Shamron Mills LLC

06/09/2022

POSTING AGAIN - WAREHOUSE SALE

06/07/2022

We are having a warehouse sale! Many sizes and colors. Cash only, please bring small bills if you have them. Tell your friends, especially those in the health care industry. Please share this post! Hope to see you there!

10/22/2021

09/30/2021

Supply chain problems are everywhere. They affect every business, every industry and ultimately, every consumer. Shamron Mills is no exception. Here's why:

The global supply chain that brings toys, clothing, electronics and furniture from Asia to the United States each year is clogged, an enduring impact of the pandemic that is unlikely to ease soon.

08/10/2021

PRESS RELEASE

Shamron Mills LLC buys Hinson & Hale Medical Technologies Plant
creating Shamron Manufacturing

Wilkesboro, N.C. — Shamron Mills, a Troy, N.Y.-based garments and textile company, has purchased Wilkesboro-based Hinson & Hale Medical Technologies plant to create Shamron Manufacturing. The two companies have had a relationship since 2014, when Hinson & Hale began manufacturing medical garments for Shamron Mills. Shamron Manufacturing’s 43,000-square-foot plant is located at 1208 Industrial Park Road in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

Shamron Mills focuses on custom orders, from fabric procurement to garment finishing. The majority of its products are manufactured in the U.S. Since 1983, it has served customers in healthcare, energy, research, military, government and industry. Increased demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic challenged Shamron Mills to consider expanding into overseeing its own U.S.-based manufacturing capabilities to meet market demand. The acquisition of the Wilkesboro plant provides a talented workforce and equipment that will strengthen Shamron Mills’ position in the marketplace.

“It is a great time to be manufacturing in the U.S.!” –Ronnye B. Shamam

“I purchased the Wilkesboro manufacturing plant to create a more vertical company,” said Ronnye B. Shamam, president of Shamron Mills LLC and owner of Shamron Manufacturing. “This acquisition allows Shamron Mills to better serve its customers in the variety of textile products they need and to ensure that the manufacturing of these products stays in the United States. We will be able to utilize our skilled workforce and build upon that talent, allowing us to have more control over products and relieve supply chain issues when purchasing from overseas.”

“Many of our components are no longer manufactured in the U.S. and have to be imported, primarily from China. Importing delays can affect my production, and ultimately, my end users,” said Shamam. “By keeping as much of our supply chain domestic as we can, it not only creates a smooth manufacturing process, it also contributes to the country’s economy.”

Shamron Mills sells its products to distributors and other manufacturers. These products include medical scrubs, operating gowns, patient pajamas, examination gowns, hyperbaric garments, wrappers, draw sheets, and standard and custom-sized drapes with specific openings used in operating rooms.

08/03/2021

TAP is one of Troy's most important organizations. Here's how it got started.

Vince Lepera: TAP’s Founder
- Suzanne Spellen

There are lots of reasons why people come together in cities - protection, employment and trade, or significance, such as a seat of religious activity or civil government. Troy advanced from a small trading town on the Hudson River to one of America’s wealthiest cities for many of those same reasons. The city swelled to a population of over 70,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, as Troy’s many textiles, iron and precision equipment manufacturing sites provided jobs for much of its working-class population.

But after World War II, the jobs and the people began to leave. Textile manufacturing was shifting its operations down South and overseas, iron and steel was a waning industry in NY State, and Troy began to see the population shift to the suburbs that was affecting every major city in the Northeast.

By the late 1950s, early 1960s, New York State, armed with millions in federal highway funding, was building roadways across the region, often with little regard for communities in their path. Parts of Albany, Menands and Watervliet were destroyed along the Hudson in order to build Interstate 787. The roadway was supposed to make it easier for suburban commuters to access Albany. The state was also planning another big roadway called the North-South Arterial, which was slated to slice upwards through Troy, bisecting the city.

In anticipation of this road, entire blocks of houses were torn down, from South Troy to downtown, displacing hundreds of families, many of whom could not afford to buy anywhere else in the city with the money given to them for their homes.

When Vince Lepera arrived in Troy in the fall of 1964 to attend RPI, he found himself in a city at a pivotal place in its history. Big changes were afoot in Troy. Vince was a working-class young man from Massachusetts. Having known a fair share of economic distress in his childhood, he could easily relate to those people losing their homes to forces beyond their control. As a budding architect, he could also appreciate the rich architectural history the city provided, a legacy that seemed to be of little value to those who were eager to see the city destroyed for vehicular “progress.”

