The walls of the Kibbitz Room are now filled with photos, articles, and reviews, showing the wide popularity of Attman’s and the Attman family. Here we see a photograph of Jimmy Carter sampling an Attman’s hot dog during Carter’s campaign for president. Here, too, are pictures of Seymour and his brothers Edward and Leonard with Presidents Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan; with Maryland Governors Mandel, Glendenning, Ehrlich, and O’Malley; and with Teddy Kennedy and Henry Kissinger.
Also posted are framed citations from Southern Living and City Paper naming Attman’s Baltimore’s Best Deli, a Zagat Survey Award of Distinction, and a Maryland Restaurant Association Medal of Honor.
The American delis may have started in New York City, but Attman’s—cited in the book Great American Delis as one of a select group of delis in the nation and the only one from Baltimore—refers, in its cheeky way, in its menu as offering “authentic New York delicatessen (only better).”
An insight into why Attman’s Delicatessen has survived and prospered so long can be found in the sentiments left in the Guest Book set up in the Kibbitz Room for patrons to sign. A selection:
“I was born and bred in Baltimore, but I’m now in Atlanta. I drove 12 hours just to eat this bit of heaven. Excellent!”
“We came from Rhode Island in search of the best pastrami sandwich. Mission accomplished!”
“We’re Red Sox season ticket holders. Wish we had a deli this good near Fenway!”
“This is our 35th wedding anniversary, and where did we choose to eat, but with you! We used to eat here in the 1970s when we lived in D.C. So nice to travel back to you today to celebrate our special day.” — New Canaan, Connecticut
“I was born in New York and moved to Baltimore in 1966. When I feel nostalgia for the lower East Side of NYC and the ‘old’ Baltimore, I come here. Corned beef (hot) on rye with mustard is food for the inner woman. Keep the tradition going.”
“All the way from Prague, Czech Republic, Europe. Now living in Towson. Best deli ever. Long live Attman’s. J”
On the street outside Attman’s, however, there are few other indications of when this section of Lombard Street, in the early to mid-1900s, was a thriving center for immigrant Jewish life and a shopping mecca for Jews and others in Baltimore. In a two-block area decades ago, small family-owned and operated shops were selling baked goods, groceries, dairy products, meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, candy, horseradish, hardware, clothing, pots and pans, imported foods, even live chickens, and of course deli. The narrow first-floor shops in what had been three-story row houses were usually so stocked with goods that merchants often displayed their wares on the sidewalk, in bins or barrels, the merchandise even hanging from poles. Black-and-white photos of the day show Lombard Street crowded with automobiles and delivery trucks and shoppers.
All of this is gone. Attman’s is now bordered by a paved parking lot on one side and a vacant lot on the other. Across the street a chain link fence encloses an open, bare space. None of the original structures remain, except Attman’s.
But the interest and nostalgia for that period remain. A block away, in the middle of Lloyd Street near Lombard, the Jewish Museum of Maryland, situated between two restored synagogues built in the1800s, is on this day featuring a major exhibition on the Lombard Street area in its heyday.
A prominent part of the show is a segment on ‘Corned Beef Row,’ with special attention to Attman’s Delicatessen and its Kibbitz Room. When after 2½ years of development, the museum on October 14, 2007, unveiled “Voices of Lombard Street: A Century of Change in East Baltimore,” the exhibit met with such a large turnout at the opening that the museum’s executive director, Avi Decter, termed the scene a “sardine can” of people.
“That day was also opening day for the Baltimore Ravens and we were petrified no one would attend, but we had the first or second largest crowd ever,” he recalled in an interview I had with him. The show has remained popular ever since, and Decter said that plans are to retain it for “five to ten years and maintain it as our ‘core’ exhibit.” This would be the first time that the Jewish Museum of Maryland kept a show for such an extended time.
To mount “Voices of Lombard Street,” Decter related that because Lombard Street is so well-known for its food, the museum sought and received key financial help from several families associated with food and Lombard Street. One of those families was the Attmans, and exhibit materials prominently list major gifts from the descendants of Harry and Ida: the Edward and Mildred Attman Family, the Leonard and Phyllis Attman Family, and the Seymour Attman Family.
“The Attmans could not make the opening, so we hosted a special brunch reception for them the following Sunday. Four generations of Attmans came and toured the exhibit, with the older group answering questions from the younger ones about what it was like back then,” Decter said.
“We love the Attmans. They are wonderful neighbors. Marc Attman has supported our speaker series for several years, covering the costs for marketing and sending out speakers. And the family as a whole has been encouraging for years. These are people who not only get with you, but stay with you.”
Decter remembers Harry Attman fondly. “Harry was a doll. He was a sweetie. I’m sure he was a tough-minded businessman, because you can’t run a deli in the midst of competing delis and succeed like he did. I remember him as hustling around. He was very active, not a passive manager. He was always there and everybody knew it. He must have been a ball of fire in his youth.”
It is an interesting observation. At one time, seven delicatessens competed for business on Lombard Street. Today, only two other Lombard Street delis besides Attman’s exist, one of which is open for limited hours and the other is slated to give way to an expansion of the Jewish Museum. Only Attman’s remains, with its original vigor and its reputation, as a one-of-a-kind destination delicatessen that is not just intact, but still growing.
But the presence of Attman’s Delicatessen today has an additional story to tell: how the children and grandchildren and, in fact, now the great-grandchildren of Harry and Ida Attman have built other successful enterprises and careers as well. And they have accomplished these successes by learning from and employing many of the business and ethical principles Harry and Ida practiced and taught.
This unusual and compelling story can be said to start with a pair of scissors.
Chapter Two
WHEN HARRY MET IDA
My grandmother taught us how to live.
My grandfather taught us how to work.
— Steven Attman
Between 1880 and 1924 when U.S. immigration laws became highly restrictive, 24 million immigrants of various nationalities streamed into the United Sates. Of those, an estimated 2.2 million were Jewish, most of them from Eastern Europe, in what has been termed the third wave of Jewish immigration to America. This wave dwarfed the first wave, of Spanish or Sephardic Jews from 1640 to 1820, and the second, of German Jews, from 1820 to 1880. In the case of Eastern European Jews, they were not only “yearning to breathe free,” but fleeing from gathering threats to their safety. Among those millions were two families: the Gettmans (the original name of the Attmans in Europe) and the Shapiros who came at different times in different ways during those years, but all of whom eventually settled in Baltimore, Maryland and gave rise to this family’s history.
The mass of Jewish people who lived through those times witnessed years of great turmoil. With the emancipation of Western Europe’s Jewry in the 19th century, Jews were beginning to enter into general society. But Eastern Europe itself was undergoing seismic changes in their governments and society. In the past, social and economic upheaval often