Nostalgic Tarrytown Bakeries - Sleepy Hollow Country

Before the rise of supermarkets in the 1950s and 1960s, Main Streets across America looked very different than they do today. Small bakeries and other specialized food stores were much more common than now. Many also delivered to homes. While records are sparse, we’ve compiled a short compendium of historic Tarrytown bakeries.

Today as we witness a resurgence of fresh, locally produced food, bakeries in particular have flourished. Find contemporary Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow bakeries at VisitSleepyHollow.com.

Endress Daylight Bakery ran delivery routes around Tarrytown and North Tarrytown. The photo above is of the author’s grandfather in March 1933.

Contents

1 Breitenbach’s Bakery
2 Endress Daylight Bakery
3 Alter’s Bakery
4 Eberhardts’s Bakery
5 Days’s Bakery and Quality Bakery

Breitenbach’s Bakery

John C. Breitenbach founded his eponymous bakery in New York City in the 1880s. It grew into a substantial operation with four retail stores and a wholesale business supplying goods to hotels, hospitals, and institutions. It also supplied dining cars on long-distance New York Central trains. John’s son Charles Breitenbach, Sr. took over the business, moving operations to Tarrytown in the late 1930s.

By the late 1950s the third generation, brothers Charles J. Breitenbach, Jr. and John Breitenbach, gave up the retail store to concentrate on their wholesale operations. They continued to make cakes for special occasions like weddings, banquets and parties.

After Charles J. Breitenbach, Sr. died in December of 1967, his son Charles J. Breitenbach, Jr. moved the business to Dixon Lane. Over many years the building had previously housed a livery stable, a warehouse, and a plumbing contractor. Since 2016 the building has been home to Jazz Forum.

Brietenbach's Bakery was located in this building at One Dixon Lane in Tarrytown, NY. — Charles and John Breitenbach moved their baking operations to this building at One Dixon Lane in Tarrytown. Photo courtesy of Westchester County Historical Society.

Endress Daylight Bakery

Endress Daylight Bakery was located at 39 Orchard Street in the main business district of Tarrytown. Orchard Street and several blocks off it were demolished in the late 1960s as part of a drive for urban “renewal”.

In the early 1930s Endress produced a line of baked goods that included bread, cakes, pies, pastries. A popular item during those years of the Great Depression was Bermaline bread, fortified with whole wheat flour and milk powder. Zwieback, a sweetened loaf, was another. One of Endress’s advertising taglines was “All Scientifically Baked of the Finest Ingredients”.

Alter’s Bakery

Alter’s Bakery was an institution at 144 Cortlandt Street in North Tarrytown, today’s Sleepy Hollow.

Eberhardts’s Bakery

Founded in 1897 by Frank Eberhardt, this bakery was located at 39 Orchard Street in Tarrytown. Like other businesses of the period, it ran regular home delivery routes. In 1947 Eberhardt sold the business to two employees, John N. Logan and Theodore Faas. Logan soon sold his share to Faas when he purchased a nearby dairy business. Fass in turn sold the bakery to Logan’s brother Ernest in 1953.

Days’s Bakery and Quality Bakery

Otto Heinicke purchased the bakery in 1927. One of his immediate changes was switching from horse drawn delivery wagons to motorized. By 1933 he had renamed the business Quality Bakery.