Through the efforts of Trojans, and of students like Vince, some of RPI’s faculty and local preservationists, the North-South Arterial was proved to be not only unnecessary, but also too expensive to build, and an environmental mess. The latter issues sealed its fate with the state. The project was abandoned, leaving large swaths of now-empty land. The demolitions had been for nothing. Not even Uncle Sam’s house had been spared.

When Vince was deciding on a thesis project, he was inspired by the community activism he was a part of and realized that much more was needed. Vince wrote a proposal for an organization he called the “Troy Architectural Program, Inc.” TAP would help Troy’s voiceless when the government or other forces decided that their homes were expendable. TAP would also function as a design center, providing low cost or free architectural services to help property owners with plans and drawings for building permits and applications. They would also advocate for historic preservation. By teaming up with a legal aid service, TAP could also provide answers to questions and issues of property and other law.

The ideas for TAP came to Vince and his co-founder Bob Mitchell in a flood. He would buy an abandoned building from the city, renovate it and live above the TAP offices. He consulted with his RPI

advisor, Professor Bob Winnie, who thought it was a great idea, but was skeptical as to its success. But he approved TAP as Vince’s thesis project.

Vince found an abandoned building that was in the path of the Arterial - the old Malloy’s Meat Market on Hutton Street, a three-story storefront and apartment building (now long gone). With the help of the city he purchased it for one dollar. Vince knew how to build, and he and Bob and others began cleaning it up, replacing the windows and remodeling it for TAP. He kept the top floor for himself, with TAP’s design center on the ground floor and the legal services offices on the second floor. The basement was transformed into a community art room. The rent paid by the law office enabled Vince to pay the taxes and utilities for those initial years.

Just a year prior to the founding of TAP in 1969, the Troy Rehabilitation and Improvement Program was established as Troy’s first housing related non-profit. TRIP’s mission was to aid low- and moderate-income people in home ownership. Vince needed a job, especially while getting TAP started, and became TRIP’s Executive Director. The two organizations, with parallel missions, have worked in tandem ever since.

TAP grew, Vince’s RPI thesis passed with flying colors, as did he. He somehow managed to run both organizations for several years, and left TAP in 1972 in the capable hands of his friend and fellow RPI graduate Joe Fama. “I’m the charge up the hill kind of guy, not really the run-the-stuff guy,” Vince said.

When Vince left TAP, Troy was on the verge of another challenge - urban renewal in the form of a new downtown shopping mall, and the creation of the Collar City Bridge on Hoosick Street. For most cities in America, the 1970s would prove to be disastrous. The lack of urban investment, white and monied flight to the suburbs, and new suburban malls would devastate the city. That abandonment was a detriment to some of Troy’s oldest and most beautiful neighborhoods, like Washington Park.

Those of us who cherish Troy’s fine architecture owe Vince a debt of gratitude for buying and rescuing 185 Second Street. Located next door to the Uri Gilbert mansion, which was the Italian Cultural Center at the time, this beautiful Gothic Revival house was slated to be torn down for a parking lot for the center to use on bingo night. Alerted by city preservationists, Vince was able to get a mortgage, put down a modest down payment and write a business plan for saving the house. Vince and his family lived in the house for many years before selling it and retiring out of town.

Vince and TAP saved much more than 185 Second Street. During the 1970s Troy had a multi-stage urban renewal plan that threatened the destruction of some of the city’s most famous and iconic structures. The Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the Rice Building, the buildings now housing the Arts Center of the Capital Region – all were threatened, and all saved in the first years of TAP’s existence. We’ll go into more detail on those stories in a following chapter.

TAP is one of the oldest, if not THE oldest continuously operating design centers in the country. It was the brainchild of a man who saw a need and knew he and his friends could fill it. We would be living in a far different, and much less beautiful city if TAP and Vice Lepera had not stepped up. Now, fifty years later, our city is known as far away as Hollywood for its authentic, eclectic and vibrant architecture; a city to be proud of in every way.

05/25/2021

Downtown Troy developed throughout the 19th century. The bustling river city saw a devastating fire that ripped through River and First Streets and the surrounding area in 1820. Troy’s business community quickly rebuilt, this time with many more brick buildings. As the century progressed, River Street and the downtown blocks that connected to it saw vast growth and development.

