Buttoning Up the Collar City

A look at the creation of Troy as the "Collar City"

(Postcard celebrating Mrs. Montague’s place in history)

Most American cities have nicknames. Chicago is the Windy City, New York is the Big Apple, Las Vegas is Sin City and New Orleans is called The Big Easy, to name a few. There are all kinds of nicknames, with all kinds of reasons for their designation. Some reference geography or weather, some refer to the nature of its people, and many others have historic precedent or remind people of the industries that made the city great. Our local cities are a great example of the latter. Amsterdam is the Carpet City, Schenectady is the Electric City, Cohoes is called the Spindle City, and of course, we here in Troy are the Collar City.

It’s a point of city pride to point out that Troy was home to one of 19th and early 20th century’s most far-reaching industries. In its heyday, Troy’s collar and cuff factories and their affiliated laundries employed half the city, made fortunes for some and produced a product that was in demand across the entire United States and beyond. Those products are gone today but leave a marketing legacy that lends itself to some clever marketing and civic pride. I’m especially fond of the pun in “Collard City Growers,” but we also have the Collar City Painting, Collar City Growers, Collar City Lofts, the Collar City Café, and many more. And let’s not forget the Collar City Bridge, either.

Of course, the large factory buildings that line River Street north of the Green Island Bridge are a daily reminder of this industry. But they are not the totality of it. It was HUGE. It’s not until one does some research that you realize that those buildings, as large as they are, represent only a fraction of the structures that once catered to the collar and cuff industry. Not all the companies were housed in large factories, either. Some were pretty small. After all, how much room do you need to put together some shirt collars and cuffs?

A Great Product Often Begins with a Woman’s Great Idea

In 1825, a woman named Hannah Lord Montague was tired. Her name brings images of a well-born lady to the manor born, but Hannah Lord was married to a hard-working Troy man named Orlando Montague. Some sources list him as a blacksmith, other histories have him as a shoe maker. Who really knows, and it is possible he did both. Whatever he was, he was also known to be a fastidious dresser who liked to look professional and upstanding.

Back then, unless you were very wealthy, people didn’t own a lot of clothes. Montague probably owned a handful of white shirts, which he wore every day. Washing clothes back then wasn’t easy either. Water had to be heated over the fire for the wash tub, then harsh detergent and bleach were added. Stains had to be worked out by scrubbing barehanded, as rubber gloves wouldn’t be invented for another 90 years. The clothes were hung on a line and when still damp, they had to be ironed by heavy irons that were heated either on the stove, or by inserting hot coals into a hollow body. They were also heavily starched to a crispness required by the fashion dictates of the time. Women would have died of joy seeing a modern washer/dryer and an electric steam iron at work.

The male fashions of the day included a close-fitting buttoned waistcoat with a jacket over that. Even if he took the jacket off to work, the body of his shirts would have remained relatively clean underneath the waistcoat. (We won’t get into the habits of personal cleanliness and lack of deodorant at this time in history.) Mrs. Montague noticed that her husband was pretty good at keeping most of his shirt clean for a few days, but his collar got wilted and grimy from sweat and the soot and ash that was part of his work life. It was unthinkable that he would walk around with ring around the collar, that was very low class. But why wash the entire shirt when only the collars were dirty? She had other things to do with her day besides laundry, and laundry took all day.

One day, she unpicked the seams that attached his collar to the neckline of his shirt and attached multiple ties and a couple of buttons and buttonholes on both pieces. The ties and buttons kept his collar in place, firmly attached to the shirt, but allowed Hannah to remove them and wash and press them separately. She did the same thing with his shirt cuffs, too.

She no doubt had to play around with this idea to get the perfect fit and security of the collar, and maybe sacrificed a few collars and cuffs in the process, but she persevered, and soon had Orlando in high fashion without her backbreaking work. She spread the news to her female friends, who copied the idea, and soon Troy’s men were the first to wear the new detachable collars and cuffs. They told their friends and soon the men of Troy and the surrounding areas were clamoring for detachable collars and cuffs. Eventually, it went national. It didn’t take long before someone thought, “I should start a factory making these things. I could get rich!”

That person was not Hannah Lord Montague. She’s lucky that she got the credit, and that her name has gone down in history. Much later, her home was noted as the place where the industry began. Her home at 139 3rd Street was used in postcards and advertising. A plaque was placed on the house reading, “In this house probably before 1827 detachable shirt collars were first made and the collar industry originated by Hannah Lord Montague, 1794-1878. (Mrs. Orlando Montague) Inventor and manufacturer – dedicated by Rutherford Hayner ( editor of the Troy Times) Unfortunately, her house no longer stands.

The first man to really monetize the detachables was a retired minister named Rev. Ebenezer Brown. He had a notions store in Troy and was soon inundated with requests for collars. He set his wife and daughter up as his factory, and they began cutting, sewing and laundering detachable collars. Brown carried them in his shop, and went door to door in Troy, selling them at 25 cents each, or a dozen for $2.00. The demand was so great that he had to open a new shop and hire outside women to manufacture at home. The women were paid in trade with items from his notions shop. Historians think that he may have established the first “sweat shop” in the nation, a dubious honor. One wonders if he paid his family.

Not to be left out of capitalizing on his wife’s genius invention, Orlando Montague and partner Austin Granger opened the first real collar factory in Troy in 1832. They improved upon Rev. Brown’s “string collar” design, which he had adapted from Hannah’s original collars. They also introduced different styles and were the first to manufacture the first detachable shirt. We know them as “dickies,” those backless, sleeveless, tied around the back shirtfronts. They are still in use today.

