Street View photo from Google maps on Watkins Street near Boone Street from 2011
is a similar location to the 2022 photo of the new Historic Wayne Knitting Mills Park Nebraska Neighborhood Association sign.
On Growth Avenue in the Nebraska Neighborhood. The sprawling hosiery factory site was started by Theordore F. Thieme as Thieme Brothers Knitting Mills circa 1875, and incorporated as Wayne Knitting Mills in 1891. By 1905, it employed approximately 1,100 workers and became the largest maker of knitted hosiery in the world, spurring residential development in the area. The business thrived well into the 1900s. Today, the mill complex consists of five buildings.
Wayne Knitting Mills, located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, was America's largest producer of silk hosiery from 1892 to 1960.
This collection is comprised of company’s two publications: Wayne Knitting Mills News Letter (1952-1954) and Wayne Knit Rav-Lings (1913). Posting these newsletters is a cooperative project of Fort Wayne’s History Center and The Genealogy Center.
Owners put stamp on decades-old firm Though in their 90s, couple still involved with Ward Corp, Janet Patterson, September 9, 2018, The Journal Gazette newspaper. States they started their business in 1964. In 1978, Ward Aluminum Casting Inc. grew to 40 employees with 15,000 square feet of space in the same building where the business began with 1,500 square feet. Gradually the expansion of the business meant buying the entire 120,000-square-foot building where they started their business. What was once Wayne Knitting Mills became Ward Corp., housing three divisions of the company. A fourth division, Ward Heat Treating, is on Opportunity Drive in Fort Wayne.
Wayne Knitting Mills was established in 1891 by Theodore F. Thieme to manufacture “full-fashioned hosiery.” The company was one of the largest employers of young women at this time. The company produced the nation’s first line of fashion hosiery and exhibited it at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. During World War I, the factory produced fifty thousand standard issue woolen army socks, and organized drum corps and marching bands as well as a girls’ chorus called the “Knittingales” to help boost morale. As early as the 1920s, most of its employees were female, and the company’s buildings included a dormitory for female workers who had come from rural areas and small towns. Women worked as “transfer girls” and “loopers,” and used less complicated knitting machines than those used by the male knitters. In 1923, however, Wayne Knitting Mills was the focus of one of the city's most celebrated financial episodes. Thieme had decided to sell the plant to Munsingwear, then abruptly changed his mind. Other stockholders, however, led by Wayne president Sam Foster, still wanted to sell and were angered by what they considered to be Thieme's unfairness toward stockholders. Eventually the sale went through and the company for a time was still known as Wayne Knit, but later Munsingwear. After 70 years in business the Wayne Knitting Mills closed their doors for the final time in 1960, with all of its operations transferred to Tennessee. #sociallyhistory
Is it Thursday already? Here's a little throwback of the block where Freimann Square now sits! Does anyone know of anyone who remembers this or worked here?
"Established in 1891 at the northeast corner of Clinton and Main Streets by Theodore F. Thieme, Wayne Knitting Mills would become one of the city's largest and best known turn of the century employers. By the 1920s, there were 1,500 people - many of whom were women!! - working at this expansive factory at West Main Street and Knitters Avenue turning out seamless Wayne Knit Hosiery for women and pony socks for boys and girls.
Thieme started the company by first importing both machinery and a handful of skilled workers from Germany. He took a very benevolent approach to his employees; the company had profit sharing, group insurance, a clubhouse, and dormitories to encourage women who didn't live close by to work at the plant. Thieme also sponsored many employee athletic leagues and musical groups."
Photo courtesy of Randolf Harter's "Postcard History Series, Fort Wayne"
November 9, 2015 post by Hofer Davis Surveyors on Facebook is no longer online:
"Out in the Field" with Hofer and Davis, Inc. While working on West Main Street last week, we were investigating what remains of the Norfolk and Southern Railroad just North of Paula's. From 1892-1960 the Wayne Knitting Mills produced hosiery from this plant on West Main Street at Growth Avenue (or Knitters Avenue). The brick smokestack still remains, although shorter, and one can still see the "MILLS" on its side. By the way..... A.K. Hofer surveyed the Knitting Mills in 1961 and William S. Davis updated the survey in 1985!
June 24, 2019 post by Indiana Magazine of History on Facebook is no longer online.
In 1891, Wayne Knitting Mills began producing full-fashioned hosiery (knit to the contours of the leg and not in a straight tube) at their mill in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The successful company became a major employer in the city. In 1904, a Wayne Knitting Mills Pavilion was a feature of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
But German American businessman Theodore Thieme had experienced significant difficulty finding skilled workers to operate the knitting machines he wanted to produce superior hosiery. Thieme had travelled (incognito) to the town of Chemnitz, Germany, where he persuaded families of skilled knitting mill workers to emigrate to Indiana to work in his mill and train their American co-workers.
