Saratoga Seltzer Spring

Saratoga Seltzer Spring Co.

(Embossed Spring Image)

Saratoga N.Y.

S S S (Script)

Saratoga Seltzer Spring Co., Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Deep Dark Olive Green – Pint

Provenance: Dave Merker Collection

Saratoga Seltzer Spring is represented by large “SSS” fancy script lettering on the reverse of our pint bottle which was put out by the Saratoga Seltzer Spring Co. in 1870 or so. The company was addressed on Spring Street in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Our pint bottle, in deep dark olive glass, looks like it was carved from shiny black coal. It is cylindrical in form and has an applied sloping collared mouth with an underlying ring and a smooth base. The bottle would have been blown in a two-piece hinge mold. The embossed copy reading ‘SARATOGA SELTZER SPRING CO.’ in a horseshoe arch, appears on the front around a pictorial embossing of the 3-foot glass tube fountainhead at Seltzer Spring. ‘SARATOGA, N.Y.’ embossed copy, in a straight line, anchors the above graphics. This is a rare bottle cherished by collectors. There are also a few quart examples known in collections. The bottles were probably made at the Congressville Glass Works in Saratoga, New York.

Seltzer Spring (German word ‘Selters’) was located about 150 feet from the High Rock Spring but curiously enough, the water had a completely different character and taste “thus illustrating the wonderful extent and capacity of nature’s subterranean laboratory.” (R. F. Dearborn, 1873)

The Spring was initially called the Bartel Spring up until 1860 when a Dr. Haskins bought it and began to excavate with thirty men. In two and a half months, a shaft twenty by thirty feet was excavated through the muck, tufts, blue clay, and hardpan, down to sand rock. They also took out a buried birch tree with roots thirty feet in length.

Saratoga Springs was essentially a swamp before it was drained earlier in the century. They found that eighty gallons a minute would not keep the shaft clear so they pumped in steam. Now the column of water rose to thirty-seven feet and it was full of flakes of silver. The flow of gas was abundant and constant, but every few minutes, as the watchful visitor would observe, there was a momentary ebullition of an extraordinary quantity which caused the water in the tube to boil over the rim. It was reported that when the sunshine fell upon the fountain, it presented a beautiful heavenly appearance.

Around 1870, new owners, the Saratoga Seltzer Spring Company, constructed an ingenious contrivance for exhibiting the flow of the spring water and its carbonated gas. It consisted of a glass tube, about three feet in height and fifteen inches in diameter that was precisely fit to the mouth of the spring. Through this, the sweet, clear, sparkling water gushed in a steady volume of bubbling water and sparkle. An image of this spring fountainhead contraption is embossed on the face of our bottle.

The spring was a genuine Seltzer spring with a character of water almost identical with that of the celebrated Nassau Spring of Germany. The water was described as delicious by German’s who visited Saratoga Springs who had discovered a spring that reminded them of their “Fatherland.”

No people in the world, perhaps, consider a summer’s excursion to a watering-place so absolutely essential to life, physically, dietetically, morally and politically considered, as the Germans, and we are happy to know that they are beginning to realize the attractions of Saratoga.

The Watering Places, The Springs at Saratoga, Chicago Tribune, August 9, 1870

Selters (Seltzer) water came from the village of Lower Selters, in Prussia, near Coblentz and the different springs coalescing formed a basin, from which was bottled the extraordinary number of 1,500,000 jugs a year in 1869. It was reported in 1873, that nearly two million stone jugs, holding one quart each, of the Nassau Seltzer, were annually exported from Germany and that Saratoga Seltzer Spring water would satisfy the desire for Germans to get their Seltzer water right here in America. Apparently, the analyses of the Saratoga and the German Seltzer springs were reported as being almost identical.

Saratoga Springs at that time possessed numerous objects and places of interest for the German population, surpassing even the famous Spas of Europe, and the discovery of the Seltzer Spring attracted large numbers of German newcomers to the region who flocked to the many hotels for relaxation and rejuvenation.

The water of the spring was described as very pleasant to the taste, being slightly acidulous and saline, but much milder than that of the other Saratoga springs. When mixed with still wines, etc., it would add the peculiar flavor only to be derived from a pure, natural Seltzer. It would enliven the wines and give them the character of sparkling wine.

Primary Image: Saratoga Seltzer Spring bottle imaged on location by the FOHBC Virtual Museum midwest studio led by Alan DeMaison.

Support: Reference to Saratoga and How to See It by R. F. Dearborn, 1873

Support Image: Auction Lot 130: “Saratoga Seltzer Spring Co / (Spouting Spring) / Saratoga. N.Y.” – “SSS” Mineral Water Bottle, America, 1860-1870. Cylindrical, deep olive green, applied sloping collared mouth with ring – smooth base, pint. T #S-50B Bold embossing. Differences in glass thickness make this a visually appealing bottle. Rare. Fine condition. – Norman Heckler, Norman C. Heckler & Company

Join: The Saratoga type Bottle Collectors Society. Request information at jullman@nycap.rr.com