Founded in 1893 by brothers H.S. and L.W. Phillips, the Phillips Brothers Bottling Company and Champion Bottling Works was located at 609 South Caroline Street. An article from the RE-LY-ON magazine dated January 1922 describes the state-of-the-art bottling facility after the introduction of the rotary high-pressure bottle filler. At their start, Phillips Brothers Bottling was counting production by the dozens, but in 1922, the automatic filler’s daily output could reach 6,000 dozen bottles of Champion ginger-ale. The storehouse’s capacity was 40,000 bottles held in reserve for the summer rush on carbonated beverages. Champion beverages were so popular among Baltimoreans that without new stock, the reserve would have lasted less than a month. Champion soda flavors produced at the Baltimore plant were ginger ale, sarsaparilla, lemon, and chocolate. Champion cola and soda water could also be purchased in siphon bottles.

Phillips Brothers Bottling Company Ceramic Bottle Stopper
c. 1893-1927
The Phillips Brothers motif is two boxers and was depicted on stoppers and impressed into bottles.
This stopper is a tapered cone-shape and a pointed end which was fitted with a rubber gasket popular on glass bottles from the mid-1870s until the 1920s.

April is #marylandarcheologymonth ! We’ll be sharing some of the more than 15,000 artifacts found during excavations at the Flag House between 1984 and 2001. For a more in-depth look at the Flag House’s archaeological surveys visit, our blog where we’ll be posting a three-part series. https://flaghouse.org/blog