One of Troy’s pre-Civil War Troy developers was Nathan Dauchy. He came from an old Troy merchant family. Dauchy family members built two buildings on River Street for their grocery and paint businesses. One building was replaced by a larger one in 1886, giving us the Dauchy Building we know today, at 275 River Street.

Nathan Dauchy, who was also a prominent attorney and politician, built his building on the corner of River and 3rd Street in either 1850 or 1851. It was an awkward triangular corner, which had previously been home to a collection of wood-framed buildings. His three-story building built in a “flatiron” shape, with a rounded front was home to the Market Bank of Troy, hence the much later name “Market Block Building.”

Most people did not know it by that name. The building had storefronts on the ground floor, wrapping about 3rd and River, offices on the second floor, and a magnificent public auditorium on the third. That floor’s distinctive tall windows give away its purpose, and gave it a name. The space was called Harmony Hall.

Harmony Hall was a popular venue from the day its doors opened. All kinds of meetings and events took place there. The hall had a stage, a small balcony and plenty of floor space. In 1861, the first Civil War rally took place there, and Troy’s citizens passed a resolution to form a militia unit and to join surrounding cities and towns in doing what was needed to support the government of the U.S.

When the 2nd Presbyterian Church was destroyed in a fire in 1862, Sunday services were held here. Other activities included union meetings and rallies, cotillions, concerts, dances and dance classes, theatrical performances, and other social and organizational activities.

Although Nathan Dauchy owned the building for years, he never used any of the space for his own, or his family’s businesses. Over the next century, the storefronts would be home to jewelers, shoe shops, restaurants, men, women and children’s clothing stores, cigar stores, liquor stores and more.

The building passed through several owners over the century and a half, as well. It was always known as the Harmony Hall building until around 1980, when an ad in the October 28 Times Record announced the new branding as the Market Block. The building was lauded as being part of the historic downtown, and a shining example of Troy’s future.

This was fortuitous, as 1970s urban renewal had gutted much of downtown for the Atrium, Uncle Sam's Parking and the hotel, and a "Part Two" had been planned which would have destroyed much of the rest of downtown's historic fabric. Fortunately, those plans were scrapped.

Today, Market Block Books enjoys its spot at the prow of this great ship of a building. Other storefront establishments include the Third Street Potters, and the Anchor Boutique. The Market Block building is now part of a larger collection of buildings adjoining it on both 3rd and River.

The stained-glass Harmony Hall sign still shines above the 3rd Street entrance, now leading to the offices above. Today, the auditorium is home to the New York division of Warner Brothers Games, one of the many hi-tech companies enjoying life in Troy.

Story by Suzanne Spellen. (Photo credits: 1. Albany Business Review, 2. James Robinson, artist 3. Troy Times Record, 4 & 5 - 1st Playable blog. 6. Warner Brothers Games website)

02/23/2021

Let us raise a glass to beer, the drink that has fueled America since its beginnings. Beer was such a popular drink that most cities during parts of the 19th century had almost as many breweries as houses of worship. At the highest point in Troy’s brewing history, one source lists 34 breweries in Troy. Some only lasted a couple of years, while others endured, even beyond Prohibition.

One of the oldest and largest of Troy’s breweries was the Fitzgerald Brewery. In 1866, Edmund Fitzgerald purchased the Lundy & Ingram brewery on the western side of River Street, which was founded in 1852. Brothers Michael and John joined in, and in the beginning, they did not brew themselves, but were distributers of various kinds of liqueurs, gins, whiskeys and brandies. Michael dropped out in 1870, leaving Edmund and John to grow the company and move forward. They decided to start brewing their own brand of beer and ale.

By 1886, Arthur James Weise writes in “The City of Troy and Its Vicinity” that the brewery was called the Garryowen Brewery, but the beer and ale were always called Fitzgerald’s. The malt house and brewery were separate brick buildings, six stories tall, stretching back to the Hudson River. They were built in 1877 and 1881, respectively. Further down the street, the two-story office building stood surrounded by other wings and buildings associated with the company, bringing the total to nine buildings, from 195 to 511 River Street.

Weise goes on to report that the company was producing 70,000 barrels of ale and porter annually, and employed seventy men. John Fitzgerald died in 1885, passing his interests to his heirs, who continued the growth of the company. The company became the Fitzgerald Brothers Brewing Company in 1899. The company expanded by building a large new bottling plant across the street, at 494-500 River Street.

