City of Corsets Walking Tour - Clio

Entries on This Tour

1. Worcester Historical Museum (30 Elm Street)

The Worcester Historical Museum was founded in 1875 as the Worcester Society of Antiquity. Today, the museum offers exhibitions and programs about the history of the city and region as well as a research library of over 7000 titles and half a million photographs. The Worcester Historical Museum is the only place in the city where one of its most famous exports can still be seen: a black silk ribbon-trimmed Royal Worcester corset displayed in its Fuller Gallery.

2. Home of Lavinia Foy, 19th century patent holder and manufacturer of corsets (5 High Street)

5 High Street is currently a vacant lot but was once the site of the boarding house where Lavinia Foy lived from 1854 until the mid 1860s. Widowed and self-supporting, Lavinia launched a lucrative career from here, becoming a nationally prominent designer and manufacturer in the emerging corset industry.Note: If you are walking the route, this address and the following stop (David Hale Fanning Girls Trade School) can be viewed from the same corner: Chestnut St and Pleasant St.

3. David Hale Fanning Girls Trade School (24 Chatham Street)

The large building at 24 Chatham St. was once home to the David Hale Fanning Girls Trade School which opened at the time of the first World War. Worcester's young women could receive a free trade school education which included hands-on courses featuring machines used in corset manufacturing.Note; If you're on the walking tour with the historical museum behind you, you will look across Pleasant Street to see the back of the Fanning building.

4. The Corset Shop, 1949-1987 (27 & 29 Pleasant Street)

A native of Poland, Bennett Siegal's sales expertise included multiple product lines. This is the second location of his corset shop. Prior to the Pleasant Street location, he owned another corset business (Siegal Trading Co Inc.) located at 326 Main Street. He appears to have worked in conjunction with downtown corsetiere May Cosgrove.

5. May Cosgrove's Corset Shop (3 Pleasant Street)

Like many of Worcester's corsetieres, May Byrne Cosgrove's shop moved from one downtown address to another over the thirty-plus years of her business as she searched for better locations, cheaper rent, or snazzier display cases. Her introduction to corsets came via retail, having sold them as a young store clerk at both a downtown department store and a corset boutique.

6. John C. Maclnnes Co. (454-468 Main Street)

On this prime chunk of downtown real estate (now a green space next to the Glass Tower building) was the John C. Maclnnes store, operating from 1878 to 1958. It was an emporium of dry goods, household items, and clothing including a corset department. Many advertising signs on the exterior drew the attention of the hundreds of customers who would pass by as either pedestrians or trolley riders.

7. Denholm & McKay Co. (484-500 Main Street)

At the turn of the last century, the Denholm & McKay department store gave women another venue for purchasing corsets in Worcester. It was the only local department store in the early 20th century where women could buy Royal Worcester Corset Company products, a widely popular brand at the time.

8. Royal Worcester Corset 1861-1950 (564 and 566 Main Street)

This location is the second home of the Royal Worcester Corset Company, back when it was still known as Worcester Corset Company. A globally recognized brand name in the industry, Royal Worcester began as a hoop skirt manufacturer downtown where the company grew for several decades before moving to its expansive 30 Wyman Street headquarters, south of downtown near Clark University.

9. 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.

10. Solon Bryant Co. (1880-1892) & Park Corset Works (1882-1894) (88 Front Street)

One of the city's earliest factory-style corset producers, Park Corset Works evolved from a "notions" store run by a transplant from New Hampshire who had just served for the North in the Civil War. Solon Bryant played an early role in the development of the corset industry in Worcester from his business' central downtown location.

11. Ivy Corset, formerly Corset H (154 Front Street)

Mary Heintzelman Gifford Bowne opened a corset factory in downtown Worcester in 1904 and ran that company and its affiliated national chain of retail shops for sixty years. She was not only the only woman at the head of a manufacturing facility in the city's corset industry but also for many years the only woman running a corset factory in the United States.

12. Auguste Jean LeCoutre- The Salon 1926-1939 (6 Foster Street & 9 Norwich Street)

Auguste LeCoutre was a French immigrant who was one of the most acclaimed corset designers of his era. After serving many years as head designer at the Royal Worcester Corset, he forged out on his own with a retail shop at 6 Foster and a factory at 9 Norwich, just around the corner. Today the location of his shop is a parking lot to the right of the building at 2 Foster Street.

13. United Corset Shops 1917-1963 (294 Main Street)

This downtown shop was one of a nation-wide chain run by the Ivy Corset Company, a Worcester manufacturer in the Junction Shop district. The first location was opened in 1917 and it was listed in the city directory until 1963. United Corset Shops operated in Worcester from 1922 until 1939, but continued in other areas for decades longer. While in Worcester it inhabited multiple addresses.

14. Emma Kemp's Corset Parlor (340 Main Street)

Raised on a farm in nearby Webster, Massachusetts, Kemp came to the city with sewing skills that she used as a Main Street corsetiere in the early 20th century. She opened a corset parlor in 1905 which provided a very upscale corset-buying experience in Worcester. She later shifted to running the business from her home in the Elm Park neighborhood west of downtown.

15. Slater Building (390 Main Street)

When the Slater Building opened in 1907 it was Worcester's second "sky-scraper," joining the State Mutual Building at 340 Main Street in a vertically growing city's new skyline. The National Register of Historic Places added the Slater Building to its registry in 1980. It is one of two Worcester buildings that housed seven different corset-making businesses.Note: this is the last stop on the City of Corsets walking tour. To return to the Worcester Historical Museum walk up the hill on Elm Street from Main Street one block.

This Tour is a Walking Tour.

City of Corsets Walking Tour

Created by City of Corsets (Clark University) on April 8th 2024, 4:16:24 pm.

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Description

Worcester's canal to the sea (built in the 1820s) and its extensive railway service (since the 1840s) contributed to the explosive growth of many industries by the late 19th century, when the city was a powerhouse of manufacturing. Its durable goods exports included wire, guns, skates, envelopes, abrasives, shoes ... and corsets. From 1860 to 1980 almost 130 businesses in the city either produced corsets, sold them, or provided supplies to the thriving industry. One of those producers -- the Royal Worcester Corset Company -- was allegedly the largest employer of women in the U.S. as the 20th century began. Starting out as a small downtown hoop skirt factory in 1867, it partnered from its earliest days with another Worcester giant the wire maker Washburn & Moen which made hoops for skirts and then stays for corsets, providing an example of one of many corporate synergies in a city of manufacturing. Many employees of Royal Worcester and other local corset factories became business owners themselves, setting up shop as sole proprietors and building up a clientele of women who patronized them year after year for an updated corset when theirs became too worn, stained, or (for wealthier patrons) out of fashion to wear any longer. Half of the city's 126 corset businesses were owned and run by women, including most notably the Ivy Corset factory that employed hundreds from 1905-1961. That company's owner also ran a chain of retail corset shops with a nation-wide reach. Much of this activity happened in the downtown core, within a few blocks of City Hall. Our walk will start at the Worcester Historical Museum which has several Worcester-made corsets in its collection. Then we'll proceed through downtown, stopping to learn more about these factory owners, retailers, and sole proprietor "corsetiere" shops that fitted the city's women for over one hundred years.

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