“Don’t know why
There’s no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Since my man and I ain’t together
Keep raining all the time
Life is bare
Gloom and misery everywhere
Stormy weather” —- Ethel Waters
Back in a more sartorial and elegant time, and whether it was raining or not, the umbrella was an indispensable if not essential component of male and female attire, like hats.
If you need reassurance on this fact simply view a Hollywood motion picture made in the 1920s or 1930s, and characters are always wearing hats and carrying umbrellas, most of which were manufactured in Baltimore’s now vanished Garment District.
In 1922, a Sun headline touted the city as the “CENTER OF UMBRELLA TRADE,” as it was similarly in the production of straw hats.
With the average rainfall in Maryland during the summer months between 3.5 and 4.7 inches per month, the umbrella is still a useful companion, if not to ward off the rain but also the broiling sun.
If you find rain somewhat bothersome, there is always the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile, reportedly one of the driest places on Earth, where the average rainfall is 0.3 inches.
Otherwise just endure rainy Maryland, and if that’s the case, you’ll require the services of an umbrella, pronounced “Umber-ella” in the Baltimore patois, while the French term is a bit more refined; “parapluie.”
Umbrellas are not exactly a new thing and have been around roughly 3,500 years, and first made their appearance in Egypt and China where they were employed to repel the searing rays of the hot sun.
In India, in addition to beating off the sun, they also denoted rank in palaces and courts.
The roots of the word umbrella are from the Latin which means shadow.
We owe the umbrella’s acceptance — after a time, that is — to Jonas Hanway, a wealthy 18th-century English trader, author, philanthropist and social reformer.
He had first encountered the usual device during a business trip to Asia, and brought one home to London.
A man of fragile health, the umbrella kept him reasonably dry, but anxious London hackmen were suspicious of the device thinking it might put them out of business, because of enabling the user walk in the rain rather than hire a hansom cab.
To show their disdain for Hanway and his damned umbrella, they would race by in their cabs making sure they hit every mud puddle and thoroughly splashing him.
Unfazed, Hanway carried on until his death in 1786, strolling London streets daily with his carefully furled umbrella by his side ready at any moment for service.
He had proven their practicality a year after his death, when the umbrella began to be commercially manufactured in England and early models were somewhat unwieldy when wet as they were made of oiled and waxed silk.
“Then acorns were widely used decorations, because of an old superstition that oak trees were sacred to the god of thunder,” observed The New York Times in 1981. “Elaborate handles were fashioned of rare woods, leather, ivory and precious metals, even encrusted with jewels.”
Umbrellas, like the bowler hat, became symbolic of the sartorially turned-out English gentleman, and in those early years, as if in tribute to the man who popularized their use, were fittingly called a “Hanway.”
The first umbrella seen on Baltimore streets was in 1772 when a shopkeeper took to the streets with the new-fangled device.
The carrier, whose name has been lost to time, was mobbed.
“Pedestrians stood transfixed, women were frightened, horses ran away, and naughty children threw stones,” wrote authors Katherine Morris Lester and Bess Viola Derke in their 1954 book, “Accessories of Dress.” “Finally, the town watch was called out to quiet the disturbance.”
The Baltimore medical community chimed in and supported the umbrella as a worthy medical appliance.
In the “Chronicles of Baltimore,” historian J. Thomas Scharf writes that in 1772, “the first efforts were made in Baltimore to introduce the use of umbrellas as a defence from the sun and rain. They were then scouted as ridiculous effeminacy. On the other hand, the physicians recommended them to keep off vertigos, epilepsies, sore-eyes, fevers etc.”
But it was a German immigrant, Francis Beehler, a wood carver from Heidelberg, who first began manufacturing umbrellas in Baltimore when he established a factory on East Baltimore Street.
The business was later relocated to 204 W. Lexington St., in 1886, which burned in a spectacular fire fueled by thousands of yards of silk and killed one firefighter.
It was later rebuilt and opened at 222 W. Lexington St., and billed itself as “The Oldest Umbrella House in America.”
Named umbrellas of its manufacture included the Travella, a folding umbrella, that could easily be slipped into a desk or suitcase, and the Nameon is “what we call working any name or address in silk thread right into the fabric of the umbrella,” according to a 1924 advertisement.
Prices ranged from $1 for children’s umbrellas and from $5 to $6 for women’s and men’s versions.
Top of the line was a $25 men’s umbrella with a hand-engraved sterling silver handle which Beehler billed as having “superfine quality” and “handles that are true aristocrats in style and materials.”
This was at a time when the average worker was making between $28 and $30 a week, and would have represented a significant investment.
By 1922, production soared to 2 million annually with a value of $5 million.
Other local firms included such makers as Baltimore Umbrella Manufacturing; Brunswick Umbrella, Samuel Cohn; Walter J. Cornelius; Micahel Daneker; Fink & Easter, Polan Katz; Abraham Nowitch; Siegel Rothschild, Minne Stevens; and Gans Brothers, according to a 1927 city directory which incidentally was the high-water mark of local umbrella manufacturing.
However, the best umbrella slogan belongs to Gans Brothers, that was founded in 1870 and located at 115 Hopkins Place: “Born in Baltimore, Raised Everywhere.”
Polan Katz, founded in 1906, which became the city’s largest umbrella producer, finally furled its last umbrella when it closed its operation in 1981.
I also believe there was an advertising slogan of “The reigning queen of umbrellas” or was it “raining’?