Enjoying a Wilson whiskey highball in Philadelphia at the turn of the century
So I started thinking about the advertisement there, which is for a brand of whiskey called Wilson. The man is making a highball (which I had to Google), and it's done by pouring whiskey in a tall glass over ice, and then adding seltzer water. I've never seen a seltzer bottle in real life, but I've seen them quite often used by the Three Stooges, and it looks like it was a way to add carbonated water to a beverage. Mostly the Stooges would always spray each other in the face with it, and I'm inclined to think that if I used it, I'd make a mess.
I'm an old graphic designer, and I studied advertising in college, and so my eye went to what you could call a billboard, which is actually a hand-painted mural. When I searched for other images of the same "That's all" campaign by Wilson whiskey, I found that by 1904 the word "Highball" had been replaced with the word "whiskey".
Here's a 1904 image from the nice people at Shorpy, and in addition to saying "whiskey" instead of "High Ball", and a period has been added after the word "all". Subtle changes, but the kind of refinement that you see in advertising. By the way, the font remained the same, but it was handled in a more professional way. The lettering in the Duke image, if you'll excuse me for saying it, is crude. And that's what made me put a date of 1900 on my file name, although it could be as early as 1894 (when the statue of McClellan there was dedicated).
Here's a closer look at the people, with the McClellan statue in the background. I'm no expert in women's fashion, but the lady there on the right is not from the 1930s, more like 1890s.
A closer look at the entrance area of the hotel shows that there was a drug store. Not surprising, since traveling has probably always been a headache! My eye was caught by the five (count 'em five) seats for shoeshines. Everyone must have tried to get a shoeshine right before the train left!
Anyway, let's get back to the whiskey. You can clearly see that the man is preparing a highball. He is ignoring the short whiskey glass, and is shooting the seltzer into the tall glass. Presumably there's ice in there, and there's certainly whiskey. Speaking for myself, I've never had whiskey that way. I've had it two fingers neat, and also on the rocks. I'm not much of a whiskey drinker, although I've been known to have some cinnamon-flavored whiskey on my birthday, which I often celebrate several times a year!
Here's a fashionable turn-of-the-century lady pouring some Wilson whiskey from an eBay listing. The glass doesn't seem to be all that tall, but she has a bottle of seltzer water handy. Looks like the bottle came in a nice container, and if you look very carefully you can see that it says Established 1823. It makes me wonder when they started advertising? And based on the fact that they added an exclamation mark there, I'm gonna say that this ad is newer than the Duke image.
In this Getty image, which is about 1915, our man seems to have aged quite a bit. I suppose drinking whiskey will do that to you! And interestingly enough, it says "High Ball", not whiskey, so it looks like they waffled back and forth, which is also typical of advertising.
Hmmm... all this talk about highballs is making me think that maybe tonight I'll celebrate my birthday. I wonder where I can find some whiskey around here? I'll look in the pantry, you never know!
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