Ehrlich's (David P. Ehrlich Company)

Ehrlich's, formally the David P. Ehrlich Company, is a tobacconist and pipe maker that operated in downtown Boston for more than a century. The business traces its roots to a cigar and tobacco shop Ferdinand Abraham opened in 1868 in the South End, on Washington Street; Abraham moved downtown in 1880, and the firm never left that neighborhood again.

David P. Ehrlich joined the shop in 1881 at age twenty, later married his employer's daughter, and devoted the rest of his life to the business. The company took his name in 1916; management later passed to second-generation relatives, including Richard A. and William Ehrlich.

Addresses in the Heart of the City

The firm's addresses line up along Boston's historic core. The 25 Court Street location it entered in 1880 sat near where, in the 1720s, James Franklin, with the help of his brother Benjamin, had printed The New-England Courant. In 1908 it moved to number 37 on the same street; after the Second World War the shop relocated from its then-location at 33 Court Street to 207 Washington Street, across from the Old State House. When that building was demolished in 1967, its final stop was 32 Tremont Street, adjacent to the city's oldest cemetery, King's Chapel Burying Ground. The mahogany display cases built for Court Street at the turn of the century were dismantled and reinstalled at each new shop, so the interior look was largely preserved across generations.

The centennial year of 1968 was marked by two separate events: the January issue of Antiques magazine carried an article by Wendell D. Garrett introducing the firm's collection of tobacco and pipe artifacts, and the Boston Public Library's Copley Square building devoted a twenty-five-case exhibition to the same collection that same month.