This might be a first in the history of this mapping project. A wall was cleared of old paint and it REVEALED old signs instead of removing them. Shocking, I know.
So let’s talk about this wall. We’ve seen it before in this 2021 post on Par-T-Pak beverage signs in the Bay Area. This building is known as “the Oriental Block” and sits on Washington Street in Old Oakland. Built in the 1880's by architect John Marquis, it’s been designated Oakland Landmark #LM 82-263. Back in the early fall of 2021, the building’s billboards were removed, revealing a partial Par-T-Pak beverages sign from the 1930’s-1950’s. Given the age of the building, I’ve always known there were considerably older signs under that beige paint. Well, lo and behold, in spring of 2022 that paint was stripped, revealing faint outlines of those very signs.
Truly, late 19th century/early 20th century lead paint was a thing to behold. The staying power... the way it bonds to brick... the environmental toxicity... Brilliant.
So what was revealed? The answer is – several partial, incomprehensible signs and one amazing tale about late 19th, early 20th century advertising. To make this a little easier, here is my interpretation of the visible letters on the building. You can find a more high res version of the original picture here and map out your own take. Maybe some of these illegible letters are more legible to your eyes than mine!
Bow down before my Photoshop skills...
Now, the left and the right hand sides of the sign are currently beyond my sleuthing ability, but that middle section has some potential. Let’s pop it out from the rest of the image.
Patronize Home
Industry
Leak’s
New
Driving Gloves
And then some stuff we can’t fully read. But what can we learn from the pieces we CAN read. First things first, let's look at "patronize home industry."
Patronize Home Industry
This is a fairly archaic 19th/20th century advertising term – which frankly I was not familiar with before this – which loosely translates to “buy local.” As with the more modern variation, it was used not only by individual manufacturers, but by civic bodies and professional associations.
Some of my hyper-local, absolutely INSANE favorites include this 1912 PR announcement by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s easy enough to be pleasant when you are an Oakland booster.”
Leak’s Driving Gloves
So, based on the inclusion of “patronize home industry” on this sign, we can assume the brand was made in California, if not the Bay Area itself. So was there a local brand called Leak’s and did they produce driving gloves? From looking at Newspapers.com we can see various ads for Leak’s Driving Gloves – or simply Leak’s Gloves – in the San Francisco Examiner circa 1889 and 1890 (as well as newspapers in Petaluma, Sacramento, Oakland, Redlands, Greenville, Monterey, etc). Some of these ads, such as the 1890 Sacramento Bee ad below, place Leak’s on Market Street in San Francisco, giving us a specific location for this “home industry.”
As we all know, very few buildings in this part of San Francisco survived the 1906 earthquake. So where was 521 Market and what did it look like back in the 1880's-1890's? Vol 1 of the 1887 Sanborn Map of San Francisco places them at Market and Ecker, right near 2nd St. But what did the building look like? VIOLA!
The 1889 pamphlet The Industries of San Francisco, California: A Review of the Manufacturing, Mercantile and Business Interests of the Bay City: Together With a Historical Sketch of Her Rise and Progress provides a contemporaneous woodcut of the building. Additionally, it gives us an interesting background history on the company.
The Leak’s Glove Manufacturing Company was founded in 1874 by Mondula “Mon” Leaks and Philo Mills. The building contained a factory and a commercial showroom, with the factory measuring about 100x150 feet and powered by both electricity (for the sewing machines) and steam (for the ironing and finishing). The factory employed 100 men (30-40 for the tanning alone), and brought in about $250,000 per year.
Some other facts gleaned from this pamphlet:
Their gloves were manufactured from horse, calf, deer, sheep, goat and dog leather. No, that is not a typo...
They processed over 75,000 animal skins into gloves each year. No word on how many of those were dog skins.
As was common in 19th century San Francisco, they made a point of not hiring Chinese laborers (and actively promoted this fact).
You could purchase their gloves in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and Montana. (I’ve also seen photos of Leak’s ghost signs in Missouri and Iowa)
Their top seller was the Sierra Buck Glove, NOT the Driving Gloves
Mondula Leak - A Co-Founder With A Mission
It’s impossible to understand Leak’s Gloves without becoming acquainted with Mondula “Mon” Leak, the co-founder and namesake of Leak’s Glove Manufacturing Co.