The labor conflicts set off by Thieme's business strategy, both in Germany and in Indiana, are explored in Nancy Brown's article "Challenging Economic Borders" in the March 2016 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History [Volume 112, Issue 1, March 2016], available free online through IU ScholarWorks.
Are you familiar with Wayne Knitting Mills? Located in Fort Wayne's Nebraska neighborhood, the sprawling hosiery factory site was first established as Thieme Brothers Knitting Mills circa 1875, and incorporated as Wayne Knitting Mills in 1891. By 1905, it employed approximately 1,100 workers, spurring residential development in the area. The business thrived well into the 1900s. Today, the mill complex consists of five buildings.
Lots of comments including one by Jim Sacks:
Story goes that Theodore Thieme, a first generation American, was "home" in Dresden when he learned of the advent of fashion hosiery, what we now call socks. He saw an opportunity, raised some money and bought a factory there which he shipped to the US. The Germany government was not pleased when they found out, a bit of intellectual theft, as we call it today. Thieme had the factory set up at the location shown above and quickly found the few young Germans who had come along for the adventure were not numerous enough to keep up with demand, which had been spurred by demonstrations in a booth at the St. Louis Expo of 1905, so he began advertising in the Vaterland for workers and hundreds, if not a thousand plus came to Fort Wayne. The language of the plant was, of course, German. Thieme and his investors became fantastically rich. His son was a wealthy investor and land developer and his grandson was a local judge with membership number one at the Summit Club, and lifetime privileges at the Country Club. Theodore Thieme's philantrophy can be seen in the Thieme Overlook at Main and...Thieme Drive along the St. Mary's. He was also active in other community efforts until his death. As I remember, he was one of the founders of the German-American Bank, later renamed Lincoln Bank.
KNITTING MILLS PROSPERING; ARE INSTALLING MORE MACHINES
As a further evidence of the claim that the knitting industry of the country is in no way fearing the competition of foreign manufacturers in spite of the reduction, under the new tariff, of the import duty on hosiery from sixty to thirty percent may serve the fact that two additional large knitting machines have just been received at the Thieme Bros. silk mills. In fact business in the knitting industry has been prospering remarkably late and when orders for the new machines were placed with a Philadelphia firm the specifications required the installation of the machines in a much shorter period of time than on previous occasions.
In compliance with this request, Frans Oestreich, who has been charge of the work of erecting new machines in the local mills on previous occasion, was accompanied by two assistants when he arrived here this week to put up the new knitting machines. The management is very much pleased with the present outlook and there is absolutely no danger of a reduction in the output as a result of the new tariff.
Class Rooms Are Being Provided for Employes of the Wayne Knit Mills.
ONE HOUR WORK A 'DAY
Superintendent of Schools R, W. Himelick is completing the arrangementa for the part time school made necessary by recent requirement of the state board of education that all children between the ages of fourteen and sixteen receive at least four hours school work a week during the publio sohool term. This has made it necessary for special provisions to be made for boys and girls of that age who are employed. The method devised to fulfil the requirement of the new law is to provide that children of this age be permitted to continue their employment but be released from work one hour a day to spend in school.
One of the first companies to make provisions for this school work is the Wayne Knitting Mille. Nearly two hundred children are employed at this factory of the school age, due largely to the fact that the work is of a light nature. As is the plan of some the factories, the Knitting Mills has provided class rooms for the work. In cases where classrooms are not provided by the company, pupils will have to be released from work long enought to attend school one hour a day at some public school. The children down town will meet at the Vocational high school building on East Wayne street.
It much easier to complete the plans for the part time school at the Wayne Knitting Mills than at other factories as a school of this nature was conducted there last year, because of the great number of boys and girls in the employment of the company. Four hours a week was devoted to the school which was well attended. The teachers were furnished by the city schools for this part time school and general common School training was provided for all who cared to enter the classes.
Many Take Work.
Many older employes took advantage to get special school work at this school and it is felt that much good was accomplished by the movement. Rooms will be furnished by the company and the employes will have the same advantage this year. Although the schedule will unclude five hours a week or one hour a day.
Six classes will be organized and the teachers from the city schools will conduct the work in strict accordance with the course of study prescribed by the state board for other public schools, however the work will be more intensive. Most of the pupils with enroll in the seventh and eighth grades, and they will be able to complete their common school education while they are employed. To many this has a great advantage over the full time course of the public school.
