The Montauk Wine & Liquor Company was apparently active from the late 1800’s until at least 1917 or 1918. Their Brooklyn address was 2043 Fulton Street in the East New York section.
The company was not listed in Brooklyn’s general directories but was listed in Lain’s Brooklyn Business directories and later, the Brooklyn Phone Books from 1899 to 1917. They were not listed in the 1892 Business Directory suggesting that they started in business sometime between 1893 and 1898 (I don’t have access to the business directories for those years). At times they were listed under the heading “Wine & Liquor Dealers – Wholesale” and other times under the retail heading of “Wines, Liquors and Lager Beer,” and still other times under both headings.
The company was apparently quite small, incorporating with capital of $3,000. in 1908. Their incorporation notice, printed in the January 25 edition of the (Brooklyn) Daily Standard Union named A. DeWillers and Isaac Weinoten of Brooklyn and Isaac Sobel of New York as directors. By 1914, the Brooklyn and Queens Copartnership and Corporation Directory named Max Weinstein as the sole director, with no mention of the original 1908 directors.
The company maintained a liquor tax certificate at the 2043 Fulton Street address up through at least September 30, 1916 and was still listed in the February 1917 Brooklyn-Queens section of the NYC Telephone Book. They were not listed in 1920 suggesting that they did not survive the advent of Prohibition.
Ultimately the corporation was included on a list of 2266 Brooklyn corporations dissolved under a proclamation signed by Governor Alfred E Smith on January 13, 1926. The list appeared in the March 9, 1926 edition of the Brooklyn Standard Union under the following heading:
PROCLAMATION STATE OF NEW YORK EXECUTIVE CHAMBER ALBANY
Pursuant To section one hundred and seven of the stock corporation law, as added by chapter three hundred and nine of the laws of nineteen hundred and twenty-four, I, Alfred E. Smith, Governor of the State of New York, do proclaim and declare the corporations named in the following list, which has been transmitted to me by the Secretary of State, are dissolved and their charters forfeited by reason of their failure to report as required by the statute aforesaid.
The company also included the Rockville Centre, Long Island address of 96 Village Avenue on the embossing of the bottle I found. I haven’t been able to connect the Montauk Wine & Liquor Company name with this Rockville Centre address, however that address did maintain a liquor tax certificate for several years in the mid-teens (1911 to 1917) under the name Meyer Hecker. It’s possible that Hecker was Montauk’s Long Island agent during part or possibly all of their existence.
On September 1, 1917, Meyer Hecker’s name was included on a list of businesses that were refused a liquor license for the upcoming year beginning October 1, 1918. Regardless, it appears that several members of the Meyer family continued to operate the business, albeit illegally, at 96 Village Avenue up through at least 1920. A story in the May 14, 1920 edition the Brooklyn Standard Union described a federal raid on their operation at that time.
Prohibition agents Connolly, White, O’Leary and Scanlon visited the wholesale liquor house of Herman Hecker, 96 Village Avenue, Rockville Centre, and seized tweet-five barrels and 117 cases of Gugenheimer bonded whiskey and arrested the proprietor and his son, David Hecker.
The arrest was made because of an alleged sale of a quart of wine, for which a marked bill was given as payment. Following the alleged illegal sale, the son, David Hecker, was charged with possessing the liquor, in that he took the quart of wine and wrapped it up for delivery.
The revenue men then entered and seized the entire stock found on the premises and will bring action against another twenty-five barrels of bonded whiskey in Government storehouse for violating the dry law.
Federal Commissioner McCabe held father and son for hearing later.
The case was included in a “Listing of Cases Disposed of Since the Volstead Law Went Into Effect” that was printed in the April 3, 1921 edition of the Brooklyn Standard Union. It indicated that David Hecker had been acquitted but that Meyer Hecker, obviously still head of the operation, had received a jail sentence of 15 days. (The list did not include Herman Hecker.)
The bottle I found is a flask roughly one pint in size. It exhibits both the Brooklyn and Long Island locations of the business. Mouth blown it was likely made on the earlier side of the 1899 to 1917 period that the business operated legally.