The Design Company.

Beginning with the first Hershey Chocolate products, packaging carried advertising slogans such as “More Sustaining than Meat” and “A Sweet to Eat.”

Bar wrapper for Hershey's Milk Chocolate. 1903-1905

 Later bar wrappers included advertisements for Hershey’s Cocoa.

Bar wrapper for Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar. ca. 1912-1926

 During the Hershey Chocolate Company’s early years, it inserted specially sized postcards in standard size Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars.  These postcards featured scenes from the chocolate factory , dairy farms that supplied much of the milk used to produce milk chocolate and also images of the community’s recreational facilities.  Other Hershey Chocolate “bar cards” can been seen on the Hershey Community Archives website.

Postcards such as this were included with standard size Hershey's Milk Chocolate bars between 1909 and 1918.

 

 

 

Sidewalk candy display created by a Hershey Chocolate salesman for Leftoff's Retail Store, Bronx, New York. 1938

 

 

 

 

Hershey Chocolate Company made effective use of displays in store windows, counters and aisles:

 

 

 

 

Hershey Chocolate Corporation store window display, ca.1930-1932

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hershey Chocolate in-store display. ca.1945-1950

 

 

 

  

In smaller stores, special counter displays were used to promote Hershey’s products.

 

 

 

 

 

Hershey Chocolate store counter display. ca.1920-1925

 

 

 

 

 

  

For several decades these methods were effective ways to market the United States “great American chocolate bar.”  However, beginning in the 1960s, these methods were no longer enough and Hershey Chocolate began losing market share.   In response to growing competition, Hershey Foods Corporation launched its first media advertising campaign in 1970. 

 How do we know what we know about the past?  Historians, researchers and students study the materials cared for in an archives to learn more about the past.  Photographs, newspapers, business reports, and other documents provide clues.  When pieced together, the history of a time or organization emerges.  The more clues, the fuller our understanding of the past.

While today the main focus of the Hershey Trust Company  is managing the Milton Hershey School trust fund, that was not its original purpose.  At the Hershey Community Archives, there are a variety of documents that can help us understand the early history of this business.

Documents such as the Hershey Trust Company’s by-laws:

Pamphlet: Hershey Trust Company By-Laws. April 27. 1905

 offer information about the legal organization of the new business as well as its established operating hours: 

ARTICLE XV

Hours of Business.

The Hershey Trust Company shall be open for              

 the transaction of business every day from 9 o’clock

a.m. to 3 o’clock p.m., except Sundays and legal           

holidays.                                                                                                     

Other documents in the Archives’ collections provide information about its funding, financial transactions and annual audits of its assets.  The Archives collection includes ledgers and cash books, annual statements and a variety of emphera that helps us understand how Hershey Trust Company servied the public.  For example, a pamphlet printed by the Trust Company provide information about its early operations:

Pamphlet: Hershey Trust Company announcement of its new location. September 30, 1905

This pamphlet was created to announce its move to a new location (Cocoa House).  Included in its pages is a list of the Hershey Trust Company functions:

                             POWERS OF THE COMPANY

Receives money on deposit, subject to check.

Issues time certificates of deposit for money left

with the Company for six months or longer, on which

interest will be paid at the rate of three per cent, per annum.

Acts as executor, administrator, trustee, guardian,

assignee, receiver, and buys and sells securities suitable

for trust estates.

Collects incomes and rents, and takes general

charge of real and personal estate.

Buys and sells notes, bonds, mortgages, commercial

paper and approved securities.

Acts as financial agent fo individuals and corporations.

Loans money on mortgages and other approved

collateral securities.

Receives for safe keeping securities and valuables

of every description.

Transacts a general trust business.

Other sources of information about  the early operations of the Hershey Trust Company include can be found in the Paul A. Wallace Collection and the Archives photograph collection, The Hershey Press  (a weekly newspaper in publication from 1909-1926) contains news stories about the early Trust Company and is filled with advertisements such as this one:

Advertisement for Hershey Trust Company; Hershey's Progressive Weekly. October 17, 1912

providing information to reseachers about how Hershey Trust Company presented itself to the public.  Archives contain the keys to learning about the past.  It is up to the researcher to study the clues and organize them so that we can better understand the past.

Hershey Chocolate Factory visitors department; Tour Director Lloyd Shoap and hostesses. ca.1936-1940

Almost as soon as the Hershey Chocolate Factory began operating in 1905, visitors wanted to tour the facility to see how Hershey’s milk chocolate was made.  The Company began offering formal tours as early as 1910.  In 1915 the Hershey Visitors Bureau opened in the Cocoa House as an information center for Hershey’s rapidly growing tourist market.  The Visitors Bureau provided information about Hershey’s attractions and provided Admission cards to visitors wishing to tour the factory.  Opening in July 1915, the Bureau distributed over 10,000 factory tour admission cards during its first three months.

