Quaker Lace Company (1911-1993)

Quaker Lace Company of Philadelphia was founded in 1889 as the Bromley Manufacturing Company by the sons of John Bromley, an English carpet weaver who immigrated to Philadelphia in the 1840s. The brothers imported lace looms and skilled weavers from Nottingham, England, in order to mass-produce lace in the United States. In 1894, they renamed the business The Lehigh Manufacturing Company. It was incorporated as the Quaker Lace Company in 1911, with its manufacturing based in Philadelphia and sales offices in New York City.

Historical note
The Quaker Lace Company manufactured Nottingham lace and was the last survivor of a number of the textile firms founded by John Bromley (1800-1883) and his seven sons.

Bromley, an English immigrant, in 1845 started a carpet factory with a single hand loom in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. His company grew to be one of the city's largest textile enterprises. When his children joined the firm it was renamed John Bromley & Son in 1856 and later John Bromley & Sons in 1860. In 1868, the Bromley sons began to strike out on their own in Philadelphia's booming textile industry. At first the business ventures of the younger Bromleys were confined to the ingrain carpet manufacturing that their father had so successfully lead.

In 1889, Bromley's sons John H. (1844-1918), Joseph H. (1852-1931), and Edward (1861-1915) established the Bromley Manufacturing Company to produce lace curtains. The Bromley brothers were the first to make a serious effort to weave lace in America on a large scale and after some difficulty were able to induce large numbers of skilled Nottingham weavers to emigrate. During the depression of 1893 to 1898, the Bromley began shifting most of their capital from carpets into the new product lines. The Bromley firms were a series of inter-linked proprietorships and partnerships that were entirely self-financing. The profits of the carpet business enabled the Bromleys to overcome the barriers to entry posed by the high cost of lace-weaving machinery.

Joseph H., John H., and Edward Bromley formed the Lehigh Manufacturing Company in 1894. The firm constructed a new lace curtain factory at 4th and Lehigh. Three years later, Joseph withdrew from the older Bromley companies, and John and Edward withdrew from Lehigh Manufacturing. The company opened a new factory at 22nd and Lehigh that was said to be the largest in the world. Joseph, along with his sons, continued to operate the 4th Street plant under his own name as an individual proprietorship, also known as the Joseph H. Bromley Mill. The Bromleys also established the North American Lace Company around 1902 and the National Lace Company around 1904.

In December 1911, Joseph H. Bromley consolidated his efforts to form the Quaker Lace Company. The expansion of the American lace industry had been facilitated by a 1900 tariff revision that raised the duty of lace goods and suspended the duty on imports of lace-making machinery until 1911. However, the lace tariff was reduced to its former level by the Wilson administration in 1913, and several firms started since 1901 failed.

At the same time, consumer taste began shifting away from lace curtains. The Bromleys were thus impelled to redirect their investments in lace. The large 22nd Street mill was closed in 1916. Quaker Lace then took over the 4th Street mill where they manufactured tablecloths, scarves, napkins, doilies, and government camouflage and mosquito netting during World War I. Unlike smaller textile firms, Quaker Lace was responsible in-house for the complete manufacturing process including winding, warping, threading (brass bobbins for Nottingham lace), weaving, mending, wet processes like dying and bleaching, folding, and packing.

After World War I, Joseph H. Bromley gave the old 22nd Street mill to his son Charles S. Bromley (1882-1950), who converted it to a hoisery mill in 1919 under the style of Quaker Hosiery Company. Fueled by the popularity of silk stockings in the 1920s, the full-fashioned hosiery industry boomed in Philadelphia. Quaker directed the bulk of its new investment into its hosiery company during this decade.

The Bromley enterprises initially survived the structural changes that precipitated the decline of the Philadelphia textile industry. In the 1930s, the Bromleys began to move their investments out of Philadelphia with the purchase of the Riverside Mills in New Jersey, the Mayfair Mills in Athens, Georgia, and the Smoky Mountains Hosiery Mills in Kingsport, Tennessee. The depression proved a difficult time for the hosiery industry, and on December 23, 1940, the Quaker Hosiery Company was dissolved. Assets of the hosiery company were conveyed to the Van Pelt Realty Corporation. On June 20, 1942, the Quaker Lace Company merged into Van Pelt Realty, which subsequently changed its name to the Quaker Lace Company (briefly reffered to as Quaker Lace Company (new)).

