelman had been advertising that they would be giving every purchaser a souvenir card for a free quart bottle of Red Cross Port.

The man behind this business was thirty-year-old Morris Salzman. Salzman was born in Austria in 1870, and arrived in New York City at sixteen years old. He lived in the city’s Lower East Side, among other Jewish immigrants. He went to work in the growing liquor business, both making and selling whiskey. He adopted the motto Purity Above All and included it on everything he sold to promote the quality of his product. It must have worked, since his business boomed. By his early twenties, he had accumulated considerable wealth and expertise. He married Rose, another Austrian-American Jew, and the couple had three children. Around this time, he also went into business with Meyer Siegelman, forming the company Salzman & Siegelman.

The Salzman Family

Unfortunately, the new store’s May 5^th opening day in Elmira had a few hiccups. After weeks of whipped-up anticipation, several hundred customers lined the sidewalk hoping to gain admittance and receive their free port. By evening, the crowd had grown so large and impatient, the clerks were forced to limit customers in the shop to only 50 at a time. Four policemen were called in to restore order. By 10 pm, over 1,200 bottles of Red Cross Port had been given out, which still left hundreds more customers empty-handed. The store promised to honor their promise to any patrons who missed out.

Eventually things were resolved, and the store attempted other promotions and attractions. One that caught the attention of the newspaper was a window display of an eternally pouring bottle of Empire rye whiskey. It seemed to defy nature and intrigue passersby. Other promotions Salzman offered were shot glasses, whiskey jars, and bottles, complete with his purity motto.

Less than four years after their Elmira store opened, Salzman & Siegelman’s business partnership fractured. While the reasons are unknown, the two men filed injunctions against each other. Each ended up starting competing liquor stores, but not in Elmira. Here, the store became Salzman & Co. Its last business listing in the Elmira City Directories was 1919, the year before Prohibition started.

In 1920, Morris Salzman joined the Greenpoint National Bank briefly before leaving and starting his own company, Colonial Discount Company out of Brooklyn. It offered loans for automobiles, another growing field. Salzman died in Brooklyn at 61 years of age in 1930. The obituary described him as a philanthropist and banker, with no mention of his whiskey making-- not a surprise since the country was still under prohibition and dry.

Today, you can still find bottles and liquor jugs with the Salzman name and the purity motto on them. It’s interesting to note that unlike many other whiskey makers, Salzman was never cited by state or national authorities for adulterating his liquor or wines.