Hershey, through the lens of Harpel

This story began as a hunch, or perhaps an excuse.

Along Chocolate Avenue, U.S. Route 422, in the basement of The Hershey Story Museum, sits the Hershey Community Archives.

Archives to the historian have a tantalizing, transportive effect. Portals to the past, artifacts reaching forward. But what purpose would a LebTown journalist have for digging through this cocoa collection?

A digital finding aid: Lebanon-related keywords thrown at the dartboard. Railroad material – the Lebanon Valley Branch – maps. Photos of the new town of Hershey. Wait, Hershey? For a search of Lebanon? A-ha.

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Luther Grant Harpel was born in Lebanon to parents David and Catherine on Feb. 2, 1869; Milton Snavely Hershey was 11 at the time, the then-future confectioner in Derry Church about a dozen miles away. There’s no sign their paths crossed until after the turn of the century. In fact, there’s limited documentary evidence to support these two men having a personal relationship of any kind. But that’s not our lens….

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Milton Hershey’s story bears little need of repetition to the LebTown reader, not to mention the imminent release of a blockbuster treatment.

A sweet teenage apprenticeship in Lancaster. A Philadelphia failure on Spring Garden while the Centennial Exhibition turned Fairmount Park into splendor. Wander and false starts, then back to Lancaster. It’s the milk caramel. Another world’s fair, this time in the Windy City, name given for the boosterish tactics that secured the World’s Columbian Exposition. Hershey there; chocolate there; bean planted.

Also emerging into popular consciousness via the White City: Kodak, postcards.

Courtship of Catherine “Kitty” Sweeney; repurchase of the childhood homestead in 1897; marriage in 1898; a sale – a windfall – in 1900. What’s next?

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Harpel apprenticed at the Lemberger pharmacy in Lebanon during his teenage years, then he was off to Philadelphia, where he took a graduate degree in pharmacy from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy; his thesis on benzoin, his graduation on April 17, 1890. He returned to Lebanon and Lemberger’s. In 1894, he started showing up in the Daily News for a new hobby, with a new gadget: His Kodak.

His reputation grew quickly. Just a couple months after his first mention, the Daily News was saying Harpel “is quite an expert with the use of the Kodak” and that his work “has been highly praised by those who have seen it.” The inklings of a business evident; of his latest views, “those desiring to secure a set can purchase them at a reasonable price.”

He’d go all-in on photography in 1899, opening up Harpel’s Store and Studio in a 16-by-45-foot room in a building on the southwest corner of 8th and Willow streets. The business would grow quickly, moving to larger and more central locations and investing in equipment. The Daily News notes that in January 1903, just-inaugurated Gov. Samuel Pennypacker ordered from Harpel a series of inauguration photos.

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Harpel must have seen the reports in the local papers. Milton Hershey would establish a chocolate factory not far down the Lebanon Valley. As Cornwall historian Bruce Chadbourne recently identified, Hershey’s original plan may have been to place the plant west of Campbelltown along a planned Cornwall & Western Railroad. The line never materialized, possibly the right-of-way used later for the trolley; the factory would go by the Philadelphia and Reading line instead.

Kitty and Milton moved into the Homestead in 1905. What did it take to convince her to move from Lancaster to Derry Church? Possibly it was a promise of a splendid new home, designed by the midstate’s preeminent architect, C. Emlen Urban. Construction on High Point began in 1906; it was completed in 1908, and the couple occupied the 22-room edifice that year. The entry hall was decorated with a cut-glass torchiere, first seen by Hershey during the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

In 1909, the Hershey Press begins publishing. Also that year, the couple signs a Deed of Trust establishing the Hershey Industrial School. The first four boys enrolled later the next year, housed and taught at the Homestead. That year, 1910, Harpel begins showing up in Hershey.

A couple weeks later, he – or his “man” – was back.

There were no more mentions of Harpel in the Hershey Press through 1910.

These years, the years before Kitty’s death in 1915, the chocolate couple spent much time in Europe. The Harpel family found in their collection of Luther’s work a photo from this period, a portrait – “one of our best formal photos of the two of them together,” says archivist Tesa Burns – taken in Nice, France. The portrait was likely taken around February 1910, according to a report in the Feb. 11 edition that postcards had been sent by Milton Hershey from Nice congratulating the new YMCA. It’s not clear how the portrait later ended up in Harpel’s collection.

Hershey, that year, also strengthened his presence in Lebanon. In April 1910 the company announced the lease of the Upton Motor Co. plant – today’s Lebanon home of Jubilee Ministries – for the wrapping of chocolate. The Hershey Press cited “unprecedented demand” as the reason for the expansion.

