New York poet Walt Whitman was known to have frequented an adjacent bar during the time of Mendes’ chocolate operation.
Eugene Mendes, whose chocolate career spanned the same period, began on William Street and later moved to Fulton Street in lower Manhattan, then to Leonard Street in Tribeca, and finally to Broadway near Bleecker Street - one of the few chocolate-related buildings of its time that still stands, at least in part, to this day. Havens)Įffray was among a group of small, independent chocolate businesses in the city we first see him at Broadway and Grand in the early 1840s, then at his shop near Astor Place, which he operated until at least 1880. It has three white stone rollers and they grind chocolate into paste all day long… ( Diary of a Little Girl in Old New York, by Catherine E. One contemporary account describes the shop run by Felix Effray at 64 East 9th Street, whose stone melangeur was prominently positioned in the store’s window:ĭecemOn the corner of Broadway and Ninth Street is a store kept by Felix Effray, and I love to stand at the window and watch the wheel go ‘round. One might also imagine the role these chocolate makers played in the daily life of the street, tempting passersby with colorful displays, and perhaps a view of the chocolate-making process itself. Much of what we know of chocolate culture during this period is preserved in the form of ornate tins and whimsical advertisements of the day. I’ve come to think of the latter half of the 19 th century as New York’s “golden age” of chocolate, in part because of the growth in number of chocolate makers in the city, from a handful in the early 1800s to a dozen or more before the turn of the 20th century. Indeed, many of the most prominent chocolate companies in New York City branched out into chocolate candies in addition to manufacturing plain bars and cocoa powders. While I tried to limit my own research to manufacturers who produced chocolate from the cocoa bean itself, those lines between chocolate-maker and confectioner began to intersect even 150 years ago - a distinction that continues to confuse most consumers today. Of course, the range of traditionally sugar-based confections expanded with the introduction of sweet chocolate products. Extra cocoa butter from this pressing would soon be added to bars of “eating” chocolate, leading to the smooth refined textures of the bars we consume today. We first see this shift in early advertisements extolling the virtues of “digestible” cocoa - lower in fat and thus lighter and easier to prepare. in the 1820s) allowed for a number of new applications and refinements. The innovation of pressing ground cocoa beans into its cocoa butter and powdered components (a process perfected by Dutchman Casparus Van Houten Sr. With the industrial revolution of the 1800s, chocolate and cocoa made an interesting transition from the beverage served at coffeehouses and pharmacies into the realm of confections.
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