The Collar City
By Don Rittner
You may remember the television commercial of old that shows a woman
yelling "ring around the collar," in which she uses a detergent to
wash out the grime from her husband's shirt and collar.
Ring around the collar isn't simply a Madison Avenue executive's
clever ploy to sell washing detergent. It's a centuries-old problem,
and more than 150 years ago, a Troy woman set out to do something
about it. However, she hadn't planned on creating a whole new
industry.
Hannah LORD was a daughter of William A. LORD, a Revolutionary War
officer and author of Lord's Military Tactics. She married Orlando
MONTAGUE, a shoemaker (or blacksmith), on August 14, 1817, and both
settled in Troy, originally on Second Street.
Mrs. Montague, tired of washing her husband's shirts because only the
collars were dirty, decided one day to snip off a collar, wash it, and
sew it back on. Mr. Montague, it's written, agreed to the experiment,
and in 1827, the first detachable collar was made at their home at 139
Third Street.
..
..
The original reason that Mrs. Montague created the detachable collar
was to clean it separately from the shirt. With the increased
production of collars came the need to wash the thousands of collars
being produced. In 1835, Independence STARKS entered the collar-making
business and also created the first Troy Laundry, at 66 North Second
Street (Fifth Avenue today), where he washed not only his own collars
but those of competitors as well. Many years later, the laundry
industry would spark the creation of the first female union in the
country (see also Don's article "Collar Maid Cuffs Bosses").
For the next 50 years, many inventions were developed to aid the
collar, cuff, and shirt industry, and Troy production boomed. By the
late 1880s, detachable collars were being manufactured around the
nation.
...
...
In 1901, there were 26 collar- and cuff-makers and 38 laundries in the
city. Wearing a detached white collar gave rise to a new working
social class, the "white-collar" worker, who differentiated themselves
from the no-collar or "blue-collar" factory worker.
https://rensselaer.nygenweb.net/article11.htm?utm_source=substack
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