ITEM DESCRIPTION:

Vintage painted metal pot or pan scraper. It advertises Merkle's Blu-J Brooms. It is a vintage, used, preowned scraper. It is 3.5 by 2.75. In 1879 John Merkle and his son Oscar started the Merkle-Wiley Broom Company in Paris. The new brick factory was built at the corner of West End Ave. and Broom Street in 1890. In the 1910-1919 era the company produced 10,000 brooms per day. By the 1920s they were producing 20,000 per day.It was famous for its Red Bird and Blu-J brooms which the factory shipped all over the U.S. The Blu-J brooms were produced until the 1920s. The company merged with the France Broom Company in 1964. The last broom was produced in Paris on April 30, 1964. In 1985 a furniture manufacturer acquired the facility. It survived a fire in 1996, but Northern Harvest demolished the building in 1999 to make way for a new facility.