Warner’s Safe Cure: Closing the Deal

 

 

Warner’s Safe Remedies Envelope

For all of the money that Warner poured into advertising in its various forms, he was not unmindful of the impact of personal communication with potential and existing customers. In the 19th Century, much the same as in the 21st, people respond best to marketing on a personal level.  This may have been even more important in Warner’s time, because people actually sat down and wrote letters to one another. Consequently, receiving personal correspondence from a merchant might well help close the deal. The above picture is an example of what one might have received in response to a letter to the Warner’s Safe Remedies Company. As you can see, very little space is wasted and the envelope is emblazoned with the image of the Safe Remedies Building, perhaps second only to the “Safe” as Warner’s trademark.

Undoubtedly, this envelope contained  yet more information to entice the prospective purchaser. This flow of information was designed to establish a personal connection with the recipient. After all, you are more likely to buy something from someone you know and trust than from a complete stranger. Warner knew this and exploited it as well as any other patent medicine manufacturer of the era. He wanted his potential customers to see Warner’s Safe Remedies as a source of helpful information that might not be readily available to them otherwise. This explains why his annual almanacs were so popular. They were crammed full of information (some of it accurate, but a lot that was not) and offers of assistance.

One of the perenial  offers that appears in Warner’s Safe Remedies advertising was for a urine analysis. For example, in his 1890 Almanac entitled “Safe Points,” Warner again extended this offer to his customers:

1890 Warner’s Safe Remedies “Safe Points” Almanac

It is impossible to say whether a drop of the gallons of urine that showed up at the Safe Remedies Building was ever really analyzed. More likely, the recipient received a form in response to his or her submission that detailed the dire state of his or her health. Fortunately, a return to good health was within grasp provided the person promptly purchase and consume a bottle (or bottles) of Safe Kidney & Liver Cure or Diabetes Cure or whichever Warner’s Safe Cure pertained.

This offer of help and information required an investment of time and money on the part of the consumer, but, at the same time, helped Warner close the deal. In effect, he was saying “I will help you, provided you follow my advice.” Many thousands of consumers did just that, making Warner a very wealthy man.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Early H. H. Warner and Reynolds Arcade (1874)

For most Warner’s collectors, the history of H. H. Warner begins about 1879 when Warner introduced his intial line of Safe Cures to the public. I covered some of Warner’s history in my series “The Rise and Fall of the Warner Empire.”  We know that prior to his life and death struggle with Brights Disease and his miraculous discovery of Dr. Craig’s Kidney Cure, Warner made a fortune selling fireproof safes in the post-Civil War era. Indeed, some of those safes have survived down the years as testimony to Warner’s first career. However, it seems that very little paper has survived from that enterprise. One exception is the above letter from Warner to a customer in 1874. The stationery is engraved “Office of H. H. Warner & Co., Fire & Burglar Proof Safes, Combination Locks, Vault Work [Etc], No 18 Arcade, Rochester,  N.Y.”

This terrific piece of paper is merely the confirmation of the order of a safe and nothing more, but it gives us a glimpse into the world of H. H. Warner before patent medicine. The other interesting tidbit we get from this otherwise seemingly innocuous piece of stationery is the address “No. 18 Arcade.” Thanks to the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County, I was able to learn a bit more about Reynolds Arcade. Architectually speaking, I love arcades because they combine the feeling of an open space with the beauty of natural light.  The structure was the brainchild of Abelard Reynolds (1785-1878) and was completed in 1829 with additions in 1838, 1842 and 1862. Fortunately, both illustrations and photographs of the Arcade have survived.

Based on the above floor plan, the Arcade apparently stretched between East Main Street and Exchange Place. The location of No. 18 would have placed Warner’s safe business on the outer edge fronting on Exchange Place opposite the Post Office. This is interesting because, although we usually associate Warner’s Safe Cure business with his Safe Remedies Building on St. Paul Street, his initial location was on Exchange Place as depicted in one of his early almanacs.

My initial thought was that perhaps this early Safe Remedies office was simply converted from selling burglar and fireproof safes; however, the building depicted in the almanac seems too tall to have been part of the Arcade. At any rate, we now have a better sense of where Warner was doing his safe business in the early 1870′s. Sadly, the Arcade in its original form has not survived.

The original Arcade and any vestiges of Offices of H. H. Warner & Co. Fire & Burglar Proof Safes at No. 18 were razed in May, 1932 and replaced by an Art Deco style building bearing the same name. Time marches on. Special thanks to Jack Stecher, who owns this nice piece of early-Warner stationery and to the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County for the wonderful information on Reynolds Arcade.

Warner’s Safe Cure: The Industries of the City of Rochester (Part I)

Let me start out by saying that Google has done us all a huge favor. Their project to scan the libraries of several great universities has provided a treasure trove of historical material at our finger tips. Thankfully, that includes publications about H. H. Warner and his Safe Cure. Thanks Google.

Having said that, I was delighted to stumble across a book published in 1888 by Hiram Sibley with the rather cumbersome title of “The Industries of the City of Rochester: A Resume of Her Past History and Progress, Together with a Condensed Summary of Her Industrial Advantages and Development and a  Series of Comprehensive Sketches of Her Representative Business Enterprises, Incorporating a Condensed History of the Chamber of Commerce.” So much for brevity. The work was published by Elstner Publishing Company in Rochester. By the by, you will recall  from my earlier Warner Chronology that H. H. Warner was elected as the first president of the Chamber in 1887 beating out that obscure camera inventor, George Eastman. By 1888, Warner was probably at the height of his patent medicine success and opening his short-lived Pressburg Office in Hungary. Not surprisingly, Industries included a section on H. H. Warner, which begs the question of whether this book was simply another piece of advertising. Well, I guess that is the business of any chamber of commerce.

Prominently featured in the article is the Warner Remedies Building, having been opened four years earlier in 1884. This is a particularly good engraving of the Warner Building and I have fixed it as a permanent image on this blog. In fairness to Mr. Warner, this book is by no means a fluff piece just for his enterprise, but is, rather, an amazing catalog of Rochester businesses and industries. Any student of Rochester history would want to leaf through a copy of this book, which is apparently available in a reprinted version.

There are several interesting portions of the section on Warner Safe Remedies.  It provides us with the layout of the building:

The above building, which is located on North St. Paul  st., Nos. 60, 62, 64, 66, 68, 70 and 72, has a floor capacity of four and one-quarter acres, the basement being used for storage purposes of bottles and materials, the first floor being the general offices and shipping room; second floor, mailing room with packing room for  the Yeast department; third floor, packing and bottling room for the Safe Remedies; fifth floor, drying floor for the Yeast department; sixth floor, laboratory; seventh floor, laboratory; eighth floor, general storage rooms.

Now, before you accuse me of leaving out  mention of the fourth floor, it was omitted from the text. Not sure if that was a typo or if the operations of the fourth floor were not for public dissemination. Who knows? In any event, this book helps us gain a little more insight into the operations of Hulbert Harrington Warner.