San Antonio Brand Presence
Hoffmann-Hayman didn’t just sell coffee in San Antonio — it painted the city with it. This hub traces the physical and print traces the company left across the city from the 1920s through the 1960s.
Street-level paint. The ghost sign at 331 Burnet Street — a hand-painted H and H brand panel on exposed brick, identified in a 2026 building survey — is among the clearest surviving examples of the outdoor advertising the company ran through Stevens Outdoor Advertising. Project lore holds that Silas P. Stevens founded his outdoor firm by painting H and H billboards first.
A second ghost sign — Helena Street lead (Southtown). On the 13 June 2026 tour, David Peché reported an H&H coffee billboard/ghost-sign on the side of a house on Helena St, Southtown, which he wants to “pull the boards off and reconstruct” (Rec20 / 43:17). A possible in-the-wild H&H wall sign — street to-confirm (the transcription is partly garbled), verification of address and condition pending. Source: Peché family tour session.
The rooftop landmark (planned). Pre-construction illustrations published in the San Antonio Light (24 July 1932) depicted a large Crystalvac glass jar as a planned rooftop element for the Delaware Street plant. No post-construction photograph confirming installation has been located; the jar’s presence on the completed roof remains unverified — and the 1933 “In Step with N.R.A.” employee photo (HH-COLL-2018-0004), a front view of the finished plant, shows a bare roofline, mild evidence the jar was not installed (at least not on this elevation by 1933). The building itself, designed by Morris, Nooman, and Wilson in fireproof two-story concrete, was a statement of permanence at the Southern Pacific tracks.
Newsprint. The Pitluk Advertising Company ran a sustained 1923 San Antonio Light trade-and-consumer campaign that put H and H on the front of 50% of San Antonio housewife awareness by their own count. The Broggi Advertising Agency produced four Master Chef radio transcription spots in 1961. Between those two agencies — nearly 40 years apart — the Branding newspaper gallery holds the advertising paper trail: wholesale display ads, can-house placements, and the visual vocabulary of a regional brand asserting itself in its home city across six decades.
See also
- Hoffmann-Hayman Company — corporate hub