In Hammacher Schlemmer’s lobby museum hangs an enlarged and framed page from the 1878 New York phone directory, the city’s first, upon which is listed the misspelled name Hamacher & Co. It serves as proof that the peddler of aggressively futuristic items like the Hair Rejuvenating Laser Comb and the Medical Grade LED Wrinkle Reducer is one of the country’s oldest companies.
In 1848, a German immigrant named Charles Tollner opened a hardware store on the Bowery in New York that would eventually become Hammacher Schlemmer. He was selling hammers and nails there back when West Virginia was still part of normal Virginia.
Tollner invited his 12-year-old nephew, William Schlemmer, to help work on the floor shortly thereafter. Albert Hammacher, a family friend, invested $5,000 in the store in 1857, and when William bought out his uncle in 1867, the two became partners. Under Albert and William’s direction, the business grew famous for its exhaustive and organized inventory.
Hammacher & Co. was a shopping destination not just because of what it sold but for how it sold it. Screwdrivers and bolts were displayed on velvet beneath glass in mahogany cabinets. The store was staffed with smartly dressed salesmen who wore white gloves and would pluck tools from the cases with theatrical care. The ostentatious environment attracted an auspicious clientele, and Isaac Singer built his first sewing machine with parts obtained from those lavish cupboards.
Hammacher Schlemmer started publishing a catalog in 1881, and the business ballooned. Early editions were hardbound and contained beautiful hand-drawn illustrations of workbenches, mortise locks, and plumb bobs—every item the subject of a delicately crosshatched likeness. At a Tolstoyan 1,112 pages, the 1912 catalog remains Hammacher’s largest, and a copy currently resides in the Smithsonian.
According to company documents, Russian czar Nicholas II ordered “a lot of everything” from the 1916 catalog. A comprehensive one-of-each selection was duly shipped to His Excellency, who was assassinated in July 1918. What exactly happened to all that Hammacher Schlemmer gear is a matter of some dispute, but the triumphant Bolsheviks are said to have placed their own order from the catalog shortly after their victory.
In the 1920s, the retailer began to move away from hardware and toward pianos, home goods, and assorted paraphernalia. While the inventory may have changed, Hammacher Schlemmer’s catalog business thrived. It’s the single, unbroken thread that connects Hammacher & Co. on the Bowery in the 1800s to the Hammacher Schlemmer of today.