11-25 Wyckoff Ave, Ridgewood.Stahl Meyer franks, Stahlmeyer.com 2New York City is a hot dog city. The frankfurter, wiener, tube steak, hot dog; whatever you want to call it, was invented right here in New York. At Coney Island, to be specific. Although there are conflicting stories, most people credit German immigrant Charles Feltman with the invention of the American hot dog, a cooked sausage served on a bun so that it did not have to be handled with the fingers, or need a fork and a plate.

Feltman first served his frankfurters in his restaurant on Coney Island in the 1870s, and over the next several decades, the hot dog made him rich beyond his dreams. In 1916, one of his employees, Nathan Handwerker, with the help of his wife, came up with an even better tasting recipe, and a better price, and Nathan’s Famous became synonymous with this cheap and satisfying food, the staple of Coney Island, and a quintessential New York favorite.

Almost all of the words that are used to name hot dogs are German, and that’s because the hot dog is really a variation on Germanic sausage recipes.” Frankfurter” is derived from Frankfurt, Germany, and “wiener” refers to “Wien,” the German name for Vienna, Austria. Unfortunately, the word “dog” in relationship to sausages also comes from the Germans of yesteryear, who often called any kind of sausage a dog, a bad joke pertaining to the rumors of dog meat in sausages, a rumor as old as 1845. It wasn’t always an urban legend, either.

The Germanic tradition of sausages and cured meats, what we call “cold cuts” today, came with the multitude of German immigrants who began coming to America in large numbers around 1850. They were fleeing civil unrest in Germany, as the many city-states in the old Holy Roman Empire began vying for independence. There were a lot of Germans in the food business by the end of the 19th century, including both Jewish and Gentile meat packers, food processers, wholesale and retail grocers, and of course, brewers.

Brooklyn and Queens had a huge German population in and around Williamsburg, Bushwick, Eastern Bedford, Ridgewood and Astoria. Within that area, there were many successful meat packers, and makers of provisions, which include bologna, sausages, knockwurst, bratwurst, salamis, pastramis, corned beef, smoked ham, and more. Some of them made a tidy living just producing for their local clients, while others became very large companies, and eventually household names, like Oscar Meyer, and for many, Stahl Meyer, Inc.

In 1894, Lewis Meyer founded Lewis Meyer & Co. and a year later, another local meat packer, Otto Stahl, opened his company, called most appropriately, Otto Stahl & Co. Both men were meat packers and makers of provisions. Louis Meyer came to this corner, on Wyckoff and Cooper Avenues, in 1923. His business had outgrown his small factory on Flushing Avenue, and he had a new cinderblock brick factory built here at 11-25 Wyckoff Avenue, to accommodate his growing business.

The cinderblocks made it fireproof, a good thing in a business that involves a lot of heat around flammable substances. It also was situated next to LIRR tracks. This enabled him to receive and ship carloads of refrigerated meats, cutting way back on the time the meats were exposed to warmer temperatures.

Meyer and Stahl were essentially making the same products, and both had excellent reputations, so they decided to join forces in order to make their overall business larger, leaner, and more profitable. Their company became Stahl-Meyer, Inc. Twenty years later, in 1928, another meat packer, F. A. Ferris & Company, a Ridgewood staple since 1836, merged with them as well, creating Ferris, Stahl-Meyer & Co. This Ridgewood plant became the Queens plant. There were others throughout the city, including their largest plant, which was in the Bronx.

Stahl-Meyer was known for all of its fine products, but was especially known for its 100% beef hot dogs. By the 1950s, they were the official supplier of hot dogs for all three area baseball teams, the Giants, the Yankees and the Dodgers. Everyone loved a Stahl-Meyer hot dog. Like many other food companies, they also printed collectable baseball cards. Each card was of a local team player, and had his picture on one side, and his stats on the other. In 1953, Stahl-Meyer issued a now very rare set that also had a coupon for a free ticket raffle to any of the three stadiums. A fan had to send in a letter of 25 words or less telling Stahl-Meyer how much they liked their hot dogs.

When Stahl-Meyer merged with Ferris, they inherited Ferris’ Sabrette hot dog brand. Those dogs were made in the Bronx, and were also one of New York’s classic hot dogs, sold by street vendors everywhere. The 1950s were great times for Stahl-Meyer, they had all kinds of success with cocktail wieners as well as hot dogs, and their other cold cuts and canned meats. Hostesses throughout the city were serving those tiny mini-hotdogs in the strangest ways, as seen in an ad below. But Queens would not be celebrating. In a move to consolidate manufacturing, they closed the Ridgewood plant, and shifted production to the Bronx. They are still in business, in their Bronx factory.

The factory building was sold and became a garment factory. By the 1980s, when the tax photo below was taken, it was called the Fitwell Garment Company. It was several different sewing plants over the years. The building was also taken for taxes by the city in 2002, bought by a series of LLC’s, and finally became a storage facility, called U-Store-It,which bought the building in 2010. The holding company paid $13.6 million for it, which tells me that down the road, when the rest of Ridgewood gets filled up, this is going to become a large new condo tower. Before that happens, drive by and take a look at the place where the hot dogs that powered three stadiums worth of baseball fans were made. Stahl-Meyer dogs; the food of champions.

(1950s advertisement for Stahl-Meyer cocktail franks. Photo:stahlmeyer.com)

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Photo: Christopher Bride for Property Shark
Photo: Christopher Bride for Property Shark
1980s tax photo. Municipal Archives
1980s tax photo. Municipal Archives
Another 1950s Stahl Meyer advertisement. Photo:Stahlmeyer.com
Another 1950s Stahl Meyer advertisement. Photo:Stahlmeyer.com

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