In 1928 the factory began keeping formal statistics about factory tours.  A Factory tour was a popular part of a visit to Hershey.  Whether you were coming to Hershey to visit the Park, swim at the pool, enjoy the flowers at the Hershey Gardens or to shop at the Department Store, many people made a factory tour part of their visit to Hershey.

Visitors receive free cup of cocoa at the end of the chocolate factory tour. ca.1950-1960

Factory tours were not just for visitors.  Many people have fond memories of growing up in Hershey and taking the tour just to get the chocolate provided to visitors at the end of the tour.  Frank Simione shared these fond memories in his 1993 oral history interview:

We used to go through the chocolate plant, through the main entrance on Chocolate Avenue.  As we entered the main entrance there, they would give you a small cup of chocolate drink, and when you came back [from the tour], they would give you a pack with five bars, which says “Five Famous Hershey Bars.”  We used to go over there to get the chocolate drink and get those five little famous bars.  They were very little, in a small pack, and sometimes we used to go two and three times in a day, just to receive the chocolate drinks and the chocolate bars.  Now, this was done practically every day.

By 1970 almost one million people were touring the factory each year.  The factory had never been designed to handle so many people.  So many visitors were causing traffic jams downtown, overwhelming the building capacity and creating risks for product safety.  Hershey Foods Corporation’s solution was to build Hershey’s Chocolate World, a corporate visitor center that could welcome the millions of people visiting Hershey each year and would teach how Hershey’s milk chocolate is made in a fun and informative way.  The last public Chocolate factory tour was held June 29, 1973 and Hershey’s Chocolate World opened the next day.

Hershey Creamery and "Model Dairy," ca.1940

The Hershey Creamery began operations in May 1930.  The facility served two purposes.  It was a “model dairy” processing milk and producing a variety of milk products including butter, cottage cheese, milk, cream and ice cream. 

Hershey Creamery employee, Al Tesno, bottles milk, ca.1951-1959

The building also operated a soda fountain counter where patrons could purchase drinks and ice cream based treats.  This public portion of the building featured beautiful tile work  and a special mural designed and installed by noted tile maker Franklin Pottery, located in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.

Design plan for Hershey Creamery tile mural. Created by Franklin Pottery, Lansdale, PA. ca.1930

The mural incorporated images of cocoa bean harvesting, grazing dairy cows and the Hershey Chocolate factory in the background.  It was placed on the wall behind the soda fountain counter.

Hershey Creamery soda fountain, ca. 1930-1940

The Creamery was a popular destination for visitors enjoying Hershey Park, the Ballroom and even the Park Swimming Pool.  Brent Hancock in his oral history interview remembered: 

We used to go swimming at the Park Pool. You could go swimming and you could lay over there until 10:30 at night, and listen to the orchestra at the Ballroom. Boy, that was beautiful. The women wore their frocks, and with all the lights, it was out of this world, really. Beautiful. The music coming out and all the lights.  At the break, you could go over to the Creamery. The Creamery would be open. They’d take the women over there.  It was very, very nice.

 

Hershey Creamery closed in June 1971.  When the building was razed in 1986, the mural was saved and it was eventually transferred to the Hershey Museum.  Today it is on display in The Hershey Story’s gift shop.

50 years ago today the Philadelphia Warriors played the New York Knickerbockers in a game held in the Hershey Sports Arena.  At that game Warrior Wilt Chamberlain scored a record smashing 100 points, an achievement that no basketball player has ever duplicated or even come close.

Little remains of the game, no ticket stubs, no video.  Fortunately there are some photos taken by Paul Vathis, an AP photographer who happened to attending the game as a fan and who rushed to his car mid-game to get his camera equipment, . 

Game program, Hershey Sports Arena, March 2, 1962

In the Archives collection, there are copies of the game program and remarkably, a recording of the last 15 minutes of the historic game.  The recording was made by an enterprising college student, a Knicks fan, who listened to the game on his AM radio and was inspired to record the broadcast on his reel to reel tape recorder.

 In 1944 Milton Hershey signed a new will and testament to replace the one he had created in 1909, before he had transferred his fortune to the Milton Hershey School trust fund.  The new will and testament was a brief, two page document.  It provided that most of  his “estate, real, personal and mixed,” should be put into a new trust fund. 

At the time of his death his estate consisted of the wealth that he had accumulated since his endowment of  the Milton Hershey School trust fund in 1918.  The beneficiary of this new trust fund would be the Derry Township School District.  Milton Hershey had been very supportive of the community’s public schools during his lifetime and he wanted to provide an enduring legacy for them.  The purpose of the new trust fund would be for “assisting the Township to relieve tax burden for the upkeep and maintenance of the Township’s public schools.”  In making these plans, Milton Hershey was particularly unsentimental.  His will directed that his personal belongings should be auctioned and the proceeds added to the new trust fund.

