Sign of the STEAMING tea-kettle.

The word caught my eye. “Steaming”. Did the tea kettle actually steam? I had to know more.

Why, you ask? If you’re a regular reader, I admonish you; you should know better than to ask me why I need to know more. That’s what this is all about. If this is your first Gonechester read, then let me let you in on something about me: I need to know more.

But really, a big copper kettle that actually steamed once hung in front of a coffeeshop on the Main Street bridge. That’s just… cool! So let’s get into it:

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Van Zandt Tea, Coffee & Spices

The story of the steaming teapot starts decades before its creation, in 1844. Three brothers, John Jacob, Benjamin B., and Maxcy Newell Van Zandt, came to Rochester and began working in the spice, tea, and coffee industry.

Below, the building marked “17” was No. 17 Buffalo Street, the location marked in green on the map above; by 1869 the Van Zandt spice business moved to No. 11 Buffalo Street, the middle building with the clock on the third floor.

I got into far, far more detail about the above buildings in another post, Main Street Iron Fronts.

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Van Zandt & Heath

In 1880, Maxcy Newell Van Zandt and William F. Heath, from Boston, would open a coffee, tea and spice house on the south side of the Main Street Bridge, in the Ocumpaugh block. The business would sell hot, brewed tea and coffee, as well as freshly-ground spices, fancy groceries, and even choice cigars.

Van Zandt & Heath would mark their place of business by hanging a large, copper tea-kettle above the door as a sign. As an eye-catching novelty, the tea-kettle would spout gouts of actual steam. Well, water vapor, but you get the concept.

Van Zandt & Heath would mark their first day of business by offering a free cup of hot tea or coffee to anyone who stopped in.

The above article mentions the steaming tea kettle, saying it would be on “full blast” from morning to night.

Furthermore, it gives William F. Heath’s middle initial as “G”, while every other source gives it as “F”.

From here on out, Van Zandt & Heath adopt the tagline “Sign of the Steaming Tea Kettle”.

Amusingly, not long after Van Zandt & Heath’s opening, a “Mr. Martin” would cast a bit of shade on the employment of a large, steaming tea-kettle for advertising purposes:

Van Zandt and Heath would coolly clap back at Mr. Martin in a later advertisement:

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The Steaming Tea Kettle

The standout feature of Van Zandt & Heath’s, as you’ve likely ascertained by this point, was the unique sign over the shop’s door: a large, copper tea pot which actually expelled steam from the spout, advertising to passers-by that fresh, hot tea and coffee was available within.

While I’ve yet to find any photographs of Van Zandt’s steaming kettle, another example of a steaming tea kettle as a cafe sign exists in Boston.

The article states:

Made by local coppersmiths Hicks and Badger in 1873, the kettle normally hung above the entrance to Oriental Tea, its oversized, animatronic spout blowing puffs of steam into the air as if it were getting ready to whistle.

Though I have absolutely no evidence to back it up, I wonder if William F. Heath, himself from Boston, had seen this kettle himself and–upon entering the coffee brewing business with Van Zandt–decided to use the undeniably eye-catching design for his own sign.

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Heath’s Removal

William Heath would be part of the coffeeshop partnership for only a few months; in July of 1880, the firm of Van Zandt & Heath was mutually dissolved, and Irving W. Van Zandt–Maxcy N.’s son–would carry on operations himself at the same location.

William Heath went back home to Boston, for uncertain reasons.

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Van Zandt’s

In 1883, Van Zandt exhibited the latest in coffee pots invented by Harvey Ricker of Brooklyn, NY. I’m unsure who the John Ricker mentioned in the above article was; most likely either a relative or the paper getting things wrong again.

Coffee brewing was, for many many years, kind of a pain in the ass. Most methods required brewing a huge amount of coffee into a large urn, and involved egg whites to clarify the brew. As a result, a fairly noxious bitter brew was most people’s experience with coffee, which helped maintain the public’s overwhelming preference for tea. Innumerable inventors applied for patents to improve the process throughout the decades, of which the Harvey Ricker “Boss” or “Minute” pot was one. Ricker would later improve on this design with the Half-Minute coffee pot in 1901.

