Sales report books from the office ceiling

These sales forms are artifacts recovered on site at the historic Hoffmann–Hayman factory building—they were not acquired through dealers or auctions; they turned up during work on the building itself.

While pulling network cable above the ground-floor office, we found three staple-bound books of sales report forms tucked between boards and the 1932 stucco ceiling shell—the original inch-thick stucco on expanded-metal lath, a few feet below the second floor’s board-formed concrete joists. The paper is toned and starting to crack along the folds, but it sat undisturbed for decades until the cable run went in.

Taken together, the interwar books confirm the factory’s product offerings as the office actually entered them: line items for Tea, H and H brands, Sam Houston, Broncho, and Texas Girl Coffee appear on these forms—contemporaneous proof of what lines sales staff could write up alongside tins and ads in the archive.