One of the most revelatory exhibitions I have ever seen at any Museum was the New York Historical Society’s two-part exhibition slavery in New York. I was shocked; I grew up in Long Island, near Rock Hall, which I learned was owned by a slaveholder who’d had a plantation in the Caribbean. I had no idea that slavery was existent in New York City until 1827. So it is with the tobacco industry in New York City and how far back it goes

One could say really that the very foundation of the industry was in New York City, and at the same time, the very Foundation of New York City’s industry was the tobacco industry. That the oldest company in continuous operation could be said to be, Lorillard now subsumed by Reynolds American Tobacco. The snuff mill established by Lorillard in the Bronx is still existing today at the Bronx Botanical Garden, and the snuff Mill remains, in my opinion, as a rather controversial entity. Because in 1980, I was invited to speak at the Bronx Botanical Gardens, and about a month before the conference, I hadn’t received my arrangements and instructions for the presentation. When I contacted the gardens, I was told that the conference had been canceled because of a lack of Interest. Well, it turns out that Lorillard, the makers of Newport cigarettes and Kent cigarettes, were still major funders through the Tisch family, which owned Lorillard by that time, of the Bronx Botanical Gardens; and although I had no direct proof. I was never able to give a straight answer from the gardens as to how they defined a lack of Interest.

The history of tobacco in New York, though, is replete with coverage. But, something that I had not appreciated in all the years that I had spent studying the issue, Harper’s Monthly regularly featured stories on tobacco, whether it be the rebellious youth of that era smoking or the art of aging and manufacturing tobacco. Pipes and later cigars were clearly a major force in New York City. By the 1870s, articles would appear in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle touting the importance of the tobacco trade. Numerous brands competed for attention, Dukes and Sweet Caporal, all advertised in the New York Press. After the Civil War, when smoking became popularized, in part due to health reasons when spitting, which one had to do with cigars and spitting tobacco was frowned upon and in many instances outlawed because of the spread of tuberculosis cigarettes, became increasingly popular, and to increase their favor among men pinups, were included on little cardboard cards in each cigarette pack. You could collect all of them, and at the same time, you wouldn’t crush your cigarette pack, so the cardboard serves two purposes.

By the late 1880s, early 1900s, you could tell though that there were some anti-smoking activities going. By the late 1880s and turn of the century, an incipient, anti-smoking movement was in force (3:05) to the point where even a Cigar Company could be created called the Health Tobacco Company to promote Health Cigars. (3:12) So, the health consequences were on the mind of those who smoked. Cigars had become the leading form of cigar use Among men. In fact, you were generally going to take up smoking if your father smoked. By the mid to late 1800, cigar-smoking. Had become the leading form of tobacco use, and New York City was, as Joe Parker points out, the center of cigar manufacturing in the United States.

(3:38) The health consequences were not hidden. However, there was even a company called the health Tobacco Company marketing Health cigars by the turn of the century, sending out letters to doctors alerting them to this wonderful new product. Cigar stores were ubiquitous throughout New York City. In the Flatiron Building, United Cigars were always in sight, according to the advertisements. By the second decade of the 20th century, one had several undercurrents; there was a strong cigar industry. There was also an element of concern about the side effects of smoking, such as an advertisement in the Police Gazette for a cure for tobacco heart. The tobacco companies really ingratiated themselves in health organizations.

World War One marked the dramatic rise in the increase of cigarette smoking as cigarettes were sent to the boys overseas. So, if you didn’t smoke before you left, or you smoked cigars by the time you return? You were smoking a popular brand of American cigarettes.

A Camel cigarettes salesman book of ethnic advertisements really says it all. Within the second decade of the 20th Century, Camel cigarettes was advertising in virtually every ethnic newspaper in New York City. Cigarettes we even advertised in medical journals. Beginning in 1927, the New York State Journal of Medicine carried cigarette advertisements. and these did not end until the 1950s. “After a Man’s Heart” would be an example of one appearing on the back cover of the New York State Journal of Medicine in 1937, and the irony of what smoking does to the heart would not be evident until about 20 years later. The young lady in that advertisement, when I published it in the New York State Journal of Medicine in a themed issue on smoking in 1983, turned out to have been 17 years old at the time. Her husband wrote to me when he saw that II had reprinted this advertisement on the cover and said that she had fibbed about her age and was selected for this cover, and she developed colon cancer in her 50s and passed away.

The public relations man, Edward Bernays, is credited with having popularized cigarettes among women in the late 1920s by hiring models to smoke Lucky Strike Green during the Easter Parade, and he was joined by the advertising mogul, Albert Lasker, who was one of the earliest advertising men to study psychology and its influence in advertising and helped greatly popularized smoking among women. Of course, the Lasker Award for Cancer Research is one of the great ironies of the 20th century, as it has now become one of the most prestigious awards in medicine.