J.G. Dill was once a great Virginia tobacco company, known worldwide for its Dill’s Best pipe tobacco. While as far as we know the tobacco brand Dill’s does not survive, Dill’s Premium Pipe Cleaners, known by their yellow and red package, do live on.

J.G. Dill, mostly a maker of pipe tobaccos, gradually lost favor as Americans largely quit smoking pipes. At some point it became a part of U.S. Tobacco; the packaging would read J.G. Dill (U.S. Tobacco Successor) or something similar. Gradually, the company brand disappeared.

The 1946 trademark application for Dill’s Best from U.S. Tobacco points to the first use of the Dill’s Best name in 1885, though other packages say 1848. Dill’s also made a nautical-feeling brand called Look Out cut plug, and had sister brands like the cigarette called Sano (an early low tar), as well as Tweed and Model. It is unclear when U.S. Tobacco (or J.G. Dill) started selling pipe cleaners.

For a time, the brand sponsored network television, including the live NBC show called Martin Kane, Private Eye. Veoh has an episode online with an intro showing the tobacco products, as well as numerous people smoking the brands (the camera cuts to the tobacco label, quite overhanded product placement, including regular visits to a tobacco shop). Click on the show title for the Veoh link:

Martin Kane, Private Eye, 1949-54

[Narrator] “Martin Kane, Private Eye…presented by Model…Dill’s Best…Old Briar Pipe Tobacco…and their new teammate…Sano cigarettes for full smoking pleasure, yet only one percent nicotine.” (Voice of William Gargan as Kane) “This is Martin Kane with a story about a dime-a-dance girl, a Broadway joint, a niece named Irma Field, and her uncle, a distinguished old gent named Brooks Field who currently has his Brooks Brothers parked in my guest chair.”

Dill’s was the creation of the Richmond brothers J.D. and Adolph Dill, who created Dill’s Best, according to The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Tradition by Robert Sobel. Yours truly happens to be fascinated by Dill’s, mostly because he lived in a Richmond, Virginia house build by Adolph, which is also spelled Addolph, and one of his favorite buildings in Richmond (indeed the world) is the Model Tobacco building.

Dill’s was one of the many family owned tobacco companies of the turn of the century; another was T.C. Williams, whose son, Adolph Dill Williams, was a generous benefactor to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. (History question: We’d love some reader help on the genealogy, please!)

While the pipe tobacco is gone, Dill’s pipe cleaners still survive, though younger users of pipe cleaners probably don’t even know what they were originally used for. Indeed they have been renamed in many craft stores, though most still know them as pipe cleaners. We wonder if there isn’t a bigger market at Michael’s than at the tobacco stores.

Dill’s Pipe Cleaners were later sold to Lane Limited, and the trademark was recently renewed by its new owners, International Pipes and Accessories, 1731 U.S. Highway 21 South, Sparta, SC, 28675.

This also dovetails into a recent post on the the status of a ballpark in Richmond, Va., and the prospect of building a new one in a historical area known for its flooding. The need for a new baseball field, or at least a serious renovation, in Virginia’s capital has its merits: The old venue began crumbling, with chunks of concrete falling from the structure, about a decade after it opened. The clubhouses are considered tiny, the seats very uncomfortable and the concourses are dank.

But there’s a civic tragedy in all this. When the place, known as The Diamond, opened for the 1985 season, it was considered the best minor-league park in the United States. It also captured an all-too-rare moment in the old Confederate capital of cooperation between the primarily black City of Richmond and the majority-white counties in the suburbs. Unfortunately, its sheen quickly dulled as the aesthetics of baseball changed. In 1988, the first proto-retro facility was built for the minor-league Buffalo Bisons and with the 1992 completion of the Baltimore’s Orioles Park at Camden Yards, the faux-antique park reached its full form, leaving The Diamond quickly obsolete as new stadia have sprouted across the United States ever since.

But now it’s over 20 years since the baseball began honoring its past with brick, steel and concrete. Mutterings have begun over the past six or seven years that the trend’s grown stale and flabby. Perhaps they’ll grow now that New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff criticized the movement as a “nostalgic funk” in his review of Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium.

The Baby Boomers, who drove the nostalgia park wave by romanticizing the steel-and-girder baseball fields of their youth, will start dying soon. Could Generation Jones and Generation X, who grew up with the rather featureless multipurpose stadia, tire of this trend-only to have the next generation want retro-retro parks? Would Richmond, yet again, be holding the bag as it ends an architectural style for a park in what is effectively the city’s funnel during high rains?

There’s much to commend about the faux-nostalgia park, even if it often destroys real history for an “experience.” But it must be reinvented and utilize other forms of classic architecture such as one of the Modernist movements or-why not?-some Richardsonian Romanesque features. Isotopes Park (see above) in Albuquerque utilizes some wonderfully funky mid-century features, and plans for a new ballpark in Tulsa emphasize the city’s history of Art Deco design. If Richmond and other cities embark on a steel and brick design, in 10 or 20 years, tastes will evolve.

