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My father came from Kiev, Russia. He was already
a watchmaker. He came to New York. He was making $2.50 a week. Somebody
told him that if he went to Waterbury, he'd make more money. He
came here to make $3 a week.... He worked at the Waterbury Clock
Shop for 55 years.
-William Finkelstein |
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Waterbury Garment Corp., 1929
(Collection of Jack Brownstein)
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Manufacturing was the
economic engine of Waterbury during the first half of the 20th century.
A number of Jewish families became part of the city’s success
in manufacturing and contributed to its industrial accomplishments. |
[My paternal grandfather] was from Russia....
He got a job in Waterbury... and he became a foreman for $3 a week.
So, he finally got enough money [to bring his family over].... He
quit, and started his own business.... He had a little shop over
on Kingsbury Street... with all types of vises and soldering equipment....
He’d make gutters and stovepipes. He lived above that store
until he died. He wouldn’t move. And he always lived within
a block of synagogue.
-Nelson Zackin |
| The Albert family built
an industrial enterprise in recycling based on connections made
in the early years of peddling scrap. The Brownstein family developed
their textile factory on a widow’s skill with apron-making.
The Walzers expanded a small family mattress operation based in
New York into a nation-wide franchise. Others, including Harry Solomon,
apprenticed in the brass factory machine shops and developed useful
industrial processes. |
Torrington Supply Co., Inc., 1966
Jerome, Morris and Harold Stein
(Collection of Mattatuck Historical Society)
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[My father] was an enterprising young man....
He got a horse and buggy and he started peddling yard goods... to
the farmers. The women would buy, like two or three yards of materials.
He said, "What do you do with this?" They said, "We
make aprons." After a couple of years of doing that, he decided,
rather than sell them the yard goods, ...he’d make the aprons
and sell them the aprons.
-Jack Brownstein |
Postcard
(Collection of the Mattatuck Historical Society) |
By the middle of the
20th century, college educated businessmen, some the children of
local Jewish families, brought new strategies to the expansion of
area manufacturers. Isadore Cross, for example, led Harper-Leader’s
expansion into one of the area’s leading electroplating plants. |
We did a lot of electrical work and then as
the electronic industry grew, we had to change to go along with
them. And then we took rolls of metal, and we tin plated it, and
those tin plated rolls went to automotive companies.
-Isadore Cross |
My father and grandfather
were jewelers in the old country and they obtained jobs at the old
Waterbury Clock Shop.... And then, Connecticut Light and Power was
looking for private contractors to manufacture gas lights for street
lights and my grandfather being kind of an entrepreneur and a pretty
bright guy... went to work building these gas lights in 1924....
In 1929 or shortly before that they formed the Waterbury Gas &
Appliance Company and went into the electrical business because
they saw a future in that.
-Norman Feitelson |
Waterbury Gas and Electric Co., 1924
Sophia, Louis, Nevra & Paul Feitelson
(Collection of Norman Feitelson)
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