Before you know it, collar companies were established across the city.  In the beginning, the collars and cuffs (as well as the shirts and everything else) were hand sewn. The sewing machine would not come into wide use until the 1850s. As the national and international popularity of detachables grew, factories large and small flourished. While some would grow to be massive multi-storied factories employing hundreds of workers, mostly women, many shops were much smaller – a floor of a loft building, or even a home. One didn’t need a lot of room or special equipment to make collars. You only needed a table to cut, sew and package, and a place to launder and press. And hopefully, some good lighting.

(Cluett Peabody detachable collars via EBay)

The Growth of the Factories of the “Collar City”

Twenty years later, in 1851, a company called Maullin & Blanchard set up a collar factory at 282 River Street in Troy. Young Trojan George B. Cluett joined the company as a clerk in 1854. After a series of new partnerships, the death of Maullin, and the rise of Cluett in the organization, in 1863, the firm of Geo. B. Cluett, Brothers & Co. was founded. More partners were added, some more name changes, and by 1899, Cluett, Peabody & Co. was established. They became the largest collar factory in Troy.

A well-dressed man changed his collar several times a day. The rich especially changed clothes a lot, and each time, a man put on a new collar. Depending on the occasion, he probably changed the style of  the collar, as well as getting a fresh one. There was a large range of different styles to choose from – for day and evening, with multiple choices for each, all in a range of neck sizes. By the end of the century, women were also wearing detachable collars on their shirtwaists, and those too, came in many different sizes and styles.

A look at maps and old photographs and directories of Troy during most of the remaining 19th century shows a multitude of collar factories and laundries, hence the nickname “the Collar City.” These factories were far downtown, going north on both sides of River Street, and in Lansingburgh. They were in all sorts of buildings, large and small. It seems astonishing how many companies there were, and how many people were employed in the industry. It’s also amazing how all these companies made money.

Some factories only cut and stitched the collars. They then sent them to the many laundries in Troy, some adjacent to the factories. Laundries were vital to the industry, and working in a laundry was a harder job than being hunched over a table sewing all day. Workers toiled in hot, unventilated rooms over vats of boiling water, washing, rinsing, bleaching and starching thousands of collars, which were then pressed into crispy, paper-like collars and cuffs.

All the steps in producing a finished product were the result of women burning their hands and arms with caustic detergents and bleaches, boiling water, harsh chemical bluing and starches, and hot irons. If you didn’t make your quota, you made even less money, or were let go. Almost all the workers in this industry were immigrant Irish women – the sewers and the laundresses. These women, led by a young laundress named Kate Mullany, established the first women’s labor union in Troy in 1864, fighting for better conditions and better pay.

By the 1880s, Troy’s collar factories employed over 8,000 workers. Cluett Peabody grew to take up a series of building along the Hudson River at the outskirts of downtown Troy. It was massive, built on the popularity of collars. By the end of the century, they were also making shirts under the Arrow brand name. Beginning in 1905, Arrow shirts, and the ads created by artist J. C. Leyendecker propelled them into the 20th century. The “Arrow Man” was patrician, handsome and well put together. This ad campaign lasted until 1931 and made Cluett Peabody the largest employer in Troy, producing not only collars, but Arrow shirts and Arrow lines of underwear, pajamas and other products.

Most of Troy’s collar factories started to die out as the 20th century progressed. The times and fashion changed, and the market waned considerably as collared shirts became the norm. Disposable paper collars began to replace cotton ones, and technology made running hot water and the washing machine a household amenity, making laundry much easier. Many of Troy’s larger sewing facilities stopped making collars and switched to other clothing and textile items. They were able to stay in business until the 1960s and early ‘70s, when textile manufacturers began moving down south in rapid waves, helping to destroy the economies of the places they left.

Cluett Peabody operated its massive Troy factory until the 1980s. They started downsizing years before that, closing sections at a time, the jobs going down south and then out of the country. By the late 80s, the only remaining Cluett Peabody operation was the Sanforized Company, housing Sanford Cluett’s innovative and patented method of washing and processing cotton so that it doesn’t shrink. They were in operation on Peeple’s Island, across the river from Lansingburgh. The entire operation closed down in 1989.

The complex on River Street was torn down, leaving only what is now the Headley building, which was Cluett Peabody’s “newest” reinforced concrete factory building, built in 1916. It does not appear in the postcard from the turn of the century. The large factory site became parking lots and the home of the Hedley Automobile Company, which is gone now, as well.

Although detachable collars and cuffs are a novelty item, seen only in places such as the Hart Cluett Museum and on display at Brown’s Brewing Co, a former collar factory on River Street, they were largely responsible for the prosperity and growth of the city of Troy. The thousands of women who made it happen are now only statistics and old photographs to many, but these ladies built Troy. And it all started with an inventive housewife.

As the New York Times stated in 1925, at the anniversary of Hannah Lord Montague’s ingenuity, “The prints of Troy’s horseshoes have marked the highways of the globe. The sound of her church bells have called people of this and foreign lands to prayer and praise. Her railroad and street cars have carried passengers to their destinations in both hemispheres. And her detachable collars and cuffs have carried Troy’s purity and cleanliness to the furthest frontiers of civilization.”

(Arrow ad by Leyendecker, 1907) Note the men sport various styles of collars, and the woman is wearing one too.)