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Some notables over the years, including President Dwight Eisenhower, Mayor Coleman A. Young and Kid Rock, have sported fashionable hats from Henry The Hatter in downtown Detroit.
Established in 1893, it boasts of being the oldest hat store in the country. The second-oldest is in New Orleans.
Detroit native Henry Komrofsky opened the store on Gratiot Avenue, and eventually took on a partner, Gus Newman, who had been stockboy there. Komrofsky died in 1941, and in 1948, Newman sold the store to Seymour Wasserman, a New Yorker, and Murray Appleby, a traveling hat salesman.
Wasserman bought out his partner a few years later. Then in 1952, he moved the store to its current location at 1307 Broadway. There's a second location at 10 and Greenfield in Southfield.
In 1972, his son Paul Wasserman, who had been attending Oakland University and working at the post office, joined the business. His father Seymour passed away in 1998 at 82.
To this day, Paul continues to run the stores.
Deadline Detroit stopped by the downtown store the other day to chat with Wasserman about the business, the customers and how Dwight Eisenhower ended up wearing a Henry The Hatter hat at his 1956 inauguration in Washington even though Eisenhower himself never stepped foot in the store.