And the taxpayers will suffer.

If you are curious about how to brand a regional restaurant, please read our post Tips to Save Your Casual Service Restaurant. It not only has survival tips, but a few points about how to make your local restaurant a true regional brand, a local institution. (At right, the Duck-In in Virginia Beach.)

Part of pushing your restaurant brand is recipes. Write down a few, and post them on your website, with the help of a content creation company. Distribute them to regular customers, or actually bring customers into the kitchen to see how it is made. Don’t worry; no one will steal it. If they hear about the recipe from you first, you become the source, and while they might make it at home, we know it won’t be as good as the experience is being in the restaurant or eatery.

Recipes that are published ensure that your restaurant not only gets some attention, but you become a fixed element of the culinary scene. Each restaurant worth their salt ought to have at least a half dozen recipes that it publishes; in fact any named “dish” can be a potential recipe to publish. Remember, it’s about quality, so only a few proven recipes.

Below, an example, a recipe rescued from White’s, which was once Richmond’s famed ice cream parlor. It appeared in the cookbook Favorite Recipes of the Woman’s Club of Lancaster County, Virginia.

White’s Chocolate Fudge

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
3 oz. Baker’s Chocolate
1 pinch of salt
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt chocolate over low heat. Add sugar and milk. Turn heat up a little and stir to keep fro burning. Cook to soft-ball stage. Set pan in a large container of cold water. (Mrs. White said she sometimes used the sink.) Then add butter and vanilla. When fudge has cooled somewhat, beat it until ready to pour. Pour into buttered dish. Let harden and cut into squares.

RICHMOND – The merger between Wyeth and Pfizer got us thinking about the legacy of the Albert Hartley Robins company, better known as A.H. Robins. While the name A.H. Robins is gone, the Robins influence shows in the highly profitable brands that are within the Wyeth pharmaceutical company, namely Dimetapp, Chap Stick and Robitussin.

So we pulled out An Angel on My Shoulder, the 1995 biography of E. Claiborne Robins by Juliet E. Shield, his grand-daugher. Robins was the man who made the Richmond-based company grow. In it, he details how he grew the company into a pharmaceutical giant. Early on, they called themselves not a pharmaceutical company but a manufacturing chemist.

The company, founded in 1896, grew with the idea that it would try to find effective cures with quality ingredients. Its roots were from A. H. Robins c. 1866 pharmacy. It was a time of snake oil, when medicines like asafetida were popular; asafetida was a so-called “fetid gum resin” that was sold to prevent disease and children wore bottles of it around their necks to prevent illness.

Little Grey Pills

An early product at Robins was Robins Cascara Compound, which was made by Albert Hartley Robins himself in the back of his Richmond pharmacy as a cure for indigestion. Smith Kline also made products for Robins, including Bironex.

Like so many others in this time, company was terribly nimble and innovative, even though it had no capital and few resources. In addition, it was located outside the giant New York/New Jersey pharmaceutical hub.

The folks at Pfizer, who seem to need a few ideas, should take a look at this book about E. Claiborne Robins. If they are too lazy to hunt it up, we have presented a few ideas from E. Claiborne Robins here.

1. Sub out production and sell, sell. Early on, he outsourced production, including getting a Merck predecessor company to make Robins’ Cascara pills. This wasn’t because of a silly management theory about whether they should or shouldn’t outsource because of a philosophy. It was whether it worked at that moment.
2. One leading doctor can make you or break you: A Kansas City physician, a Dr. Krawl, helped build Robins as a company after World War II as he was one of the first to heavily prescribe Donnatal, a versatile drug for nerves and gastro and spastic disorders. Donnatal, introduced in 1934, is now sold by PBM Pharmaceuticals of Gordonsville, Virginia.
3. Hire researchers as soon as you have extra profits: A key to the company’s growth was research; as soon as it made extra money, it hired great physicians and pharmacists, and set them to work finding new drugs. Pfizer seems to be getting rid of research; how that pays off I am not sure. It sounds more like a “run-out-the clock” theory.
4. Success is not always about research. Robitussin, introduced in 1949, was the hit product for Robins, and still produces millions in profits for Wyeth. But it was not discovered in a lab, but instead was found in a scientific journal, for all to see. Robins just figured out how to market it.
5. Repetition, bang, bang, bang. Sales is repetition. “The secret was we were able to just pound them. We didn’t have that much. We didn’t have 500 products to work, and we could just really concentrate on them. The old repetition, just bang, bang, bang. I think that was one of the secrets.”
6. Robins never sold at sponsored dinners. They just would thank doctors, over and over again.
7. Salesmen are made, not recruited. “We were reputed to have the best sales force in the entire pharmaceutical industry….I believe that maybe we picked some ordinary salesmen and made them into better ones.”
8. Wins might be losses. What drove Robins into bankruptcy was the Dalkon Shield, which was invented by a physician at Johns Hopkins named Dr. Hugh Davis. Robins and Upjohn got into a bidding war over the patent, and Robins won. Then Robins lost.
9. Sell regulated products AND consumer products. Pfizer made a horrible mistake by selling off its consumer products and now has to get some back by buying Wyeth’s. Companies need to have both regulated and unregulated products. Not to mention the obvious fact that some prescription products become over the counter, ensuring quality distribution and relationships with grocery and drugstore chains is helped by volume. If you don’t have over the counter, you become dependent on profits from hit prescription drugs, which can disappear when the drugs go generic.

