Nat Sherman

Still maintaining a flagship store on a posh flange of 42nd Street, just off of 5th Avenue, Nat Sherman tobacconist remains a solid purveyor of high end cigars, cigarettes, and other tobacco related products. Legend has that Nat Sherman, a speakeasy proprietor of Jay Gatsby proportion, parlayed a tobacco shop procured as a means of repayment of some gambling debts. He later procured the prime Manhattan real estate location by means of loaning struggling real estate developer Abe Gubertz the funds needed to complete a 38 story building on Broadway. In a story endemic to the narrative of America, Nat Sherman, the tobacco retailer was born.

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Today, Nat Sherman distributes its high end cigars and cigarettes around the world, to be proudly displayed in tobacco shops, and private humidors – ostentatiously brought out, and conversed over. The regal emblem of the company: two Indian chiefs – facing opposite directions, looking out upon the world – a large clock between them. The 42nd Street store features a lofty retail lobby, ensconced in wood, evocative perhaps of a library. The books here, however, are cylindrical rows of brown torpedoes. Shaped, and faced, and angled in their splayed boxes. Gotham 1400s. Hobarts. Metropolitans. Omertas. Larrañagas. Glass cases remind the shoppers of a fine jeweler, or numismatic dealer.

Perhaps the most iconic of the Nat Sherman collection remains the Fantasia lights. These gold tipped, charcoal filtered cigarettes feature a colored paper, giving the cigarettes an almost uncanny crayon like appearance. The Fantasia light sets a paragon in the market of luxury brands of cigarette manufacture; a sort of Louis Vuitton of smokes.