The first public Girl Scout cookie sale took place at the intersection of Broad and Arch Streets
In 1932, Girl Scouts baked batch upon batch of the Trefoil standing behind the Philadelphia Gas Company's street level windows.
The Girl Scouts, founded in Savannah, Ga. in 1912 by philanthropist Julia Gordon Lowe, held their first bake sale in 1917 to raise money for troop activities.
Their booming direct cookie sales business, however, was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 12, 1932 at the Philadelphia Gas Co. then located at the intersection of Broad and Arch Streets.
That inaugural public Girl Scout cookie sale will be remembered Saturday at Center City’s PECO building, part of the Philadelphia Historic District’s weekly celebration of America’s 250th birthday. The historic district pays homage to events that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America — and often the world — with a weekly day party called a Firstival.
“It was the first time the Girl Scouts sold their cookies to people outside of their immediate community,” said Amanda Harrity, director of product programs for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania.
In 1932, a Philadelphia Girl Scout told her parents that her troop needed a place to bake cookies in order to raise money for nurseries, Depression-era organizations that cared for children of working parents. The little girl’s parents, who worked at the Philadelphia Gas Co., got permission for the scouts to bake cookies on the shiny new gas ranges in the gas company’s street level windows.
On the afternoon of Nov. 12, the Girl Scouts baked batch upon batch of their shamrock-shaped signature shortbread cookie, the Trefoil. The sweet, buttery aroma wafted through Center City streets and passersby asked if they could buy the cookies hot out of the test kitchen’s ovens.
The Girl Scouts agreed.
“I don’t remember how many cookies we baked that day,” then 80-year-old Girl Scout Midge Mason told The Inquirer in 2001 when the state erected a historic marker at Broad and Arch, marking the sale. “I do know we baked a lot of cookies.”
The next year, the Girl Scouts were back at the Philadelphia Gas Company to raise the money needed to pay off the mortgage for their facility at Camp Indian Run in Glenmoore, Chester County. (That facility closed in the early 2000s.)
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In 1934, the Philadelphia Girl Scouts hired Keebler — now Little Brownie Bakers — to bake Trefoils, selling them at 23 cents a box, making them the first Girl Scouts to sell commercially baked cookies.
Two years later, Girl Scouts all around the country began using commercial bakeries to bake cookies for their yearly fundraiser.
Today more than 200 million boxes of cookies are sold in America at an average price of $6 a box. 3.5 million of those boxes are sold in Eastern Pennsylvania, Harrity said.
Girl Scout cookies are baked in two bakeries in the country: ABC Bakers in North Sioux City, S.D., and Little Brownie Bakers in Louisville, Ky. There are 12 varieties of cookies including this year’s newest Exploremores, inspired by Rocky Road ice cream.
Seventy-five cents of every dollar from Girl Scout cookie sales are reinvested back into girl scouting, Harrity explained. In the Eastern Pennsylvania that includes maintaining 1500 acres of property and underwriting Scouts’ camp experiences.
This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Jan. 31, 11 a.m. — 1 p.m., at the PECO Building at 2300 Market Street. The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week.