A mourner pays his respects at Milton Hershey's gravesite, October 16, 1945

Following his death on October 13, 1945, his executor, the Hershey Trust Company, made plans for a public auction of his estate. 

Poster advertising the Milton S. Hershey Estate Auction, December 17-18. 1945

 Complying with Milton Hershey’s wishes, the auction was held at the Community Building on Monday and Tuesday, December 17-18, 1945.  Several Hershey executives protested the sale, wanting to keep his collection intact.  They argued that his personal belongings, which included furniture, rugs, linens, draperies, framed photographs, books, paintings, multiple sets of flatware and dinnerware and his personal jewelry, belonged in the Hershey Museum.  Apparently his executors, William F.R. Murrie, Ezra Hershey and William H. Earnest, agreed.  While the bulk of his personal belongings were sold at Auction, the furniture that had filled Milton Hershey’s apartment at the Hershey Country Club (High Point) was removed from the sale and Hershey Estates purchased these items.  For many years the furniture was exhibited at the Hershey Museum as a memorial to Milton Hershey.  Today while much of the furniture is in museum storage, a few pieces are on exhibit in The Hershey Story and at Milton Hershey School’s Founders Hall.

The Auction was held in the Community Building Social Room. There were afternoon and evening sessions with a large attendance. It appears that there was something for everyone. The Auction flyer highlighted large collections of Cauldron, Coalport and Dresden china, rare ivory pieces, cut glass, bronze statuary, silverware, oil paintings, linens and fine furniture. The Auction was handled by L.J. Gilbert and Son, Lebanon, PA auctioneers. The sale raised just over $17,000 and when added to Milton Hershey’s financial holdings the sale proceeds helped to create a trust fund endowment valued in 1945 at about $900,000.

Since its creation the Milton S. Hershey Testamentary Trust fund has made semi-annual payments to the School District with the goal of helping to underwrite the expense of Hershey’s public education program.  Today the Milton S. Hershey Testamentary Trust Fund is valued at about $23.9 million and Derry Township School District receives about $1.8 million a year to support its budget.

Hershey Community Archives is a rich resource with many resources that document Milton Hershey’s life.  The Paul Wallace collection includes a variety of archival material that documents Mr. Hershey’s life.  Click this link to view the finding aid for this collection.

Entrance to Hershey Park Zoo, ca.1934-1941

 

Until the mid 20th century there were relatively few wild animal collections in the United States. Not surprisingly, zoos were a “big city” attraction. Large urban areas had the resources and the potential audience to support such an exotic and unique attraction.  Some of the United States’ best known zoos, such as the Philadelphia Zoo (1874), Baltimore Zoo (1878), National Zoo (1889) and Bronx Zoo (1899), did not open until the end of the 19th century. 

Milton Hershey believed in providing his town with experiences not typical for a small town.  Hershey Zoo began in 1905 with an exhibit of prairie dogs in Hershey Park.  In 1910 the Zoo formally opened.  Hershey Zoo sought to feature exotic animals in its exhibits.  Lions, leopards, monkeys and exotic birds were popular early attractions.

Milton Hershey visits with the zoo's newest addition, a baby elephant. ca. 1935-1940

 

During Milton Hershey’s lifetime Hershey Zoo was a local attraction.  Animals were added to the zoo because they became available or someone had a special interest in having a particular specimen in the zoo.   In the era before television, zoos played an important role educating the public about animals and environments different than central Pennsylvania.

The zoo was particularly successful in breeding animals in captivity.  Lion quintuplets were born at Hershey Zoo on Easter Sunday in 1936.  The mother’s name was Erie and the father was Leo.  The cubs would have been sold or traded to other zoos when they were old enough.

Hershey Park Zoo closed at the end of the 1971 season as part of Hershey Estates’ plans to modernize Hershey Park.  In 1978 it was redeveloped as ZooAmerica, an accredited zoo that features exhibits of animals native to North America, with naturalized animal habitats.

 To see more images of Hershey Zoo and ZooAmerica, check out the Archives’ Flickr photo sets.

Within the books’ pages, you can trace the route of Hershey’s trolley system and see through whose property the trolley lines passed, see the footprint of the new chocolate factory and how it was placed on the designated land, follow the evolution of Hershey Park, the development of Hershey’s residential streets and lots, and see how the town grew and evolved.

The Archives exhibit case in The Hershey Story lobby highlights materials from its collections.

In the Archives’ changing exhibit case located in the lobby of The Hershey Story, a new exhibit features four of the field survey books and connects the information in the books with other archival records to tell a story of Hershey’s past.  Here’s an example from the exhibit:

Drawing of new Hershey Chocolate Company smokestack, 1924. Field Survey book #33, p. 142

Hershey Chocolate factory expanded frequently to meet the growing demand for Hershey’s milk chocolate.  An article in the Hershey Press noted the chocolate factory’s need for new power. 