Below is the list of the A.H. Robins product names before their Chapter 11 filing due to the Dalkon Shield. We divided them into over-the-counter and prescription, though some might be in the wrong category, so we hope if any chemists or folks can help us out, please leave a comment at the end of the story:

Over the counter

• Adabee vitamins
• Albee B Complex vitamins
• Campetrodin antiseptic dressing
• Caron Perfumes
• Chap Stick, actually purchased and moved from Lynchburg’s Miller-Morton company
• Cough Calmers
• Dimacol
• Dimetane antihistamine
• Dimetapp antihistamine and decongestant
• Donna Extentabs belladonna Alkaloids with extended action
• Donnagel antidiarrheal, made with belladonna
• Donnagesic/Donnatal plus an analgesic
• Donnalate, an antacid and sedative
• Donnazyme, a digestant
• Dopram
• Entozyme, a digestant
• H-P-V capsule vitamins, formerly Hy-Po-Vita
• Lip Quencher cosmetics (these were the ones Lynda Carter advertised
• Lip Soother
• Lip Treat lip gloss
• Robalate antacid
• Robins Cascara Compound, a “mild and strong” laxative
• Robitussin cough syrup was introduced in 1949; some of it originally had codeine
• Sergeant’s flea and tick collars and pet care
• Silain antacid
• Uralithic salt, an antiseptic
• Viokase, a digestive
• Z-bec, Vitamins with zinc

Prescription Robins Drugs

• Ambar methamphetamine with phenobarbital
• Arthralgen antirheumatic analgesic
• Bironex hematinic
• Dalkon Sheild
• Dopram, a respiratory stimulant
• Exna, a diuretic
• Mephate, a skeletal muscle relaxant and CNS Sedative
• Micro K potassium chloride
• Mitrolan, a laxative and anti-diarrheal of calcium polycarbophil
• Pabalate, an antirheumatic
• Phenaphen, an analgesic and sedative, formerly Phenacetin with Phenobarbital, changed to acetaminophen, and some preparations had codeine
• Pondimin, an anorectic of fenfluramine hydrochloride
• Quinidex, a long acting form of quinidine sulfate
• Reglan, a gastric emptying antiemetic
• Robamox, Robicillin, Robimycin, Robitet antibiotics
• Robinul, an anticholinergic
• Sedobarb, a sedative and hypnotic, phenobarbital with pentobarbitol
• Tenex, an anti-hypertensive of guanfacine hydrochloride
• Theorate, a diuretic stimulant

RICHMOND — Original neon signs from two well-known Virginia retailers have been restored to original working condition and are on display at the Valentine Richmond History Center. The exterior sign from the former Mill End Shop in Richmond ‘s Carytown and a mid-century A&N Store sign join the History Center’s extensive neon sign collection.

Upon its closure in late 1996, the Mill End Shop, purveyor of custom drapery and upholstery, saw its vertical sign donated to the History Center, where it was mounted outside the museum’s south entrance in a state of disrepair. In 2008, the History Center commissioned a complete overhaul of the sign, including replacing broken neon and transformers, removing rust, and restoring its original bright blue color. The Talley Sign Company, which manufactured the sign in the late 1950s, oversaw the recent restoration and re-installation.

Richmond-based retailer A&N grew from a small, 19th century dry goods store to a prosperous wartime army surplus supplier to a sporting goods institution, owned and operated throughout by the Sternheimer family. By 2007, 48 A&N stores were in operation, 12 of them in the Richmond area. The Sternheimers closed the entire chain in January 2008 and donated a mid-century A&N sign to the History Center. Designed in 1930, the 24-foot wide neon sign hung at a Culpeper A&N.

After its service in Culpeper, this particular sign was restored and hung in the company’s Sandston headquarters. Both signs are best visible from the History Center parking lot off of 10th Street between Marshall and Clay Streets in historic Court End. They join an extensive collection of local and regional neon signage from the Richmond community past and present, including the former Mosque, WTVR, Buster Brown and Thalhimer’s.

Today, the Miller & Rhoads building stands empty, and the city of Richmond waits for its next use, retail.

A new Hilton Garden Inn had been slated for the building forever, though now apartments are in progress!

Wouldn’t it be great if there were still actually a Miller & Rhoads? I do need a place to see Santa Claus.

Apparently, commercial real estate brokers from Grubb & Ellis Harrison & Bates are working on leasing the grand old store.

We want our Tea Room back!

If you are interested in the buildling, please talk to Harrison & Bates. Or sign a lease for an apartment.