Drexel Got Milk?

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Keating Building Co. personnel have unearthed a bottle from the Matheson Hall site that offers a milky glimpse into the past.

The bottle, completely intact yet caked with mud and mineral deposits, bears the embossed word: “Aristocrat.” Research indicates that many Philadelphia dairy products bore the “Aristocrat” name. The now defunct Philadelphia Dairy Products Co. made ice cream and other dairy products branded “Aristocrat,” while a company named Scott-Powell Dairies, which had a location at 45th and Parrish streets, owned Aristocrat Ice Cream, which made similar bottles. Scott-Powell dairy also had a location at 23rd and Locust streets.

An advertisement in a Georgia School of Technology (now Georgia Tech) publication from the World War II era heralds Aristocrat milk as “the milk that helps build bodies and brains of college men.”

Be on the lookout for the spring issue of Market Street magazine, which features an article about the history of the Matheson Hall site.