From 1916 to 1955, no trip to the Jersey shore was complete without a visit to the DuPont Products Exhibit in Atlantic City. The exhibit, which opened as the Dupont Products Store in the summer of 1916 across from Steeplechase Pier on the boardwalk at Pennsylvania Avenue, was an early promotional campaign to advertise DuPont products as the company expanded out from explosives and chemical manufacture and into the realm of consumer goods.
In its first year, the company recorded 15,000 visitors to their 2,200 square feet display space. In 1920, the company expanded the exhibit for a grander, more upscale experience, moving into the ground floor of Chalfont-Haddon Hall at 1121-1125 Boardwalk. By its 25th anniversary in 1941, the exhibits were annually drawing over one million visitors and included lectures and demonstrations showing "some of the secrets behind chemical research."
The company thought of its presence in Atlantic City as being educational, a means of advertising, a public service, and good-will gesture. These functions were listed in the show window in April 1941 which was devoted to the exhibit’s 25th anniversary celebrations. By the 35th anniversary in 1951, the 20,000,000th visitor came and was awarded a certificate. The exhibit eventually closed its doors in 1955, as DuPont made the decision to shift product display efforts to trade shows, rather than Atlantic City’s tourists and convention attendees.
This exhibit, showing Washington Woodcraft Corporation’s ‘Capitol Hill” line of toilet seats made with DuPont Pyralin plastic, was from the company’s 1949 exhibit in Atlantic City. Pyralin was a trade name for cellulose nitrate, or pyroxylin, a nitrocellulose compound developed in 1870 that can be used to produce lacquers and plastics. The material was an important part of DuPont’s transition to consumer goods, and helped launch the company into the forefront of the 20th century revolution in synthetic materials.
DuPont began producing pyroxylin after 1904, when it purchased the International Smokeless Powder & Chemical Company, a manufacturer of both explosives and pyroxylin lacquers. Six years later, the acquisition of the Fabrikoid Company involved DuPont in the manufacture of pyroxylin-based artificial leather. DuPont extended its line of finishes with the 1915 purchase of The Arlington Company and began production of Pyralin, a pyroxylin plastic used in combs, collars, cuffs and automobile side curtains. The acquisition of the Viscoloid Company in 1925 deepened DuPont's involvement in pyroxylin plastics.
DuPont research improved each of these pyroxylin products significantly, making DuPont Fabrikoid the nation's premiere artificial leather and also developing transparent plastics marketed by the DuPont Viscoloid Company. The company also invented Duco, a tough, fast-drying pyroxylin-based lacquer that became the standard finish on automobiles and a host of other consumer products through the 1930s. By World War II, DuPont had used its expertise in pyroxylin to help develop true synthetics like nylon, which were quickly displacing nitrocellulose-based substances.
This image is part of the Hagley Library’s collection of Photographs of Du Pont Company exhibits at Atlantic City, Wilmington, and elsewhere (Accession 1972.270). To view a selection of material from this collection online now, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.
