However, Baltimore was also becoming one of the most segregated of American cities. Some of this was by personal preference, as Jews often chose to live among co-religionists, and Germans, Irish, Polish, Greek and Italians eagerly formed their own neighborhoods. Little Italy persists today as a reminder of that era. But African-Americans found themselves restricted to living in certain areas of the city, first by unwritten but openly known segregated ‘redlining’ directives and then by formally legislated codes. Jews, too, faced restrictive neighborhood covenants that prevented them from buying homes in various high-end communities, such as Roland Park and Guilford. The result of both informal and formal segregation was that the various blocks around Lombard Street in East Baltimore were, for practical reasons, associated with religious, ethnic or racial communities that grouped themselves together. By the 1950s, restrictive covenants were ruled unconstitutional, and Jews and blacks could more easily live throughout metropolitan Baltimore. Such changes helped speed up the move by Jews away from East Baltimore, such that Lombard Street was no longer a magnet for attracting shoppers to Jewish-owned stores.
Attman’s Delicatessen survived these population shifts. One explanation for its continued presence on Lombard Street is that Harry and Ida and later their family conducted their business in a way that reached out to everyone, not only to Jews but also to non-Jews, whites and blacks, those of high social status and the poor. As a result, many Baltimoreans still have fond memories of the couple and of Attman’s Delicatessen, and have remained friends and patrons. Among those is Maryland State Senator Nathanial McFadden, a leader of the state’s black legislators and now chairman of the Baltimore City Senate Delegation: the Attmans gave him his first job as a youngster working in the deli, an experience he tells others he has treasured; he also recounts how they also encouraged him to get a college education and pursue a career. In fact, the Attmans’ relationship with African Americans may have ensured the delicatessen’s survival. During the Baltimore riots in 1968 in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., blacks living in the neighborhood only let fire trucks into the area when flames threatened the Attman’s store so that it could escape the fires consuming many other shops along Lombard Street.
How did Harry and Ida build a small delicatessen into a Baltimore food icon that has survived and thrived for nearly a century? After all, few if any companies or organizations endure for 100 years. And the Attmans have accomplished this in the face of hard times, both on personal and national levels. They had to deal with the disruption of a world war, a major pandemic (the worldwide Spanish influenza of 1918 struck the city particularly hard, with Baltimore experiencing the fourth highest death rate among U.S. cities), the Great Depression (during which the delicatessen almost went bankrupt, numerous periodic economic downturns, a race riot, prolonged traffic obstructions, road closings, changing neighborhoods, family deaths, all while rearing three children: Edward (born May 31, 1920), Seymour (April 27, 1926), and Leonard (February 18, 1934).
They also attempted to join with two other partners intending to launch a chain of food markets with deli departments. The partners opened one of these stores on Garrison Boulevard near Belvedere Avenue. When that store was not successful, Harry and Ida bought the 1019 East Lombard Street location from the partner who owned the building.
Consider, too, that Harry and Ida suffered from the shady dealings of a partner they took into their business when they bought the store on Lombard Street. Harry renamed the business A & L Delicatessen to incorporate the initials of their two last names. When he eventually discovered that “L,” who opened the store in the morning, had been stealing cash from the register, Harry confronted him. Caught red-handed, a red-faced “L” immediately left and never returned.
So how did Harry and Ida accomplish so much and pass on to their children and grandchildren the lessons that led to the family’s continued successes?
The first instruction was an attention to the products they sold. They offered good quality food and the better cuts of meat prepared with spices and seasonings in a special recipe Harry and Ida developed. That recipe has remained a secret, known by only a few Attman family members and the current manager. Some of Ida’s recipes for baked goods are also still used. Harry purchased with an eye to keep costs down and to respond to changing tastes of customers. He would buy cucumbers at the height of the season in August and put them up as pickles in big barrels. The Attmans also put up their own tomatoes, storing them in cold storage until they were ready for sale. They imported herrings from Norway (for making pickled herring), Scotland (to make matjes herring), and Iceland (for schmaltz herring), and put them in cold storage for later sale, often selling several barrels of herring a day. They also sold, in bulk, dried lima beans, split peas, and a variety of grains.
In preparation for Passover, they featured 100-pound burlap bags of walnuts, hazel nuts, butternuts and almonds; barrels of kosher salamis and bolognas; and wooden cases of dried apricots, sweet and sour prunes, and various-size pears. To serve the Passover needs of Jewish customers in small towns, the Attmans distributed circulars throughout the South and shipped orders to them by American Railway Express. “I remember staying up at night after the store closed to fill these orders,” says Ed. He also remembers the matzohs then in demand: Wittenberg Matzoh (the least expensive at 10 cents a pound), Manischewitz (12 to 13 cents per pound), Streit’s, and Goodman’s.
Another reason for their growing success was undoubtedly the couple’s willingness to work together and work hard, adjusting always to the changing times and needs of their customers. The area around Lombard Street was initially filled with people struggling to integrate into American life. Jewish East Baltimore was crowded with the influx of thousands of destitute newcomers, many of whom spoke Yiddish and little or no English and had to contend with rearing children in a new world while the parents themselves emerged fitfully from the old. Jews tried to earn their livelihood as garment workers, seamstresses, tailors, laborers, hired hands, and tutors. Some of the more enterprising set up their own shops. Most families lived in crowded apartments with few amenities and limited sanitary conditions.
Innovations that made life easier came slowly over the next decades as Harry and Ida sought to bring up a family: the Attmans did not have an indoor bathroom with bathtub and hot water until 1927, when Edward was seven (until then, outhouses were common and communal bathhouses were the rule); instead of electric lights, dangerous gas jets illuminated homes at night; linoleum was yet to be introduced to cover bare floors; instead of refrigerators, insulated boxes were cooled with blocks of ice delivered by truck. In the summertime, to escape a hot, humid Baltimore night, the Attman children would take blankets and sleep in nearby Patterson Park. Still in the distant future were air conditioning, easy access to telephones, and affordable automobiles.
However, all these people, living in the same conditions and from the same religious and cultural backgrounds, found common ground and camaraderie. In the Jewish areas, the streets were alive with people of all ages, but especially young adults who had been the early arriving immigrants and the children of newly forming families. At one point, sixty synagogues dotted the area around Lombard Street. And seemingly at the center of it all was that crowded row of shops along several blocks of Lombard Street where patrons could find much of their needs for home: from live fish and chickens to two-cent chocolate sodas to clothing and hardware items.
Across the street from Attman’s store was Blank’s department store, which carried a variety of fabrics. Within the same block was Fayman’s and Ben’s, two stores which handled all kinds of clothing, from socks for children and bras for women to men’s pants and shirts, much of it in odd lots. There was Brotman’s kosher butcher shop, Yankelov’s chickens, and down the street Lazinsky’s fish store and Crystal’s Bakery. Next door to Attman’s was Holzman’s Bakery. In the 1100 block of Lombard Street was Stone’s Bakery, where patrons could buy hot rolls and bagels, baked fresh every hour. Among the other delis was Atlantic Import, operated by Harry’s parents, brother, and brother-in-law. That store lasted until the riots.
As an Italian woman who grew up in nearby Little Italy told me about her memories of her mother taking her there to shop, “Thanks to those Jewish merchants, Lombard