Located at the intersection of Binney and First Streets in East Cambridge, a man named Adolph Sommer lived and died for his business. Adolph Sommer, born and educated as a chemist in Germany, later worked as a druggist in California, where he first studied and then taught at UC Berkeley. There he discovered the formula from which he afterwards made his principal product, Viscol. By about 1890, he removed to Cambridge, and opened a small wooden factory building in the rapidly developing industrial area of East Cambridge. The history of “Viscol” as a trademark began by Adolph Sommer in 1889, as “leather-grease”. Sommer was at the time a resident of California, and the product to which the mark was applied was a liquid preparation made principally from vegetable or animal oils and chloride or sulphur. There is evidence that this preparation was being advertised in California as early as 1891 for sale in cans as “Viscol dressing” for softening, waterproofing and preserving boots, shoes, harness, belting, etc.
Sommer was actively engaged in the operation and development of the Viscol business in Cambridge and during this period of over 40 years, the product was advertised nationwide under the “Viscol” mark in shoe and leather journals and in Montgomery Ward catalogs. Sales during the period were made in small cans to merchandising outlets for retail distribution, and in 5-gallon cans and 50-gallon drums to tanneries for use in processing leather. Sommer oversaw the expansion of the company which coincided with the need for more manufacturing space and employees. The complex consisted of three buildings along First Street.
In Cambridge, Adolph lived alone, had no social relations, worked an unusual number of hours everyday, never took a vacation nor allowed his employees to take any, permitted no conversation or cooperation among his employees, and even lived in the manufacturing plant. He was known as being industrious, alert, keen, strong willed and stubborn; yet, he was kind to his employees when they got into financial difficulties, and many worked for him for decades. In 1922, when seventy-one years old, Sommer married a widow of fifty-one, Emmeline Harnden, who had worked in the factory for more than twenty years. At the time of their marriage, Sommer was actively looking for someone to take over his business and generated a written contract with his new wife that upon his death, the company and all holdings would go to his legal heirs, which apart from his widow, were two children of a deceased sister in Germany.
On October 1933, 82-year-old Sommer and his plant superintendent, Hans Bloomberg, picked up over $1,000 from the Lechmere Bank on Cambridge Street before driving back to the factory to pay the workers. Upon arriving to the factory, five robbers with pistols trapped the car and demanded the money. One man pointed a gun at the face of Sommer, who was sitting in the driver seat of his vehicle. When he saw the pistol, 82-year-old Sommer is said to have swung the door open and lunged at the robbers gathering his pistol from his pocket. Upon lunging he was shot three times and died, but not before shooting one of the thieves, who got into a get-away car and fled over the Prison Point Bridge to Charlestown.
There were few leads besides the witnesses, one of which identified the gunman to Cambridge Police as James Deshler. It was soon after unveiled to the public that Edward Galvin of 22 Lambert Street, was the witness who placed Deshler as the gunman. Within a week of the arrest, three men attacked Galvin in a parking lot, seemingly as retribution and were never identified. Two men were eventually imprisoned for the robbery and murder of Mr. Sommer, James Deshler and Marshall “Hickey” Bowles. After the death of Sommers, the company and properties were sold in 1936 to the Stamford Rubber Supply Company, a Connecticut corporation located at Stamford, Connecticut, which operated the business as one of its own departments until January 1937, later selling again. The complex was used for other industrial and storage uses until they were razed in the mid 1980s.
