Archive of the Professional Kitchen Supply Firm W.H. Davenhall

Boston: various, 1929. Archive. One medium-sized file box containing approximately six hundred twenty-five items, including: commercial brochures (121), samples (11), posters (3), typed letters signed/TLS (304), autograph letters signed/ALS (149), postcards & telegrams (29), and periodicals (5). The commercial or trade brochures are mostly small booklets, bi-folds, and tri-folds, graphically illustrated with images of the equipment on offer, and frequently printed in two colors or in duotone. A small but deeply engaging archive depicting the business activities of the Boston, Massachusetts kitchen equipment supply firm, W.H. Davenhall. The supply company serviced businesses with food production and serving needs far beyond the traditional restaurants and hotels. There are, in fact, few of those represented therein. The company's stock in trade seemed to have been the many "secondary" food establishments growing in number in the early twentieth century, including soda fountains, candy shops, tea rooms, diners, cafeterias, educational dining facilities, gas stations with food offerings, cafes, lunch shops, beauty parlors, fraternity houses, and military bases. The types of equipment depicted in the archive represents changes in food production for a population rapidly moving away from traditional home dining and increasingly consuming food in new types of establishments. The rapid economic expansion that made all this change possible came to a halt with the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The archive illustrates the experience of a small business in the years leading up to the Crash, with issues collecting debts, bankruptcy of suppliers and clients, etc. The correspondence includes offers of new equipment or supplies (often the line between brochure and correspondence is blurred), orders, inquiries, demands for payments, complaints, requests for new supplier arrangements, bankruptcy notices of former customers, and more. In addition to the typed and handwritten letters, there are postcards and telegrams. A handful of label samples and posters are included as well. Finally, there are materials produced by trade periodicals including: Institutional Merchandising, Hot Off the Griddle (published by Westinghouse), American Restaurant Magazine, and The Soda Fountain. A wide range of business topics is visible in this archive: bill collection, disputes about what was delivered or when, disputes about salesmen adding items to an order, bankruptcy of a client, price changes, a UNH fraternity orders a half dozen aluminum pitchers (surprised), complicated returns of defective merchandise, development of school cafeterias, the Crash of '29, deliveries abandoned or rejected, and more. Condition is generally very good or better. [A more detailed description, including complete lists of suppliers and clients is available by request.