As I've been working on an article on the Spencer Optical Manufacturing Company (commonly known as the Spencer Optical Works) I thought it'd be a good time to share these images I've collected to illustrate the article. The image above is an illustration of the Spencer Optical factory in Kirbyville, featured in J. Thomas Scharf's History of Westchester County, New York (1886). You can see the river in the right background, which powered the factory's turbines. Unfortunately, the lake supplying this water was drained in 1889, forcing the Optical Works to relocate to Newark, New Jersey.
This photo-lithograph illustration has become one of my favorite images. It shows the intersection of Broadway and Maiden Lane, where the Spencer Optical Works salesrooms were located, as it appeared in 1885. I looked, but couldn't find a sign for Spencer. The frenzy of wires between the buildings are telephone and telegraph cables, which became explosively popular at this time. If you look closely you can see a few bedraggled little moppets wandering through the street.
I've shown this image on the blog before, but it's worth reposting because it's so great. It shows the Spencer Optical Band (yes, they had their own band) standing behind one of the factory buildings - probably the smaller of the two buildings shown in the first illustration above. Sixty years later, Edmund P. Horton, a former Spencer employee who had played bass horn in the band, recounted how he and his bandmates traveled to Manhattan in 1883 to play in the parade at the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. I think what I like best about this photograph is the factory workers leaning out the windows.
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There's a fair amount SOMC trade literature in the so-called Warshaw collection in the Archives Center, which is part of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
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