Founded in 1848, Hammacher Schlemmer began as a modest New York hardware store specialising in hard-to-find tools and precision equipment. The business was originally established on the Bowery by Charles Tollner and his partner R. Stern. In 1859, family friend Alfred Hammacher invested in the company. The “Schlemmer” portion of the name entered the picture through William Schlemmer, nephew of Charles Tollner. Schlemmer, also a long time employee, watched the company as it evolved from a traditional hardware supplier into a broader purveyor of specialty goods and consumer curiosities.
Over the next century-and-a-half, Hammacher Schlemmer became America’s most gloriously eccentric mail-order retailer. By 1912, it had printed its largest catalog to date, spanning 1,112 pages – a hardbound copy of which is now housed in the Smithsonian's permanent collection. The US Navy, recognising something authoritative in the sheer sprawl of the thing, used the catalog as an equipment manual from 1904 until 1971.
If the Sears catalog [RR1:68] represented practical middle-American aspiration, the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog eventually became a curated museum of gadgets, luxuries, inventions and delightful absurdities. Its slogan – “Offering the Best, the Only and the Unexpected”.
Hammacher Schlemmer thrived in the strange territory between innovation, novelty, engineering experiment and rich-person whimsy. By the late 20th century, receiving the thick Hammacher Schlemmer catalog in the mail became an event in itself. Readers flipped through its glossy pages less to shop and more to marvel.
Some products were genuinely ahead of their time. Hammacher Schlemmer sold one of the first electric shavers in America (1934), pop-up toasters (1931), early microwave ovens, telephone answering machines (1968) and other unusual personal electronics long before such devices became mainstream. But the company became most famous for products that seemed to exist purely because somebody somewhere had decided they could be invented.
The catalog dropped its hardware roots in the 1950s and leaned heavily into the high-end, the peculiar and the frankly inexplicable. Among the more outlandish offerings over the years:
- A personal submarine
- A floating poker table with built-in drink coolers
- A robotic golf caddy that followed its owner autonomously
- A 4-metre-long backyard zeppelin
- A remote-controlled bald eagle
- A voice-controlled martini maker
- An indoor snowball launcher
- A giant backyard slot-car racetrack for adults
- A full-size animatronic dinosaur
- The “world’s largest” cigar humidor
- A full-scale working replica of the 1966 Batmobile (US$200,000)
- A transparent kayak
- A bamboo tiki bar
- A wearable sleeping bag suit
- A garden shed shaped like a UFO
- And perhaps most famously, a US$20,000 (about US$215,000 today) personal fallout shelter
In many ways, Hammacher Schlemmer anticipated the modern internet era. Long before online shopping algorithms surfaced bizarre niche products at 2am, Hammacher Schlemmer had already mastered the art of making people exclaim: “Who on earth would buy this?” – immediately followed by: “Actually – maybe I would.”
In October 2025, after 177 years, Hammacher Schlemmer initiated a going-out-of-business sale. The brand was subsequently relaunched in March 2026 under the management of event-driven retail company Stores.com. What that means for Hammacher Schlemmer moving forward remains to be seen.
Story Idea: Gordon Garb
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References
wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammacher_Schlemmer
entrepreneur.com/living/the-13-most-outrageous-gifts-from-hammacher-schlemmer
blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/2025/06/09/announcing-hammacher-schlemmer-records
ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/hammacher-schlemmer
Images
1. Hammacher Schlemmer at 209 The Bowery in 1883. Hammacher Schlemmer 2016 Catalog.
2. Albert Hammacher and William Schlemmer. Credit: Hammacher Schlemmer
3. First printed catalog, 1881
4. Festive graphic
5. Hammacher Schlemmer catalog
6. The Nothing Box from Hammacher Schlemmer in 1962 did nothing
7. Hammacher Schlemmer traded from 57th Street for almost 100 years
8. Helicycle
9. 57th street store interior
10. Submarine sports car
11. New Yorker cartoon by Nick Downes, 2016
