Brooklyn Seltzer Museum

Tucked into an industrial area of Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, is this gem of a museum offers a glimpse into the history of New York told through one of its favorite drinks.  The museum is located inside the Brooklyn Seltzer Boys Factory, and is a labor of love for Alex Gomberg. The Gomberg family has been in the fizzy water business since 1953, when the original Gomberg Seltzer Works factory opened in Canarsie. 

Around the turn of the 20th century, there were hundreds of “seltzer men” lugging 60-pound cases of glass bottles around the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Many of these early entrepreneurs were Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who also sold their wares in soda fountains. Today, carbonated water is a multibillion-dollar business in the United States, but the old-school, small-scale production methods are increasingly rare. After his family factory shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gomberg reopened in a new location, complete with this appointment-only museum, to keep the traditions alive.

As you go around the museum and factory, you get to see how the seltzer water is triple-filtered through sand, charcoal, and paper before being put into original glass seltzer bottles. Conventional plastic bottles are too flimsy to contain the powerful levels of carbonation here. To this day, the Gomberg family relies exclusively on glass bottles handblown in Europe. They're practically impossible to replace, so the staff are constantly repairing the ones they have and searching for more.

At the heart of the factory lies a century-old carbonator, an ancient mechanical beast that would look right at home in Jules Verne's extended universe. Only Kenny Gomberg, Alex's father, knows how to repair the machine—a process that grows ever more challenging, since no one manufactures the appropriate parts anymore. 

Tours here are especially interactive, peppered with historical anecdotes dating back to ancient times. There is a scavenger hunt, games, and a chance to recreate old vaudeville gags by blasting your fellow visitors with pressurized water at the spritzing station.

As a treat, visitors can try an egg cream, a New York soda fountain classic that's increasingly hard to find. Made with seltzer, milk, and chocolate syrup, it's a lighter, effervescent cousin of a milk shake. If you cannot get yourself to Brooklyn, they'll also ship you an egg cream kit to bring a little bit of Brooklyn to you. To get on the regular seltzer delivery list you need to go through an interview process—with bottles in high demand you have to earn your spot.