At the turn of the 20th century, Troy had nine operating breweries. Like every brewery in the nation, Fitzgerald’s was closed down in 1920 by the enactment of the Volstead Act, also known as Prohibition. It lasted 13 years. During that time, many breweries survived, just barely, producing a non-alcoholic beverage called “near beer.” Some also switched to manufacturing and bottling lemonade and soft drinks.

Fitzgerald’s also manufactured malt. The barley used in making beer is also a food ingredient. Former breweries were good places to produce malt, which involved soaking the grain, allowing it to germinate, then drying and powdering it for commercial use as a sugar and as a flavor enhancer. Malted milk balls and milk shakes, anyone?

Malt allowed Fitzgerald’s to survive, but they did so with a vastly reduced work force, and use of their huge facility. “The Saratogan” in 1932 reported that they had only 12 men working at the plant right before Prohibition’s end. William Fitzgerald was eager to dust off the equipment and start producing beer again.

The company did go back into production, and was soon making their popular beer and ale. Many bottle, trays and advertising ephemera survive from the various periods of Fitzgerald’s popularity. But the end of Troy’s beer boom days was near. Some of the city’s breweries never truly recovered from Prohibition followed by the Great Depression. And some of them fell victim to Troy’s recurring menace – fire.

On November 2, 1964, a fire broke out in the main brewery house. It soon became a major conflagration. When it was over, the river side of the complex was highly damaged. The bottling plant was untouched.

Fitzgerald’s had already moved much of their operation to Glens Falls in 1960, when they purchased a Pepsi Bottling plant there. They were transitioning from brewers to distributers, and the fire was the death knell to Troy beer brewing. They sold the label and the machinery to the Drewry Company, but not the building, in 1963. So, after the fire, the city decided that the plant was too damaged to be allowed to stand, and it was torn down in 1964.

The large empty lot became home to Hedley Cadillac-Oldsmobile in 1966. After that business closed, the lot remained parking until it became the site of Troy’s new Courtyard by Marriot Hotel, which opened in 2018.

The bottling equipment was dismantled from the remaining plant across the street, and that building was sold, as well. For several years, it was a warehouse for Troy’s Nelick's Furniture company. An ad from 1965 shows a warehouse sale.

The building has been a self-storage warehouse for many years, and is owned by First Columbia, which recently announced plans to adapt the building as a state-of-the-art high security, climate controlled, “Class A” self-storage facility. This news has once again propelled Fitzgerald Brothers back into the news.

(The large mansion photo is on 2nd Street at Washington Park, and was the Fitzgerald house. The photograph of the fire shows Shamron Mill's office building in the foreground on the right.) Story by Suzanne Spellen.

02/22/2021

A glass of wine shimmering in a crystal goblet, a peaty warm brown elixir of long-distilled spirits swirling in a highball glass, these may be the ideal in classy alcoholic bliss, but the reality is that this country was built on beer. Native Americans brewed a beer using local crops, including corn and maple sap, but they didn’t have barley.

The Dutch in New Amsterdam set up the first American brewery in NYC around 1632. Most people made their own beer at home, but the Dutch West Indies Company didn’t want their new settlers distracted from their jobs of settling their new land, so they took it over themselves. In the name of efficiency, a new North American industry was born!

Up until the 1850s, British-style ales, porters and stouts were the most popular beers in this country. They were strong meaty beers with lots of dark malt and a ye**ty heartiness full of hops. Ales are brewed with a top-fermenting yeast, and can be fermented anywhere it’s not too hot. Local brewers had their own recipes and geographic variants.

Everything changed in the beer world when Germans began immigrating to America during the late 1840s. Thousands of Germans fled to the US to get away from a civil war among the German city-states. They brought their beer-making traditions with them, and introduced the United States to lager beer.

Unlike ale, lager beer is produced by bottom fermenting yeast, which ferments at a lower temperature and takes longer to mature. The word “lager” comes from the verb “lagern” – to store. German brewers kept their beers stored in cool caves or cellars as they fermented.

Beer and beer gardens are a staple of German culture, and it didn’t take long for lager to make its way into the larger society and become the most popular beer in America. Breweries sprang up everywhere. It wasn’t uncommon for even smaller cities like Albany or Troy to each have dozens of breweries, all producing ales or lagers, or both.

According to William Young, author of “Troy’s First Hundred Years” (1891), the first brewery in Troy belonged to Colonel Stephen J. Schuyler, operating in 1793. The first in the city itself was established by Charles Hurstfield and Thomas Trenor in 1809, on Ferry Street, east of 5th Avenue.

