“06880” can do many things.
Regrettably, one that we can’t do is recreate the aroma of Pepperidge Farm.
For decades the company that created and produced Goldfish and Milanos was headquartered a few yards over the Norwalk border, on US 1 (Westport Avenue).
Norwalk entrance, on Westport Avenue.
Founded on a Fairfield farm (named for a pepperidge tree that grew there) in the 1930s by Margaret Rudkin, who learned how to bake nutritious bread for her severely allergic son, it moved into its modern Norwalk facility in 1947.
Six years later, Pepperidge Farm baked and sold 77,000 loaves a week.
The cookies and other snacks came with time. But it was the bread — freshly baked, delicious, insanely aromatic — that made driving past so memorable, for generations of Westporters.
Also memorable: school field trips to the site. Decades of classes toured the factory, learned all about the business — and went home with free loaves and snacks.
Like so many other things — including the aroma of fresh-baked bread — it did not last forever.
New technology sealed the scent inside. Baking eventually moved elsewhere. Campbell Soup — which bought Pepperidge Farm in 1961 — contracted its Norwalk division.
A modern office now occupies part of the old Pepperidge Farm site. A large apartment complex — 597 Westport Avenue — sits next door.
Today’s Friday Flashback tells a bit of history about a once-ubiquitous presence. A number of Pepperidge Farm executives lived in Westport; so did factory employees. Staples High School students worked there after school or during the summer too.
If only a blog post could go beyond words, and recreate the glorious smells, inside the plant and out on the road beyond …
Pepperidge Farm founder Margaret Rudkin.
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I was lucky enough to have my dad work at Pepperidge Farm for 25 years as a food photographer and we always had a supply of blueberry turnovers in our freezer. Every birthday was celebrated with a Pepperidge Farm chocolate or coconut cake. Sadly, my son and I drove by the old location only to see a for lease sign out front.
Nice recollection for me was when I 95 still had tolls. My mother, being the frugal woman that she was, insisted that we drive around both the tolls (to avoid paying $.25) at Norwalk and at Port Chester. Both of them had bread factories, and the kids were thrilled to smell the freshly baked bread, two times in one trip. Lucky for us my grandmother lived in Mamaroneck so we made the trip almost weekly.!
Remember it well. We drove past it many times per year. Comforting.
I can relate because I was lucky to live near the Silvercup Factory in NYC and every Sunday night coming home from grandma’s we would drive past and roll all the windows down to ‘breath’ the air. Yum!
I can definitely close my eyes and still imagine that glorious smell. For many years in lived in a community just over the Westport line in Fairfield called The Ridge. The Ridge was developed on the original Pepperidge Farm estate owned by the Rudkin family. The original main house and guest house from their estate are still there today along with a gate house at the driveway to the community off of Sturges Highway.
Michael, I know someone who lives there and I visited the person once. I won’t mention a name, but I’ve known the person since 1952 from Greens Farms School. 1965 Staples graduate and at one time was a friend. it’s a shame I let that friendship wither away!
my mother bought bread weekly….
There was a Pepperidge Farm Thrift Store in Southport where we would go to buy bread and cakes that were off kilter but still tasted the same as the ones that looked nice.
Growing up, I lived in the city – but spent summers here. Some of my favorite childhood memories that have never left me include that amazing aroma from Pepperidge Farm.
Those were magical summers, living in little rental cottages at Compo Beach. I can still conjure up the sound of the Good Humor Truck, the sight of the trucks delivering milk and juice and bread and pastries door to door, the smell of cheeseburgers on the charcoal grills at the Pavilion, the smell of freshly mown grass (that I later learned through my travels was never as sweet anywhere else), even the less pleasant but still distinct smell of low tide. We’d arrive paler than pale, with tender feet – and leave tanned, with sun-bleached hair and callouses so thick we could walk on the hottest roads without shoes, and a permanent grin on our faces.
Growing up on Treadwell if the wind was in the right direction you knew they were baking bread. It was a wonderful aroma.
I now live in San Francisco, where I can no longer buy their bread but do buy their cookies, which still have Norwalk as the company’s headquarters. Pepperidge Farm Bread prided it self on having no preservatives, which was great if you ate whole loaf the day you bought it, but it would quickly go stale. My mother would buy day-old bread from their outlet store, so we had a head start on it getting stale–my childhood memories are of eating stale sandwiches.
For many years, Pepperidge Farm had as its commercial pitchman the man who played “Titus Moody” on the Fred Allen radio show, and after his death a similar sounding actor, They had distinct New Hampshire accents.
It was interesting, Maggie Rudkin didn’t live in a mansion with spacious lawns (though maybe she did when she lived at Pepperidge Farm), but had her house flush with the Post Road with the factory in the back yard and a huge mailbox out front and the outlet store next to the house.
My dad Gerry Turner did a photo portrait of Mercedes Rudkin .
We used to get free day old bread from there to feed the swans and ducks on the Saugatuck river and wild duck haven. I always liked driving by and smelling the baking bread.
My grandfather was a beekeeper and he sold honey to Margaret Rudkin when she first started baking bread in the 1940’s. I recently found some of the labels that he used to put on his jars of honey.
Being just barely over the border has its advantages.
When the now rental apartment buildings replaced the P.F. bakery and its aroma, these apts were first advertised with:
“Looking to live at a Westport address?”
which of course was perfectly truthful regarding
the “597 Westport” Apartments
which are still being touted as
such on their website.
(“location” page touts
“LIVE WESTPORT” and
“Ideally situated to give you easy access
to the best of what the area has to offer”)
Are they hoping you’ll overlook
which town 597 Westport Ave. is actually in?
I remember shopping at Wild Oats(now Whole Foods) in the early 90s?) and smelling the delicious aroma coming across the road from Pepperidge Farm. When did PF have to start keeping the smell inside and not outside? Anyone know?
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