Born in 1851 in Johnstorn, New York to Crapo and Caroline Leak, at the age of 21 Mondula made his way to California and the city of San Francisco. Soon after, he and Philo Mills established Leak’s Glove Manufacturing Co.Initially focused on the California market, thanks to inventive and persistent advertising tactics, they would eventually take their brand nationally.
Now a big fish in a small pond, Mondula’s business goals started to outstrip the size of the glove market. But where to take things next? Perhaps he could find a new way to monetize the advertising acumen underpinning the glove company’s success….
And so in 1890 Leak’s Advertising Company was incorporated to capitalize on Mondula’s talent for (self) promotion. Initially handling advertising for their glove company, as well as a few local clients, it would quickly grow into much, much more.
Early Marketing Tactics - Paint and Ink
"My forty-eight years' experience has taught me that advertising pays. Not the humdrum ad. for a year, but the continual changing from one novelty to another. There are only two ways of advertising--newspapers and paint. Give a newspaper $50 where you have been giving $5 and you will see results. The bigger you go at it the better it pays. It costs us $8,000 a month for sign painting alone, and yet it pays me. You can't get a lot of work done for little or nothing. Pay for it and you can get your money back." - Mondula Leak, The Standard, Ogden, Utah, February 4, 1892
There are numerous primary sources on Mondula’s advertising tactics, such as the quote above. One of the best from his early career is this interview in the Los Angeles Herald, Volume 34, Number 131, 24 August 1890.
In this interview Mondula laid out a strategy similar to that employed by fellow San Francisco brand MJB Coffee. He built basic name recognition by painting incredibly simple signs with just the words “Leak’s” or “Leak’s Gloves”, then backed them up with newspaper ads connecting that name to the glove business, and to locations where said gloves could be purchased. Quantity was a significant portion of this strategy. He didn’t paint one or two signs or place one or two ads - he blanketed whole regions.
But signs and ads cost money. Leaks spent $4,000 (in 1890’s dollars) on startup costs for his first state-wide campaign; which was a non-trivial expenditure for a small-time manufacturer. To spread out and justify this cost, he sought to “go into a partnership with other merchants” interested in pursuing similar marketing tactics for their own brands.
Leak Advertising’s initial client rooster included six mainly Bay Area clients, including:
Carlson-Currier Co of San Francisco
Sperry Flour Company of Stockton
J. A. Folger & Co of San Francisco (their baking soda, not their coffee)
E. Martin and Co of San Francisco
But Mondula was not content. He had bigger dreams for both his glove and his advertising businesses. Enter THE TRAIN.
The Train Part 1 - The Patent
And this is where the story starts to snowball…
In 1890, Mondula set his sights on the railroad, envisioning ways that custom exhibition train cars could help him showcase his wares throughout the US. After two years of traveling the US in an “off the rack” traincar, in 1892 he patented a new railroad car/exhibition space tailored to his business needs. Costing $30,000 to build and designed to hold twenty-four people - including Mondula and his wife, a bookkeeper, stenographer, electrician, cook, and a dozen sign painters - the seventy-one foot long railroad car included top-of-the-line features and several interesting innovations. With displays inside and out, the car had flip-down beds lining the wall which, when upright, revealed recessed display cases, panels, and counters for marketing goods and merchandise. And perhaps most novel, the train car had seventy-five electric lights powered by a simple generator – a true showstopper in the era before mass electrification.
To quote Mondula Leak and the Sign on the Wall, “In an age before most towns were electrified, the arrival of the Leak Advertising Car caused a sensation... A Placer County newspaper predicted the illuminated car ‘will resemble a huge meteor at night, as it whirls from city to city on its tour of education.’”
Thus Mondula and his car could arrive in a town, wow the locals into visiting with the novelty of electric lights, and promote their wares face-to-face while the sign painters went to work in the surrounding countryside. You can see examples of their sign painting handiwork here in Oregon, here in Missouri, and here in Iowa.
In fact, I found an 1893 pic of his handiwork for sale on eBay. A purchase which was funded by the donations of my Patreon supporters.
In the end, this train-based advertising strategy was so successful that Mondula and his wife would spend close to twenty-five years on their railroad car, although the scope and strategy of their mission would go through several permutations along the way.
Let’s talk about the first iteration of their train-based advertising business.