Fifty years and four or five owners later, they became Kennedy & Murphy, and then Excelsior Brewery. Edward Murphy, the son of the founding Murphy, is a story unto himself – a Troy Mayor and US Senator towards the end of the 19th century.

Another Troy brewery, the Lundy & Ingram Brewery was founded in 1852. It was located at 461 River Street. It also went through several name changes and owners over the years. In 1866, the brewery was purchased by the Fitzgerald brothers, Edmund, Michael and John. They took the brewery, and over the years expanded it in both size and importance.

The Fitzgerald Brewery bottling plant building is next door to Shamron Mills. Our next post is their story.

Photos of the Kennedy Murphy Brewery. Story by Suzanne Spellen

10/28/2020

The South Troy building known throughout the area as the “Fortress” was built as the United Waste Manufacturing Company. It was used to store materials and finished product for a recycled fabric called "shoddy," made from fabric scraps, and other woven materials easily found in this city known for fabric collars and cuffs, shirts and other manufactured textile goods.

The United Waste company was founded in 1899 by Troy men, and one, general manager Edward J. Murphy, Junior, was a former senator and mayor of Troy. His son Joseph was the treasurer. The vice president was Colonel William H. Rowe, Jr, who was an office holder in a number of local knitting mills, and was a bank director and trustee of Syracuse University. By 1906, the president of the company was J.J. Ryan. He and Murphy had been responsible for the construction of this warehouse, and for the opening of the Waste and Shoddy Exchange, where materials were bought and traded.

The main factory building for the company was up the river in Cohoes. Here on the Hudson, the building was a monumental advertising tool. The warehouse was also only steps from the railroad tracks, with a loading dock, where active freight lines carried goods to and from Troy, out to the rest of the world.

The warehouse is a six-story brick building with a basement. The style is Romanesque Revival, a style made popular in the mid-1880s, and for decades, the favored style for armories, storage facilities, factories and other large buildings that needed strong sturdy massing to achieve their functional and design objectives.

The Fortress can be accessed by the Jackson Street approach, but that is technically the back of the building. The side that faces the Hudson, the west side, is the front of the building, and has the most architectural detail. All four sides of the building are flanked with corner towers that rise from corbelled bases on the second floor, making the building look as if it is top-heavy, sitting on a smaller base. This makes the ground appear to need a moat, so the castle could rise above it.

There are windows on every level, but this was a warehouse, not a factory, so there really aren’t all that many, considering the size of the structure. It must have been quite dark in there, and incredibly hot and stifling in the summer. Workers in this building did not have an easy time of it, and there were injuries and fatalities working with toxic chemicals, fire and heat.

The tower that rises from the center of the building completes the look of a medieval fortress. Most of the elevation is without windows, and only at the top story are there small windows just below the crenelated roof line. This tower held the water tank. An impressive brink corbelled cornice surrounds the building, supporting a band course that had painted signage with the name of the building. It once read “United Waste Manufacturers Company,” which is very faintly seen in places, but a later name, “Hudson River Terminal Warehouse Co.” can still be seen, although that too is becoming harder to read, as time goes by.

Shoddy’s days as a lucrative material were coming to an end by the beginning of the ‘teens. Although the idea of recycling fabric and scrap was a good one, the resulting material was just, well….shoddy. The name itself and its reputation prevented its use for anything other than very limited market. Attempts to use it for soldier’s uniforms during World War I were met with fierce opposition by the armed forces and the soldiers themselves.

Uniform suppliers would testify before Congress that our soldiers were being asked to fight a war in Europe’s winters. The least the country could do is supply them with real quality woolen clothing, not shoddy. They were not going to use it. And the industry would virtually disappear, at least in that form.

By that time, the United Waste Management Company had let go of this warehouse. It was now the Hudson River Warehouse Company, owned by Joseph J. Murphy, who was treasurer of both United Waste and Hudson River Terminal. They were using it as a warehouse, and painted the company name prominently on the building.

The interior of the building is unfinished warehouse space. Huge wooden beams and posts support the ceilings and floors. The basement level consists of large arched corridors that support and spread the load of this massive building. The first floor once was office space which looked out of those large arched windows, and traces of those days still remain. There is a relatively small spiral staircase that runs the height of the entire building, and a freight elevator. There is also an interior staircase that connects the buildings’ floors.

