Isaac Edward Emerson

Captain Isaac Edward Emerson (1859–1931) was a wealthy American businessman, socialite, and seaman. He is most notable for having created the headache remedy Bromo-Seltzer upon which his great wealth was based and the reason he was known as the "Bromo-Seltzer King". Early life Issac Edward Emerson was born in 1859 in Chatham County, North Carolina, the son of a farmer. When his mother died prematurely, he went to live with his aunt and uncle. He later graduated as a pharmacist from the University of North Carolina in 1879. Career In 1880, he moved to Baltimore and opened a small drug store where he developed a formula for a headache remedy. He patented the formula, named it Bromo-Seltzer and began marketing it. In 1887, he formed the Emerson Drug Company and, recognizing the importance of advertising in selling products, undertook worldwide ad campaigns in newspaper, magazine, in-store ads and on radio which rocketed the sales of Bromo-Seltzer and other products producing his great wealth. In 1911, Emerson built the Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower, on the northeast corner of West Lombard and South Eutaw Streets, in the southwest downtown area, a well-known landmark in Baltimore, Maryland for 116 years. The tower originally featured a 51-foot revolving blue steel Bromo-Seltzer bottle on top that was lit by electric lights and visible for miles. The Emerson Tower was the tallest building in Baltimore along with another clock tower skyscraper on the downtown east side of the Maryland Casualty Company's – The Tower Building at the northwest corner of East Baltimore and Holiday Streets, until 1923, when supplanted by the Citizens National Bank Building (later First National Bank of Maryland) at the southwest corner of Light and Redwood Streets. He also built the Emerson Hotel at the northwest corner of North Calvert and East Baltimore Streets, replacing the former old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Central Headquarters of 1884, which burned in the Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904. The hotel was unfortunately razed in 1971. He was controlling owner of the Maryland Glass Corporation, which made the blue glass bottles for his Bromo-Seltzer medication.