Building History

The E.C. Niedt Company, based in Trenton, NJ, made a trademark application on 08/10/1881 for "The words 'Sea Foam,' in connection with a human female figure dressed in bathing costume standing in the sea, in the waves thereof, the tops of which are covered with sea-foam." (See Official Gazzette of the United States Patent Office, vol. 20, no. 18, 11/01/1881, p. 1238.) It obtained this federal trademark for its Sea Foam Soap on 11/01/1881. (See Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1881, [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882], p. 516.)

By 1886, Niedt had opened a soap and chemical plant in Los Angeles, under the firm name of the "Los Angeles Chemical Works." (See "A Practicable Levee," Los Angeles Times, 01/21/1886, p. 0_1.)

This wood-frame, factory building was sold in 1902. As noted in the Los Angeles Times: "The large frame building located at No. 1850 North Main Street, and known as the old Niedt Soap Factory, together with the lot on which it stands, comprising about an acre of land, was purchased last week from Robert I. Moorhead of Santa Clara by Thaddeus Lowe, through the agency of R.W. Poindexter, for $5000, and the building will be converted into a factory for the manufacture of gas stoves." (See "To Manufacture Gas Stoves," Los Angeles Times, 01/19/1902, p. A1.)

By 1905, the firm was known as the "E.C. Niedt Soap and Chemical Manufacturing Company." It appears to have gone out of business on or before 1905. (See Certified Copy of Compiled Statement of Domestic Corporations whose Charters Have Been Forfeited and Foreign Corporations Whose Right to Do Business in this State Has Been Forfeited, December 14. 1905, [Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1906], p. 51.)

PCAD id: 23341