Joseph Loth & Company Silk Ribbon Mill
In upper Manhattan, a block-long structure hulks like a stalwart old public building. But a faded ad painted in back reveals its delicate mission more than a century ago.
by Eric K. Washington
In 1892, an advertisement in Scribners Magazine read: “A Confidential Whisper. Buy Fair and Square Ribbon for Christmas fancy work; it makes a plain article elegant.” For this was the workshop of Joseph Loth & Company, a wholesale ribbon factory renowned across the country for its high-quality product.
The Silk Road To Washington Heights
The red-brick building at 1828 Amsterdam Avenue, between West 150th and 151st Streets, is still a commanding presence in the neighborhood. Built in 1886, the “Fair & Square” factory was the first major commercial building in late 19th-century Washington Heights.
At that time extant vestiges of military encampments in Washington Heights still steeped its rolling landscape in the legends and lore of Revolutionary War battles. The area was still generally known as Carmansville, and was predominantly residential. But new townhouse development had rapidly begun to cut a tooth into the once rural landscape.
Established in 1875, Joseph Loth & Company was headquartered about 10 miles south, in lower Manhattan. A fire in 1882 caused thousands of dollars of water damage to its stock in a building on Broome Street — which also housed other garment industry inventories — and possibly induced the company to transfer its textile trade operations farther uptown.
The King’s Handbook of New York City 1892 praised the ”range and scope” of Joseph Loth & Company’s “Fair and Square” enterprise, which at that time employed 600 workers. It described the “uniform excellence” of the famous woven fabric, which came in “14 different widths, 165 shades of color and from 80 to 90 styles.”
But business in the factory’s new location had not always run as smooth as silk.
Silk Weavers Union Strike
In 1889, three years after relocating the textile plant to Washington Heights, a test of wills pitted Joseph Loth & Company and other manufacturers of woven fabrics against the Silk Weavers Union. An initiative of industry merchants to establish a school for weavers fueled several issues of contention. According to the New York Times, Joseth Loth defended the proposal as “for American-born weavers who were barred out by the formidable unions established by foreign artisans who had immigrated here.”
The majority of expert weavers were said at the time to be Swiss-born craftsmen. It was argued that, by passing down their art solely along the father-to-son chain for generations, they had effectively — and strategically — kept the American weaving industry and related trade unions “in the family.” The Times described the union as “one of the strongest and most powerful labor organizations now in existence in the United States.”
The struggle raised concerns throughout the wholesale ribbon and garment industry. The Times noted “more silk looms in America than there are weavers to work them.” The weavers soon recognized this fact, too, and used it as a point of leverage to go on strike.
New York City Landmark
In 1993, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the old Joseph Loth & Company building. Although it has literally been through the mill of additions (fire escapes), alterations (fenestration) and subtractions (an impressive central tower), the building doesn’t fail to grab the attention of passersby.
The brick structure is oddly indented on three sides, like the creases of a shopping bag. Architectural historians Andrew Dolkart and Matt Postal note in the Commission’s guidebook that the building “was planned in the shape of a K,” which effectively “maximized the light entering the building.” (We’re left to chuckle at the possibility that it also left an enduring initial of its architect, Hugo Kafka.)
Silk weaving operations ended in this building decades ago, and even the ribbon of place names has frayed and severed. Except for an area playground, the name Carmansville is forgotten. (And Harlem, Sugar Hill and Washington Heights, once used pretty interchangeably, appear to be giving way to the growing place names of Hamilton Heights and West Harlem.) So a quaint surprise is what looms up on the building’s back wall.
On the building’s south side, on West 150th Street, a faded yet legible, advertisement reads: “Fair and Square — This Label Is On The Best Ribbon Made.”
And, too, it is stitched into the lining of the neighborhood’s past.
Sources:
• Kings Handbook of New York City 1892, by Moses King, p. 207.
• Guide to New York City Landmarks, by Andrew Dolkart, Matt A. Postal, 2004, p. 199.
• New York Times, “Fire in Broome-Street”, December 7, 1882; “School for Weavers”, April 7, 1889; “Weavers Asked Too Much”, August 8, 1889.
- Scribners, miscellaneous advertisements, 1892.
__________________________________________________
(This article was originally published in January 2010 on suite101[dot]com.)
