January Meeting
Monday, January 16th at 7PM
The January meeting will be held at the Pottstown Public Library at 500 High Street. Please enter via the front doors. The speakers will be Susan Davis, Executive Director of the Library and Dick Frantz, Pottstown Architect.
They are going to give a history on the Post Office Building and a tour of the just completed library renovations. If you have not seen the newly renovated library, you must come out to our meeting and see for yourself!
Library Hours
January 2017: the 8th & 22nd 1-4pm
February 2017: the 12th & 26th from 1-4pm
Acquisitions
A letter cover with Henry Potts’ signature and the first adhesive postage stamp on the envelope from 1847 was donated by Vernon Raymond Morris, JR., MD.
The Key Bank on East End donated photos of the dedication of the Reading Railroad’s new passenger station in 1929 and a poster of the Pottstown Carousel.
Donation Needed
We have a City Directory whose pages are falling out and is need of repair. The Society is seeking a $70 donation to have it repaired by a book binder. If you can help, your name will go in the cover as a donor. Please contact Dave Kerns if you’re able to contribute to save this piece of history for future generations! Thank you!
Rosemont Manufacturing Company
William Boden, a man with a dream, started a dress factory in 1949 at the current site of the Advanced Auto Parts store on Moser Road in the East End. After working at Jacob Aircraft for fifteen years, Boden realized that he could advance no further in the company and decided to start a new business venture.
To help fund his new business, Boden mortgaged his assets and formed a partnership with Murray Brownstein of New York. He purchased the adjacent property and erected the dress factory they named the “Rosemont Manufacturing Company”. Initially, the plant employed about 20 people including his wife, Jenn, who opened a retail store with Helena Tyson called the “Clothes Wagon” in the new factory building. Anna Schutz, mother-in-law of Ray Hartenstine, was the Floor Lady.
After the death of his business partner in 1965, Boden partnered with other businessmen, Jay Weiner and his father, and Joseph Meyer, and the company name changed to the “Sunset Manufacturing Company”. When he branched out to make uniforms, he bought property on Maple Street and the old Wilke Furniture store on Queen Street.
By the 1970’s, his businesses employed about 600 employees in three different plants in Pottstown, Oxford, and Reading. The Bodens retired in 1986 and sold off all their holdings. Today all the former factory buildings are occupied, except for the old farmhouse on Moser Road which later became the site of the Sunset Pharmacy, until it was razed for the current Advanced Auto Parts.