So, what does one do with this huge building in the 21st century? By the 1955, the Fortress was a storage facility for the Goldberg Building Material Company, which also owned the surrounding buildings. Over the years, other businesses occupied the building, including a furniture store.

In 2007, Maurice Margulies and Antonie Reinhard, owners of a high-end antiques business in Manhattan, now called Fortress Antiques, purchased the building. They had seen the warehouse, like most people do, from the I-787 highway across the river, fell in love with it, and bought it as a storage and sales facility for their very high-end antiques business, and hopefully, as their home.

Their antiques can be found on 1stdibs.com, and a perusal of their goods show vignettes that were photographed in the bare interior of the Fortress. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

The Fortress is a survivor. Shoddy may have been this building’s raison d’être, but it was never shoddy. Long may it stand!

Story by Suzanne Spellen

Photos: 1. Katherine M. Conway for Wikipedia, 2, 3. Suzanne Spellen, 4. hoxie.org 5. National Register 6. 1stdibs.com

10/22/2020

Fall, as the leaves are thinning, is one of the best times to see one of Troy’s most iconic buildings. If you happen to be driving north on I-787, and approaching South Troy, you can see it across the river – a tall red brick building with turrets that looks like a medieval castle, or fortress. In fact, that’s what it’s called by most people– “the Fortress.”

It’s 1 Jackson Street. What I like to call the Fortress of Shoddy.

The Fortress was constructed in 1902. Many people think it was an armory, but it wasn’t. It was built as the United Waste Manufacturing Company, and was a warehouse storing cotton and wool shoddy. The company’s main headquarters and factory was in Cohoes.

Troy, as most people know, is famous for its 19th century detachable collar and cuffs industry. Shirts and other clothing items were also made in the many factories that once lined the river and were elsewhere in the city and surrounding towns.

All of those cut goods produce fabric waste – the scraps, the ends of bolts, the damaged goods, plus other rags and fabrics were collected. Perhaps even more than in today’s recycling culture, such waste could not just be tossed, not when there were methods of manufacturing new materials out of it.

Shoddy is a cloth made from reconstituted wool and cotton rags. Shoddy was used to make blankets, workmen’s clothing, and more often, soldier’s uniforms. Many of the uniforms of the Union Army during the Civil War were made of shoddy, a practice that continued up until World War I.

Shoddy was not a superior material, it did not have the strength of either good wool or cotton, as the threads were short, not the long fibers of new goods. Not surprisingly, there was a great deal of complaining, especially during the Civil War, about the quality of the uniforms. The adjective “shoddy,” meaning inferior and badly made, as you can guess, comes from this fabric.

The manufacture of shoddy was a small, but lucrative industry. Troy actually had two shoddy mills, the building for the other, the Troy Waste Manufacturing Company, still stands at 444 River Street, recently converted into apartments.

The United Waste Manufacturing Company, founded in 1899, was one of 88 shoddy mills across the country by 1909; an industry that employed over 2,000 people. By 1906, the factory in Cohoes employed over 130 workers. In addition to the factory headquarters, they had an office in this warehouse, an office in Boston, and one on Leonard Street in lower Manhattan.

Producing shoddy was hard and hazardous work for the factory workers. The rags were soaked in muriatic acid, a process called “carbonizing, “and then dried at temperatures above 100 degrees, which reduced the cotton fibers to carbon. The whole mass was then mixed and oiled, and then ground into a fibrous mass.

From this soup, threads were twisted out, and woven into fabric that looked like dyed wool. As can be imagined, this was toxic to workers, especially those working with the hot and dry “carbonized” rags, and respiratory conditions similar to white lung were common.

Fire was a danger as well. This warehouse had a horrific fire in 1908, when a worker named Ann Rumnick had her dress catch fire from machinery sparks, in a baling room where the rags were bundled. The fire spread quickly in the hot dusty room filled with flammable rags.

Women were jumping out of the second story windows, and fortunately, the sprinkler system and the fire department were able to put the blaze out. Poor Ann Rumnick died, however, burned beyond recognition, but the only fatality. The fire caused over $50K in damages, and probably hastened the company’s demise.

More on the architecture, the owners of the warehouse, the fate of the company and the building: all revealed next time.

Story by Suzanne Spellen

Photographs of the building are mine, Vintage photos are of the Slack Shoddy Mill in Springfield, MA. The operations in Troy would have been quite similar.