What introduction did Harpel and Hershey have to each other? We simply don’t know. The two men seem cut from similar cloth – both with that quintessentially American blend of community-mindedness and capitalism. Hershey’s civic spirit is well known; for his part, Harpel would be a charter member and first president of the Lebanon Kiwanis (founded 1921) and a president of the Chamber, member also of the local Masonic lodge, Elks, and Odd Fellows.

In 1911, we see Harpel back in town. From the Hershey Press:

Jan. 20, 1911

Harpel, the photographer, of Lebanon, was in town on Tuesday taking pictures for the Chocolate and Improvement Companies.

Feb. 3, 1911

One of Harpel’s photographers was in town on Tuesday taking pictures of the PRESS office/the school, the hose house and Industrial School.

March 31, 1911

The Grand Spring Opening of the Hershey Department Store
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Harpel, the photographer, took several pictures of the interior of the store and also of the group of employees.

Harpel also ran an ad in the Hershey Press each week from June 22 to Nov. 30, 1911.

Harpel’s presence was noted again in the June 20, 1912, edition. Possibly he was giving a preview of an exhibition he had planned, because in the July 4 edition, the Hershey Press describes his “monster photos” – panoramas.

We have a cache of these photos from the Hershey Community Archives, but must note – it’s not clear what dates exactly they were taken. Those panoramas would form the basis for the most definite business relationship we can establish between Harpel and Hershey.

Harpel panoramas of Hershey

Harpel chocolate company photos

Harpel photos of the Hershey Industrial School (Homestead)

Astute observers might notice a parrot sitting on a stand in the photos below. A mannequin perhaps? Perhaps not – as archivist Tesa Burns noted, Mr. and Mrs. Hershey had a pet parrot. “So while it is possible it’s a mannequin, we believe it is their actual pet!” said Burns.

A business relationship?

In a search of the Hershey Community Archives, one Harpel record stood out from the others. Not a photograph, but a letter, dated July 18, 1912, from Harpel to Hershey.

The letter informs Hershey that “the 6 sets of framed panoramas of Hershey” will soon be ready for delivery.

“Before sending same we thought we would suggest to you that it might be a first class advertisement for both of us if you could arrange with one of our Lebanon grocers … for display of your products in conjunction with one or more of these pictures,” Harpel wrote.

Perhaps in an appeal to Hershey’s Pennsylvania Dutch thriftiness, Harpel notes, “possibly we could send them up on your milk car and save freight charges on same.”

The letter was forwarded to chocolate company President William F.R. Murrie. No response was saved in the archives.

Perhaps the deal had been arranged during Harpel’s June 20 visit to Hershey.

By the way, Harpel had been aided in his shoot by assistant Paul Ulrich. A couple years later, Ulrich would relocate to Hershey to run a photograph gallery in Hershey Park and open a studio in the chocolate town.

Harpel’s store also stocked postcards of Hershey – the park, the plant, the town. The photo above, with the parrot, also turned into a postcard in one of the three versions in the archives.

More photos from Harpel

The Hershey Community Archives had shots from Harpel taken in Lebanon County, such as of a newly constructed Hershey milk station in Myerstown and of horses pulling a snow-bound milk truck in Lebanon.

A lifelong relationship?

Scant documentary evidence exists, to our knowledge, of the apparently lifelong relationship, or at least familiarity, Hershey and Harpel had.

Harpel saw a town rise from the fields. Saw a business phenomenon emerge. Himself rode a technological and commercial wave.

Jenn and Rick Harpel – great-granddaughter and great-grandson of Luther – pulled from their family collection photos that the Hershey archivists had never seen before.

Photos of an Army-Navy “E” Award ceremony at the Windowless Office Building on Aug. 27, 1942. “Hershey received five of these awards for their wartime production efforts between 1942 and 1944,” said Burns.

In the archives’ own collection, they have a photo labeled as being by Harpel showing Hershey in a casual, candid moment.

A smile in the eyes and mouth, a moment before or after some formal event. Was Harpel there? Or his “man”? Would these shots have been obtainable by someone without Hershey’s familiarity and trust?

But, also, questions. The photo of Milton and Kitty in Nice was not taken by Harpel. Neither was the 1932 portrait of Milton known to have been taken by Underwood and Underwood in Washington, D.C.

How did it end up in the Harpel collection? Possibly we might attribute it to a Hershey Promotional Complex. Was there a market for prints of the chocolate titan? Might it have been another “first class advertisement for both”?

And more candids. Hershey at a wedding. Sitting at ease during the reception on the portico of The Hotel Hershey.

Harpel photos capture also Hershey’s final years. The 81st birthday held in the Hershey Arena, planned himself for the community.

Hershey died Oct. 13, 1945, at age 88. Harpel died July 17, 1956, age 87. Now, it’s not clear that Luther G. Harpel took the photo below himself, and even if he did, it was almost certainly sometime before 1945 – the monument was finished in 1919 – but isn’t it poetic to think otherwise?