Posted By:
Hal LewisIn practicality, you are correct in that the possibility of two separate stores still exists even in spite of this invoice.
I am not sure why Mr. Harris is certain about Peck & Snyder only having ONE store location open at a time, but he has done the research for 20 years and I have to defer to him on that.
I do note, however, that they have actually CROSSED OUT the words "Ann Street" on this invoice ... and probably on ALL of the ones that they had remaining ... so that they could keep using them for the 126 Nassau Street address (with the stamp).
If "22 Ann Street" was simply closing down their store and moving things into an already existing "126 Nassau Street" store ... there is no reason to go back and CROSS OUT the "Ann Street."
In other words, if my business moves tomorrow to a new address ... we will NOT go back into the files and CROSS OUT the old address on all of our old documents and put a NEW address on them.
BUT ... if my business was to unexpectedly move tomorrow to a prime new location that JUST became available on Nassau Street (which is probably what happened) ... then we would have NO CHOICE but to use the old invoices until we could get some new ones ordered.
We would do EXACTLY what they did: Get a stamp made quickly and cross out the old address.
Also, in looking at the invoice, it doesn't look like it has anything to do with a catalog order, or a large order that couldn't be filled from one store.
It looks like a very detailed and formal receipt that someone took a lot of trouble to have printed back in 1869... so I doubt they would go to the trouble and expense to have two separate stores with two separate sets of their own individualized invoices, etc. Remember, this is pre-telephone and pre-network, so having two separate stores 80 yards apart would require DOUBLE staffing and DOUBLE rent and a lot of running back and forth.
Why would ANYONE go through all of those expenses to have two separate stores ONLY ONE BLOCK AWAY from each other?
Also, note the HEADING of this invoice. It does NOT say anything about the "Ann Street" address being ONLY for "ice skates" or anything like that. It clearly has the entire title for Peck & Snyder, and it seems clear that at one point they were selling baseball supplies from this Ann Street location.
But again, I think the fact that the CROSSED OUT the old "Ann Street" address is the most telling fact in arguing that this was a "replacement" address and not just an invoice being "removed" from one existing store to another.