A stamp holder and pocket calendar of cream celluloid. The inside contains a calendar for 1900. A promotional novelty, it advertises Oak Hall Clothing Co. of Boston. The front resembles a stamped envelope.
Oak Hall was a well-known men’s clothing retailer in Boston started by George W. Simmons. The name derives from the new woodwork in the store following an 1842 renovation—a look that became synonymous with high-end men’s clothing stores. Thanks to Simmons's aggressive marketing campaigns, the store was familiar to most residents of New England in the mid-19th century. It is mentioned in works by Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Main Street”) and derisively by Henry David Thoreau (“Ktaadn”), as well as in correspondence by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was incensed at the store’s use of advertising poems (written by “Professor Goodfellow”), and patterned on Longfellow's style.
Source: “Oak Hall in American Literature” by Steven Allaback, in American Literature Vol. 46 No.4 Jan. 1975, p. 545-549.
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