The Train Part 2 - All Aboard, Next Stop Placer County
One of Mondula’s first clients for his new train-based advertising tactic wasn’t a product, it was a place. In 1891 Mondula contracted with Placer County, California to help attract investors to the region. For a $500 monthly fee, Mondula displayed Placer County photos, agricultural products, and a large chunk of gold ore in what was dubbed “Placer on Wheels”. This enterprise was funded by the efforts of the Placer County Board of Trade who solicited donations, ran contests, and hosted fundraising fairs and picnics to kickstart the train’s initial six-month endeavor back east. It was also this endeavor which helped to kick-start the eventual construction of the custom patented train car.
“Think of peaches weighing two pounds, plums over three inches thick! Then there are specimens of gold-bearing quartz, black granite and other mineral products, showing a variety of resources not only including those [on] top of the earth, but those under the earth.” - Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, Wisconsin, September 5, 1892
Visitors to the car not only learned about the opportunities and industries of Placer County, but were entertained with a stereopticon display, cooking lessons, and an X-ray demo, as well as being sent home with samples from Mondula’s various other clients - coffees, cocoa powders, baking powder, and cereal, just to name a few.
There was a bit of the carnival excitement to his visits. Except, “Presenting a little table boasting “the creations of Luther Burbank” and redwood bark gave him enough legitimacy to claim his exhibits were "educational" and avoid the taxes and fees communities usually charged carnival sideshows.” - The Klan In Sonoma County Mondula was truly cut from the same cloth as P.T. Barnum, as we’ll see in our next section…
“At the towns of Marysville, Gridley, Biggs, Chico, Tehama, Red Bluff and Redding, it seemed as if the whole towns were out, and we had to station our men around the car and use all manner of efforts to keep the crowds until we were ready for them. It is certainly very pleasing to hear the comments of the great crowds as they pass through.” - The Placer Herald, Auburn, California, July 5, 1891
In 1895 Mondula would diversify his portfolio, taking on Santa Clara County, California as his next client, promoting their dried and canned fruits, nuts, wines, and farming opportunities. While successful, Mondula’s eye for new business streams was already on to his next target…
The Train Part 3 - The “Whale”
Let me cut and paste this short 1897 article in its entirety. You’ll see why.
“A car containing the products of Santa Clara County, California will arrive here this evening from Dayton and will remain in Xenia for a couple of days. Everybody is invited to call and inspect the exhibits free of charge. It consists of big apples, peaches, pears, etc., raised in California, and is being shown in various cities with a view of promoting immigration to that state. Another car, to which a small admission fee is charged, contains a whale.” - Daily Gazette, Xenia, Ohio, February 1, 1897.
A whale (well, a basking shark actually). In a train car. In Ohio. Way to bury the lede.
Everyone loves a little spectacle. And when instant cakes and slideshows don’t cut it, well, a taxidermied shark that’s 37ish feet long and weighs 10,383 pounds certainly does. I’ve tried to dig into the shark’s backstory – how was it caught and by whom, who taxidermied it, how did Mondula acquire it - but the details have been somewhat elusive.
The shark was definitely caught in Monterey Bay about a decade before Mondula would display it. Some evidence places its capture in March of 1884, possibly, if Mondual’s PR announcements are correct, by a Captain Emanuel Feress.
However, whether this particular shark ended up in Mondula’s train or in Stanford is unclear to me. Likewise, I did find one picture of a basking shark taxidermied in 1884. Some sources list it as being caught in Monterey but others seem to imply it came from Santa Barbara. Either way, Look at his silly grin and beady eyes! This is a gloriously bad taxidermy.
Additionally, the colorized picture below accompanies contemporaneous articles and PR announcements about the shark - see the image at the top of this section - but is often attributed to a different shark capture in San Pedro, CA. Did Mondula just borrow a random photo and claim it was of his shark? I absolutely wouldn’t put it past him. What was the average newspaper reader in 1910 going to do? Either way, this is a glorious postcard and I wish it was mine.
Regardless of when and where the shark came from, it was an absolute showstopper – especially in the landlocked counties of the Midwest and the Great Lakes Region. The P.T. Barnum flair to Mondula’s work was becoming evermore strong as we built out his “California Marine Museum” traincar.
That’s right. Mondula added a second train car to display nothing but natural oddities, specifically those from the ocean. This included preserved examples of smaller “man eating” sharks, stingrays, octopus, sea sturgeons, angel fish, flying fish, whale bones, sea turtles, and various exotic seashells. Admission cost 10 cents to “keep out objectionable people” and came with a “sea bean” or piece of redwood bark or pampas grass plume as a souvenir.