Quaker Lace continued to operate as the textile industry moved into terminal decline. In the 1960s, the knitting operations were moved to Lionville, Chester County, Pennsylvania and Winthrop, Maine. Bleaching, drying, and cutting continued at the 4th Street plant. The final blow came in the 1980s with the closing of department stores that were the company's principle outlet. Quaker Lace declared bankruptcy in 1992, and its properties were sold at auction in 1993.The 4th Street plant was destroyed in an eight-alarm fire on the night of September 19, 1994. The arson was ordered by drug dealers to end police surveillance of the neighborhood from the abandoned building.

Quaker Lace Company, 1894
Northwest Corner of 4th Street and Lehigh Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19133
© Carmen A. Weber, Irving Kosmin, and Muriel Kirkpatrick, Workshop of the World (Oliver Evans Press, 1990).

In 1894, Joseph H. Bromley purchased the Horner Brother Carpet Company mill, constructed in 1880 and situated on the northwest corner of 4th Street and Lehigh Avenue. The Horner Brothers Company possessed twenty-one Nottingham lace curtain looms. Bromley added more looms, equipment, and skilled labor with the help of Sir Ernest Jardine of Nottingham, England and the Lehigh Manufacturing Company began production, rebuilding one of the Horner mill brick buildings along 4th Street and adding several stories to the brick building along Lawrence Avenue. By 1896, approximately one hundred and eight Nottingham lace curtain looms were operating in the mill. 1

In the early twentieth century, the firm expanded by constructing additional facilities at 22nd Street and Lehigh Avenue and incorporated under the name Lehigh Manufacturing Company in 1905. At that date the complex at 4th and Lehigh consisted of an office building mid-block, with the mill buildings on either side and to the rear of the block. The terra cotta detailing was added later. The mill on the corner of 4th and Lehigh contained a packing area on the ground floor, with spooling on the second floor, and drafting, design, and other storage areas on the upper floors. The four story brick building behind this mill held facilities for beaming and reeling, as well as drying and storage. The one story brick building behind the office, with its sawtooth roof, provided an ideal space for mending. The Jacquard looms for making lace were on the second through fourth floors of the Lawrence Street building, with finishing, bleaching, and drying operations on the first floor. 2 Today the looms stand unused on the second floor, while the finishing and other operations continue to be conducted on the first floor and the design department operates in the office building. 3

Quaker Lace was incorporated in 1911. Eighty looms operated at the 4th Street mill, with 46 looms and 48 Levers lace machines operated at the 22nd Street mill. In 1925, the 22nd Street building was sold to the Quaker Hosiery Company, and operations shifted to the 4th Street mill. John Bromley was elected President of the firm in 1926. The company first added tablecloths to their line in 1932. 4 During World War II, Quaker Lace made camouflage nets for the military. With the drop in demand for lace curtains after the war, the firm made tablecloths almost exclusively, a product they still produce and for which they are famous.

The business changed in the late 1960s with the invention of knitting machines capable of making lace. The older Jacquard looms in the 4th Street mill ceased operation in 1987. Quaker Lace maintains a plant in Maine that still weaves Nottingham lace on the older looms, as well as a newer plant with more modern knitting machines in Lionville, Pennsylvania. 5

1 Quaker Lace Company, "Dates in Quaker History," Typescript 1983, (copy on file, Philadelphia Historical Commission).
2 Associated Mutual Insurance Company, Index No. 1228, Survey No. 6548, surveyed and drawn by W. L. Blossom, (Philadelphia, 1903, copy on file, Philadelphia Historical Commission).
3 Interview with Richard Fees, Director of Design, (May 17, 1989).
4 Quaker Lace Company.
5 Richard Fees, (May 17, 1989).


Update May 2007 (by Torben Jenk):
Soon after being sold by the Bromley family, the building was destroyed in a spectacular fire and then demolished. Now the site of the Julia De Burgos Middle School.


See also:
Hexamer General Survey #1538 (1881) "Horner Bros.' Carpet Mills."
Hexamer General Survey #2524 (1892) "Horner Bros.' Carpet Company."