Earl & Wilson

From Arthur Weise’s “The City of Troy and Its Vicinity,” 1886, comes this description of a long-forgotten factory that once employed thousands, the Earl & Wilson Company:

“The senior member of this widely-known firm, William S. Earl, in 1848, entered the linen-collar and shirt-bosom manufactury of Jefferson Gardner, at No. 16 King Street, to acquire a knowledge of the business. In 1850, he began making similar goods at No. 51 North Third Street, and, in 1851, as a ‘manufacturer and wholesale dealer in ready-made linen,’ moved to No. 11 King Street. In 1856, he and Edwin D. Blanchard formed a partnership under the name of Earl & Blanchard, linen manufacturers, and occupied a part of the Manufacturers’ Bank Building, at the corner of River and King Streets. On the death of Edwin D. Blanchard, in 1859, the business was discontinued. In 1867, the firm of Earl & Wilson was formed, having its manufactory at No. 5 Union Street; Washington Wilson being the second member of the firm. Gardner Earl, son of William S. Earl, was admitted a partner in 1873, and Arthur R. Wilson, a brother of Washington Wilson, in 1881.

“On the completion of its large brick building on the southwest corner of Seventh Street and Broadway, in 1876, the firm occupied the lower part of the attractive edifice. It is four stories, high, with basement, having a frontage of 86 feet on Seventh Street, and a depth of 105 feet. The goods made by the firm are sent to its salesrooms at No. 33 and 35 East Seventeenth Street, Union Square, New York, and Nos. 174, 176, and 178 East Adams Street, Chicago, whence they are shipped to buyers. E.&W. is the trade-mark of the firm. Earl & Wilson have a uniform price for the goods manufactured by them, and purchasers can obtain the firm’s collars and cuffs only at the established rates. More than a thousand persons are employed by the firm to make the different styles of collars and cuffs demanded by its numerous customers throughout the United States.”

In 1953, the old Earl & Wilson building was repurposed as home of the Hudson Valley Technical Institute, the community college that would quickly outgrow the building and be renamed Hudson Valley Community College on its move to a new campus in 1960.

At some point Seventh and all the other streets to the river were rechristened as avenues. Seventh no longer continues through Broadway. Any remnant of the old factory building is long gone, its site given over to what was a hotel and is now a residence hall, and the old Verizon building that for a while in recent years served as yet another interim city hall for Troy.

Of all the names involved with this once-prominent firm, only that of Gardner Earl would currently resonate with Trojans; it was for him that the Gardner Earl Crematorium in Oakwood Cemetery was named.