Grew up in the heyday when Glens Falls made so many things, had so much industry

By Mark Frost, Chronicle Editor

I wore a Bronne (pronounced bron-nee) shirt to the office today because, for Prime-Time Seniors, I knew I was going to be writing about the manufacturing heyday of Glens Falls when I grew up here.

Our area made shirts back then, not just at Troy Shirt — now repurposed as multi-use Shirt Factory — but at lots of other small locations. Arthur Bronne made shirts in Fort Edward in what I believe was a former church where Hudson Headwaters Health Network office is.

Mr. Bronne made shirts for high-end retailers like J. Press. My father introduced me to Mr. Bronne and to his shirts. I in turn introduced some classmates like Bob Gillmett. I remember buying Bronne dress shirts for $4, often with the prestige label sewn in.

The shirts were so great that I’m wearing one literally 60 years later. I just rediscovered it in a closet where Sandy had stored it away.

Even in the 1980s when we were starting The Chronicle, clothing was still being made here. Besides Troy Shirt, J&J Lingerie in what is now the Bare Bones furniture store was making nightgowns and panties sold in discount stores. Native Textiles on Warren Street made fabric used in Nike athletic wear.

We made paper and cement and medical devices and paper-making machinery, and here were created the TV schedule listings that ran in every newspaper in America back when newspapers were like licenses to print money.

The industrial economy was decentralized. Hudson Falls had Sandy Hill Iron & Brass as its cornerstone just as Glens Falls had Finch, Pruyn. What a difference it makes when a community has a cornerstone industry.

Corinth had International Paper during The Chronicle’s early years. The community had new car dealerships and Brookhaven golf course that IP owned. I sold an ad to a lady in Corinth who had a a dress shop. Not consignment. New dresses.

Glens Falls had not just one but two local banks — Glens Falls National, on its way now to becoming Arrow, and First National Bank of Glens Falls, which became Evergreen and carried on that way for years. Again, makes all the difference in the world when a place has corporations headquartered there.

In the 1980s things hadn’t centralized to nearly the degree they have now.

Long before Walmart and Target arrived in this market, we had a dominant discount retailer — The Joy Store — presided over by the Ginsburg family.

In The Chronicle’s early years, they and their advertising director Ellie Hume regularly bought our paper’s back page.

I remember at one point that their balance owed to us had reached something like a thousand dollars, which in those days for us was monumental.

I expressed alarm to my father, who said, “I wish they owed you a million.”

My father, who grew up in Hudson Falls, knew the Ginsburgs, knew you could absolutely count on them.

John Morphis was the Joy Store’s general manager during those early Chronicle years. Every time I’d see him, I’d ask the same question (the same question I ask everyone in commerce): “How’s business?”

And every time John would give me the exact same reply: “We’re getting our share.”

At The Chronicle now we’re feeling pretty good. We’re getting our share.

The Joy Store sold some name brands but they also sold brands you never heard of and items with no brand at all — and always they were worth what you paid, likely more.

The Joy Store had local people not just unpacking boxes and stocking shelves, but buying the merchandise, learning how to spot quality and value. People were empowered.

Glens Falls was worldly.

Glens Falls Insurance had been sold to Continental Insurance by the time we started The Chronicle, but Continental built on the heritage and we remained very much an insurance town.

I asked the late attorney Dick Bartlett once if Glens Falls Insurance could have survived staying independent, and he said absolutely. “Have you ever heard of the Wausau?” he said. “That could have been Glens Falls Insurance.”

Continental went above and beyond, as did the Scandinavian paper technology company Kamyr, which became a major player here. When the Queensbury Hotel was struggling, Continental and Kamyr bought and operated it for years.

Eventually Continental struggled and was sold. Kamyr pulled back. The Queensbury Hotel was sold — and struggled again, for years, if not decades — until outlet entrepreneur Ed Moore bought and revived it under the leadership of Ed’s son Zack and Zack’s business partner Tyler Herrick. Now it’s full throttle with potential that is limitless.

I’m not just talking about the old days as old days. I’m talking about them because entrepreneurship is in this region’s DNA. And I’m referring not just to the founders but to the willing workers who staffed these endeavors and the type of people who still do.

We’re used to building success from scratch here.

These topics are increasingly on my mind the older I get. They’re fun to remember and they are legacy that I feel the need and desire to pass along.

I appreciate that when Peter Hoffman bought and redeveloped the building just east of our old post office (which he also bought and redeveloped), he exposed the long ago name of the building at the top: Joubert & White, the Glens Falls manufacturer in the late 1800s of the horse-drawn buckboards that the Vanderbilts, Whitneys and Rockfellers drove. Smoothest ride because Joubert & White invented a suspension that did the job so much more effectively.

I like knowing that Mr. White lived across the street in a house just a few doors up the street. He walked to work like Mr. Pruyn did to his papermill.

I like that Mr. Pruyn built houses for his three daughters on Warren Street just up the hill from the mill.

Two of those houses are now incorporated into the Hyde Collection, founded by Mr. Pruyn’s daughter Charlotte and her husband Louis Hyde, who didn’t just carry forward Finch, Pruyn papermill but bequeathed us world-class art.

I have a friend who works security at the Hyde. He told me that one day a visitor was praising the museum, but said, “It’s too bad it has that industrial site right behind it.”

My friend loved telling me: “I explained to her, Mark, without that industrial site, we would have never had the art museum.”

We’ve lost so many major industrial employers over the last few years.

I’m not just bringing up the past for old times sake. I’m going for the bedrock of pride, the foundation still to build on.

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