By 1901 the exhibit expanded to include live monkeys as well as the shark and the other preserved deep sea oddities. By 1905/1906, Santa Clara County was out and Stanislaus County, California was in. After a $25,000 revamp, the main train car was dedicated to exhibiting the fruits, vegetables, flowers, and wines of that region. Additionally, a live monkey-faced owl and a live alligator joined the monkeys in the museum car.
In 1908 the cost of visiting the train had risen to 15 cents but you could now also see guinea pigs and a trick-performing bear billed as a “real live Teddy Bear.” Stanislaus County’s run was short. By 1910 they had been replaced on the tour by five North Bay counties ( Napa, Lake, Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties) - “where the sun shines 300 days in the year, and where hail storms, ice and snow are unknown.” The cost of admission had also risen to 25 cents.
“Later it would bump up to 25¢ which was worth about six bucks today, but that’s not a fair comparison; a quarter was the price of premium entertainment – a ticket to the circus or a decent seat at a very good vaudeville theater.” - Sonoma County, Famous For Sharks and Lucky Beans
The final train tour launched in 1915 and represented a departure from Leak Advertising’s California roots. Featuring the goods and wares of the state of Georgia, and contracted for a five-year term, it was heavily funded by the state's political and business leaders.
“The two cars which the Georgia Chamber of Commerce will run are as complete, or more so, than any cars ever run for any section or state in the country. They contain actual samples of hundreds of Georgia's most notable products, agricultural, mineral and others of interest to the homeseeker. The halls of the cars are wainscoted with Georgia marble of varied colors, and over the top of the marble are photographs of various scenes in Georgia, including scenes of the great animal industry convention at Quitman last spring. The peaches, apples and other fruits in glass jars are indeed a tempting sight, and the preserves and other good things to eat, in jars and cans, put up by the Girls' Canning Clubs of the state, all go to make up an exhibit of Georgia products not to be found as complete anywhere else in the state.” - The Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, January 9, 1916
And that was it.
In 1917 mention of Mondula’s train fell off the newspaper record, likely due to WWI and the related railroad restrictions which would have made touring by train more difficult. With the train collecting dust, Mondula tried reinventing his advertising methods one final time with the “Southeastern Exhibit Association.” This was an exhibit hall in downtown Atlanta that functioned as a year-round showcase for member organizations - largely local chambers of commerce, professional organizations, and some tradespeople and small-time manufacturers.
Lacking the carnival-air of the train days, the Southeastern Exhibit Association never really took off. Mondula would retire soon after its founding, selling the business to his protege the Imperial Wizard of the KKK (yiiiiiiiiiiiiikes) - before passing away in 1924.
The whereabouts of the shark after this are unknown.
So Where Could You Purchase Leak's Driving Gloves in Oakland?
Returning to the story of our sign, where could you purchase Leak’s Driving Gloves in Oakland? Once again, this 1889 edition of the San Francisco Examiner has an answer!
C. Isaacs refers to The Elite, a men’s clothing store on Washington Street between 7th and 8th in what is now Old Oakland. Founded by C Isaacs in 1888 their claim to fame was having the best $1 shirts in town and being the local dealer for Leak's Gloves.
Does this building still exist? Given the renaming and renumbering of streets that occurred in late 19th century/early 20th century Oakland it can be hard to tell from Google Maps. However, from looking at the 1889 Sanborn map of Oakland and the 1896 Illustrated Directory of Oakland, California we can see that The Elite/868 Washing was located inside the Oriental Block, the very building this sign appears on! Which does make sense, and perhaps can help us unlock some of the less legible parts of this sign, which are likely related to The Elite and/or to additional brands they carried.
Contextualizing This Sign Within Bay Area History
Given the era that Leak's Gloves and The Elite operated within, it’s likely this sign was painted between 1889-1892, in the early days of Leak’s Advertising Co, making it one of the oldest surviving hand painted signs in the Bay Area (shakes fist at the 1906 earthquake). It is, without a doubt, the oldest UNRESTORED sign I have found as the other contenders- the Oriental Warehouse Co in San Francisco and Heinhold’s in Oakland - have both been repainted consistently over their lifetimes.
I am not sure what the fate of this wall is. The building is still very much under restoration with scaffolding all along the frontage. Its presence might be fleeting. But what a fascinating blast from the past it has been!