Hershey Chocolate Company, plan for new smokestack. 5/19/1924

In 1924 the engineering department drew up plans for the new powerplant including plans for a new smokestack.  Later that year the powerhouse was enlarged with five new boilers and a new yellow-brick smokestack to meet increased demands for power to run the factory.   Like Hershey Chocolate Company’s other smokestacks, plans called for “HERSHEY” to be spelled out in darker bricks.

If you are in the neighborhood, stop by The Hershey Story and check out the Archives exhibit case to see more examples from the Field Survey Book collection.  It will be up through March 2012.

Program; Hershey Area Playhouse inaugural presentation of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." 12/4/2008

 Last weekend Hershey Area Playhouse closed another successful run of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.  The play has been a seasonal staple at the Playhouse since 2008, delighting audiences with its holiday themed story and positive message. 

 In 1999, the Hershey Area Playhouse (HAP) was founded by local residents who wished to bring community theater back to the Hershey area after a thirty year absence.  The first production, Barefoot in the Park, was performed in October of 1999. Since then there have been approximately three to five performances per season.  HAP strives to produces a variety of theatrical offerings:  classical and original theatrical plays, musicals, as well as cabaret nights.  In its early years the Playhouse productions were presented in a variety of community venues including Country Meadows, Lower Dauphin High School and even Hersheypark during its off season.

Groundbreaking for the new theater, 10/2006

The early success of the Playhouse led to a campaign to find a permanent home for the Playhouse.  Prior to the construction of a permanent theater at Country Meadows performances were held in numerous locations.  The new theater was completed in 2007.

Hershey Area Playhouse has been placing its records in the Hershey Community Archives since 2004.  The collection records document the performances and events produced by the Playhouse since its beginning.  Currently, the records span the years 1998 to 2009.  Largely comprised of photographs and programs, the collection also includes audio visual recordings of the performances, correspondence, newsletters, posters, and scrapbooks .  The earliest records document initial efforts to establish the theater.  The scrapbooks contain photographs, programs, newspaper clippings, press releases, and other ephemera documenting performances and events.  To learn more about the collection and view a complete finding aid visit the Archives’ website and its online collections database.

One of the great myths in the advertising industry is that Hershey Chocolate did not begin  advertising until 1970.  Although the Corporation generally did not use consumer media advertising such as newspaper and magazine ads, or radio and television commercials, it did employ a variety of techniques to publicize itself. 

Hershey Chocolate Corporation offered store window displays to its customers to help them promote Hershey products. ca. 1936

Hershey Chocolate used its advertising dollars to promote its products to the stores and outlets that would sell Hershey’s products.  Hershey also believed in advertising its products where consumers could purchase them and created elaborate and often whimsical store window sets and in-store product displays that featured product in bountiful arrangements.  

Hershey Chocolate Corporation distributed charts such as this to schools to help them teach students about making chocolate. 1944

In addition to store and window displays, it published a variety of educational pamphlets  and other materials that described the process of making milk chocolate and promoted the company.  The very first pamphlets appeared a few years after the factory began operations.  These pamphlets promoted the town and linked the success of the company with the model industrial town. 

Recipe pamphlets offered cooks new recipes using Hershey products. Hershey's Syrup recipe pamphlet, ca.1936-1945

Hershey Chocolate Company published cooking pamphlets beginning about 1915 as a way to promote the use of its products and introduced its first cookbook about 1922.  One of the most far reaching advertising techniques Hershey employed was creating and inserting specially sized postcards, in standard-sized milk chocolate bars to promote the company and the town.  The postcards showed scenes of factory operations, diary farms that illustrated milk chocolate wholesome ingredients, and attractive view of Milton Hershey’s model town. These postcards were distributed nationally and found their way around the world.  In the Archives collections you can find postcards with postmarks from China, Alaska, Mexico and France. 

Hershey Chocolate Corporation promotional films featured the town of Hershey as well as the chocolate factory and Hershey products. 1932

The desire to promote the company and the town eventually led to Hershey Chocolate Corporation to underwrite the production of a series of movies that promoted the products and the town.  In 1932 the company produced a 48-minute educational film that described chocolate production and the model town made possible by the success of Hershey’s milk chocolate. This film was shown primarily in schools.  The following year two films were produced: “Seeing Wonders,” a movie short promoted Hershey as a travel destination and the “Chocolatetown Review,” another short film that featured Hershey Chocolate products as marionettes in a vaudeville style show.  Both of these films would have been seen as “shorts” shown in movie theaters before the feature film.  World War II and the death of Milton Hershey in 1945 ended the company’s exploration of new advertising techniques.