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ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW, LONDON WC1 R 4EJ, ENGLAND Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1315265 D IE T lt ULYSSES GRUNT THE DECORATIVE LIGHTING DEVICES OF D IE T! AND COMPANY OF NEW YORK, 1BA0-1875. UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (WINTERTHUR PROGRAM), M oA. , 1980 University COPR. 1980 D1ET2, ULYSSES GRANT Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 © 1980 ULYSSES GRANT DIETZ All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark . 1. Glossy photographs v/ 2. Colored illustrations ________ 3. Photographs with dark background ________ '4. Illustrations are poor copy________ 5. 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THE DECORATIVE LIGHTING DEVICES OF DIETZ AND COMPANY OF NEW YORK 1840-1875 BY Ulysses Grant Dietz A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the-University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degr of Master of Arts in Early American Culture. May 1980 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE DECORATIVE LIGHTING DEVICES OF DIETZ AND COMPANY OF NEW YORK 1840-1875 BY Ulysses Grant Dietz Approved ■ liAk X Kenneth L. Ames, Ph.D. Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee Approved: V Stephanie G. Wolf, Ph.D.P Coordinator of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture Approved yU-y-rTS RichardD-{ nViev>/4 P.B. Murray, PVlPh.D 1 University Coordinator for uate Studies Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Frontispiece from A Leaf From the Past; Daguerreotype taken at the time of R. E. Dietz's marriage in 1846. (Frontispiece) i i i Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CONTENTS Page PART I : The Company.............................................................................................. 1 NOTES TO PART I ....................................................................................................... 42 PART I I : The P r o d u c t ......................................................................................... 49 NOTES TO PART I I ....................................................................................................... 99 ILLUSTRATIONS.................................................................................................................IO9 APPENDIX.............................. 148 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 150 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PART I : The Company In 1890, the R. E. Dietz Company of New York sent out chromolithographed flyers as a Christmas greeting, presumably to its customers.^- This advertisement/greeting celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the company's founding by its namesake and president, Robert Edwin Dietz, then seventy-two. The flyer takes the form of a folding trip ty ch , showing an "old-fashioned" pierced tin lantern of "fifty or more years ago" on the left side, with a modern tubular Dietz lantern on the right. The central panel is made up of a pair of modestly-draped putti holding up a printed greeting, which gives the raison d'etre of the firm: the first application of the tubular principle to the kerosene lantern by R. E. Dietz in 1868. While the message alludes to the "vast improve­ ments" in the production of artificial lighting over the fifty years of the firm's history, there is no indication of the company's produc­ tio n before 1868. Except for the all-im portant date of 1840, when the firm was established, the past of the company is virtually ignored. However, the great v ariety of surviving labeled Dietz lamps and girandoles from before 1855 suggests the breadth and size of the firm's early production, and calls for further inquiry into this long- neglected facet of Dietz's career. 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. That the lantern firm was successful is evident; since its second president; Frederick Dietz, was included among Moses King's Notable New Yorkers of 1896-1899 as the head of the prominent lantern and streetlam p firm .2 The mystery remains, however, as to ju s t what the company manufactured between its founding in 1840 and the intro­ duction of the tubular lantern as its major product somewhere around 1868. So important was the lantern to the firm 's reputation, i t seems, that any products manufactured previous to the lantern's introduction were deemed irrelevant, and not included in the picture. Indeed, it is still the tubular lantern for which the firm is today best known, even though lanterns make up a relatively small part of the output, and have not in fact been manufactured in the United States since the 1960s. A history of the Dietz family and business was privately 3 printed in 1913 by Frederick Dietz, and from the generous inclusion of random fa c ts about Old New York, i t s purpose seems to have been as much to link the Dietz family with the past as it was to illuminate the firm's history. Nonetheless, this little book, along with the manuscript diary of R. E. Dietz on which it was based, has proved to be a vital source of information for this paper, and served as the starting point in my research. In it is a skeleton account of the pre-1868 history of Robert E. Dietz and the small lampworks, founded in Brooklyn in 1840, which would grow, change, and survive, leaving him a ric h and respected man at his death in 1897. This paper w ill, in part, deal with this early phase of Dietz's enterprise and attempt to come to an understanding of the nature of his early business and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 the reasons for its dramatic changes by 1870. The scope of this understanding will be necessarily limited by the lack of surviving records in the company itself, and by the patchwork quality of the information culled from advertisements, census and credit records, and directories of the period. In order to come to grips with the actual products of Dietz's lamp-making years, the study of surviving marked objects seemed at first to be the only solution. Fortunately, the present company archives retain a copy, perhaps unique, of an extraordinary full-color catalogue printed for the firm sometime in 1860.^ With this catalogue at my disposal, it became apparent