The Adrian Shop (6 Franklin Street)

William Adrian sold upscale Ivy brand corsets from his prime location on Main Street across from City Hall in the heart of downtown Worcester. The Adrian shop was initially just the one Worcester retail location, but William Adrian expanded his business into Boston and Providence, eventually trademarking his own "Adrian" brand of women's underwear.

William Adrian held various jobs from 1900 to 1915 (clerk, credit reporter, investment advisor, tire salesman) until finding his niche: running a high-end corset shop in the city's downtown core. As a life-long resident of Worcester, he would have been well aware of who the local players were in the corset industry. He aligned himself with Mary Heintzelman Gifford, owner and founder of busy Corset H Company (later called Ivy Corset) whose target was high end corset clients. In Adrian she found a manager for her factory's flagship retail location, on a Main Street corner across from City Hall, a ten-minute walk from her factory's door.

A Worcester Magazine article provides details on the dazzling impression the Adrian shop made on the city when it opened in 1915:

"This concern, of which the owner and manager is William F. Adrian, a Worcester man, deals in the Ivy Corsets, which are exclusively manufactured by the Corset H Co. at its plant at 40 Jackson Street, an establishment of which Mrs. Mary H. Gifford is founder and president…

In every sense the store is most attractive. The show window is in itself a work of art … in the show window is a tasteful style of carved ornamentation, in keeping with the elegance found throughout the interior… hand carved woodwork paneling… The lighting fixtures are importations from Paris and represent leaves and full-blown roses plated in antique gold. The shades are of French beaded glass … Fixtures of such an elaborately artistic character have almost never before been introduced into a Worcester mercantile establishment.

There are three fitting rooms, each screened by a luxurious heavy velvet drapery of soft burnt orange tint.  The velvet hangings were put in by the Denholm & McKay Co. Each curtain can be drawn quickly and easily by the pulling of a cord. These draperies are unlike anything of the sort to be found elsewhere in the city and are one of the most costly features of the store's appointments."

Just as some people are Coke / some are Pepsi and some are Burger King / some are McDonald's, women of that era had allegiances for their corset brands. Local devotees of the Ivy Corset would have earned bragging rights when their home retailer opened what appears to have been the unparalleled posh joint for corset shopping in Worcester.

Adrian opened another Ivy Corset Shop at 34 West Street in Boston the next year then further expanded into Providence, Rhode Island in 1917. By 1924 we see a registration at the U.S. Trademark Office for his "Adrian" brand of women's underwear (corsets, brassieres, and bandeaux) showing his confidence and expansion in the field. Whatever arrangement he had made with Mrs. Gifford as retailer for her Corset H product line obviously had some flexibility as Adrian also promoted his own creations at the shops.

1932 was the last year the city directory mentioned his involvement in the field and the Ivy Corset shop disappeared from Foster Street too, probably both victims of the Great Depression and a decade of diminishing interest in corsets. By 1940 he was putting his sales skills to work as a car salesman. The 1950 Census shows him living with his daughter Martha in Virginia; he died a few years later, in April of 1953.

Accessed April 3rd, 2024. ancestry.com.

Corset and Underwear Review.

Worcester City Directories.

Worcester Magazine.

A Proper Fit (working title), Anne Marie Murphy. TidePool Press 2025, www.cityofcorsets.com.