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Tastykake

American food company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ7687754
Source-derived summary

Tastykake is a line of snack foods manufactured by the Tasty Baking Company, headquartered at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (formerly the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Established in 1914 by Philip J. Baur and Herbert T. Morris and originally selling its product only in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the company now distributes its products in several states on the East Coast, including Florida, and has been gradually expanding across the United States.

In April 2010, Tasty Baking entered into a purchase-and-sale agreement with John Padgett

Associates and its guarantor, Metro Development Company, for the sale of its Philadelphia bakery property located at Hunting Park Avenue, and its former corporate offices and distribution center located at Fox Street, for $6 million.

Products

Tastykake produces a variety of pastries including cupcakes, donuts, honey buns, and pies.

History

Philip J. Baur and Herbert T. Morris founded the company, in the Germantown neighborhood along Sedgley Avenue, with an initial investment of $50,000, equal to $1,607,143 today. First, Baur and Morris had opened a bakery in the Pittsburgh area, selling it to the Ward Baking Company in 1913. When Baur and Morris sold to Ward, the terms of the sale prohibited them from opening another bakery within 100 miles of Pittsburgh, so the partners looked instead to Philadelphia. In November 1913 they settled on the Sedgley Avenue location. Morris's wife came up with the Tastykake name. A Boston student created the Tastykake girl and logo.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tastykake” is american food company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tastykake, American and food, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1914, 2010, 1913—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1914. For this dossier, Tastykake, American and food is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american food company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7687754. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 2010 and 1913.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tastykake”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tastykake primary sources, Tastykake archive and Tastykake research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tastykake”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Tastykake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.