H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

601 Delaware roof fire — Saturday, 25 January 1947

A fire of undetermined origin broke out at approximately 2:30 p.m. Saturday, 25 January 1947 in the roof of the H&H Coffee Company plant at 601 Delaware Street, San Antonio. Both San Antonio newspapers ran coverage the next morning:

  • San Antonio Light, 26 January 1947, page 1 — “Firemen Get 15 Alarms in Day” — frames the H&H incident as one of fifteen alarms the San Antonio Fire Department answered that Saturday afternoon (HH-CLIP-1947-0001).
  • San Antonio Express-News, 26 January 1947 — “Coffee Firm Damaged” — a sharper, H&H-focused headline running Sunday morning (HH-CLIP-1947-0003).

What happened

Both papers report consistent core facts:

  • Where: 601 Delaware Street, in the roof of the building.
  • Estimated total damage: approximately $3,000.
  • Type: approximately $2,500 of the loss was water damage to roasted coffee stocks inside the plant — i.e. firefighting water seeped into the production floor where roasted product was stored, ruining a portion of inventory. Direct fire damage was the smaller share of the total.
  • Origin: undetermined; not reported as suspicious in either paper.

The H&H plant continued operations after the cleanup — no closure or extended shutdown is documented. The fire was a routine industrial incident from the company’s perspective, not a structural or insurable catastrophe.

Context: pattern of fires at 601 Delaware

This is the second documented mid-century fire at 601 Delaware after the 1937 fire at the Tucker Coffee plant nearby (the Aviation Coffee Fire, at the W. E. Hayman successor firm — adjacent but not at H&H). A separate 1947-11-02 San Antonio Light “Damage Suit Off” item documents the antitrust-litigation context for Tucker / Three Rivers Glass; the 1947 H&H roof fire is not the subject of that suit.

Significance

  • Inventory loss documentation. The water-damage detail (~$2,500 of $3,000) tells us H&H stored substantial roasted coffee inventory at 601 Delaware in early 1947 — enough that even a quickly-controlled roof fire could ruin material on that scale. Consistent with the 1949 Light “$315 Million Output Predicted” feature documenting H&H as a high-volume operation.
  • Self-naming in popular press. Both 1947 reports name the firm as “H&H Coffee Company” rather than “Hoffmann-Hayman” — supporting the popular-press vs. legal-name reading that the shortened “H&H” form was in active common use by the late 1940s even though the legal corporate name remained Hoffmann-Hayman through the 1962 Continental sale.
  • Mid-century G. P. Menger era. The 1947 fire lands during Gus P. Menger’s long presidency (1920-1960). No officer-level commentary appears in either article.

Open questions

  • What caused the fire? “Undetermined origin” in both papers — no follow-up coverage on this site identifies the cause. San Antonio Fire Department records (if archived) could document.
  • Insurance recovery. $3,000 in 1947 dollars is ~$45,000 in 2025 — manageable but not trivial. Whether H&H carried fire insurance and recovered the loss is undocumented; a 1947 H&H financial statement would document.
  • Did the fire prompt any structural change? The 601 Delaware page documents steel I-beam first-floor retrofits of uncertain date; the 1947 fire is one of several plausible triggers for post-construction structural work. Building-permit records ~1947 would document.

See also