If you’d been searching high and low for shreded maize, like I’ve found myself on more than one occasion, Van Zandt was your huckleberry. He had his finger on the pulse of what was new; Van Zandt had that shreded maize before anyone.

In 1884, the address of Maxcy N. Van Zandt’s coffee house changed from No. 24 East Main to No. 85 East Main Street.

On particularly cold days, the tea-kettle was apparently unable to work up a head of steam [I absolutely empathize]:

The below article is the latest mention of the steaming tea-pot I could find, from December of 1887:

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A Picture of the Kettle?

As is the case with many of my subjects of research, the thing I wanted most was a photo of the tea kettle. Nothing says “this existed” quite like photographic evidence, and I was hard-pressed to find it. As far as I was aware, my window of search was the street side of the south side of the Main Street bridge between 1880 and an unknown year.

At last, after I’d nearly given up the search, I found something which I believed to be photographic evidence of the steaming kettle.

Clearly, the above advertisement is a low-resolution scan, what some call “potato quality”. Yet even given the blurry nature of the photo my eye was drawn to the form on the second story between the third and fourth windows from the left. It certainly looked like a tea kettle, to me.

I had to know for sure, so I took a trip to Central Library, where a kind librarian procured for me a copy of Illustrated Rochester 1898-1899.

The image was, to my chagrin, very small and difficult to focus on:

It was still difficult to tell whether the form was a kettle or, something else.

I tried and tried to zoom in on the kettle but, alas, at some point all I got were dots. But I also noticed something else–that’s clearly not a tea-kettle.

I had been wanting to see a tea kettle so badly I’d been willing to overlook some nagging details that didn’t line up. For one, 1898-1899 was far too late for Van Zandt’s coffee shop to still be in operation. Though the sign theoretically may have been left up long after the coffee house closed, theory is now moot. Because…

That sign is very obviously a big black bear.

You may have noted on the photo of Ocumpaugh’s building in the ad that the second story windows had a sign over them saying “JOSEPH ENGEL | FINE FURS”. The symbol of Joseph Engel’s business was a statue of a large black bear holding onto a branch, which is what was pictured in the niche above the door.

The scales fallen from my eyes, I now see that what I hoped was evidence of my pet steaming kettle was nothing of the sort; albeit, it was another interesting piece of lost Rochester. After all, it’s almost as interesting to have a giant black bear as signage as it is to have a steaming tea kettle. Almost.

One 1887 ad for Engel’s furrier included the fact that it was “over Van Zandt’s Tea Store”, which at least reassures me that, while the photo I found may not have been what I hoped, I still definitely had the correct building and confirmation that Van Zandt’s business stayed open at least until 1887.

Unfortunately, however, I am still left without a photograph of the Steaming Tea-Kettle. Thus it is with a heavy heart that I draw this essay to its conclusion.

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Spout of Time

So that’s all I could find about a steaming tea-pot that once hung beside Main Street. I find the notion quite romantic; tromping along the Main Street bridge in horse and cutter, you spot the cloud of white steam issuing from the spout of a shiny copper tea-kettle. You stop, tie your horse to a snubbing post, and stride into the door beneath the kettle. Your nostrils are met with roasting coffee and steeping tea, the tang of ground mustard, heady cinnamon and clove and ginger. You peruse shelf after shelf of fancy grocery items, then enjoy a hot cup of coffee.

It’s an experience I can connect with, having done the present-day version innumerable times.

It evokes wistfulness to think this dear steaming kettle was, for some reason or another, taken down and hidden from modern eyes; I’d love to see it dangling in front of some present-day cafe or another, sending out its welcoming blast of vapor like its cousin in Boston. Alas!

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