Guide to the Reingold Family Papers, 1915-2001>
- Repository
- Heinz History Center
- Title
- Reingold Family Papers
- Collection Number
- MSS 537
- Extent
- .25 linear feet (1 box)
- Date
- 1915-2001
- Abstract
- The Reingold Family Papers document events and experiences of members of a twentieth-century Pittsburgh family of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, including educational, social, religious, military, and business activities.
- Language
- The material in this collection is in English and Hebrew.
- Publisher
- Heinz History Center
- Address
- 1212 Smallman St.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222
library@heinzhistorycenter.org
URL: https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org
History
Members of the Spiegle family came from Ukraine, Russia, to Pittsburgh in the early twentieth century. Anna Goldie Spiegle (1899-1996) arrived in 1914 with her mother, Clara Perelmuter Spiegle, and siblings to join her father, Benjamin Spiegle, who had settled in Pittsburgh earlier. The family was engaged with the Jewish community, and Clara Spiegle was active in, and for ten years the president of, the Ladies Free Loan Association.
As a teenager, Anna attended night school classes at the Irene Kaufmann Center in the Hill District and worked in a Fifth Avenue sweatshop sewing buttons onto caps. Later she worked at Rosenbaum's Department Store in downtown Pittsburgh until her marriage in 1921 to Samuel Reingold (1898-1960), who was also of Ukrainian descent. They had met at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement, where both were active in the Young People's Zionist League.
The Young People's Zionist League was founded in Pittsburgh in June, 1916. The club raised money and public support for the Zionist cause and organized weekly meetings and special lectures and social events for its members. It was a member of the Mizrachi Zionist Organization, founded in 1902, whose goals were to "revive the Jewish Nation and rehabilitate the Jewish Land in the spirit of the Jewish Torah" (Young People's Zionist League Third Anniversary Journal, 1919).
Samuel Reingold came to the United States in 1912. After his father's death he worked to help support his mother and sister. During his lifetime he worked at a variety of jobs, from operating the Puritan Confectionery store in Homewood with his business partner Sol Podolsky to working for Westinghouse Corporation to selling Tech Ice Cream Products (a Prohibition-era division of the Pittsburgh Brewing Company) to client drug stores. In approximately 1928, Samuel Reingold began selling real estate as a side business; eventually he established the Reingold Real Estate Company, which specialized in commercial real estate.
Samuel Reingold and Anna Spiegle Reingold had three children: Herbert L. (b. 1922), Vernon (b. 1926), and Benita P. (b. 1936). Herbert was the first Reingold family member to graduate from college. He served in the Army in France and England during World War II. He worked for the family real estate company. Vernon Reingold also worked as a real estate broker and a certified housing inspector. Benita ("Bunny"), who married Marvin ("Sonny") Morris, was a health and physical education instructor and supervisor for thirty years in the Pittsburgh public school system. Leo Spiegle (1901-1986), Anna's brother, had a newsstand on Liberty Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh and also ran candy stores and taverns throughout the city. Other members of the extended family were active in the Jewish community in Aliquippa, Pa.
Scope and Content Notes
The Reingold Family Papers are housed in one archival box. They consist of certificates, publications, World War II military currency, post cards, program booklets, photographs, and business documents including cards, leases, receipts, and agreements. Of note are a post card showing one of a series of etchings made in 1933 of scenes of the Irene Kaufmann Center by artist Samuel Filner; World War II-era military currency for France, Germany, and the Philippines; military documents and news articles from Herbert Reingold's service in Europe; and an incomplete set of black and white photographic post cards, titled "Paris Liberé, Free Paris," depicting the liberation of Paris in August, 1944. Subjects of the photographs, housed in one folder, include members of the Perelmuter, Spiegle, and Reingold families and their places of business; members of the Young People's Zionist League; the Ladies Free Loan Association (1940s); and the Laurel Y Camp staff (1948).
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Benita Morris in 1989, Accession #1989.0117; in 2002, Accession #2002.0200; in 2004, Accesstion #2004.0053; in 2005, Accession #2005.0226; and in 2012, Accession #2012.0156.
Preferred Citation
Reingold Family Papers, 1915-2001, MSS 537, Rauh Jewish Archives, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center
Processing Information
This collection was processed by Martha L. Berg in August 2009 with revisions by Martha L. Berg in 2014..
Conditions Governing Use
Property rights reside with the Senator John Heinz History Center. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to reproduce or publish, please contact the Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives of the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Separated Materials
A pin of the Ladies Free Loan Association, in the shape of a Jewish star, has been separated to the Museum.
Reingold Family Oversize Photographs, MSR#537, consists of one folder of oversize group photographs of members of the Young People's Zionist League.
The Reingold Family Photographs, previously separated and catalogued as MSQ#537, have been integrated added to this collection as Folder 15.
Subjects
- Jews--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh
- Jews--Organizations--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh
- Zionism--Organizations--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh
- Real estate business--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh
- Newspaper vendors--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh
- Women--Societies and clubs--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh
- WORLD WAR TWO COLLECTION
- World War 1939-1945--American occupation
- Postcards--Paris--France