MADE IN HAMILTON
19TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 9
JOHN CALDER & COMPANY, 1880

This Renaissance Revival building was constructed in 1858 to house the wholesale grocery and dry goods business of prominent Hamilton merchant John Young. The "Commercial Block", designed by noted Hamilton architect F. J. Rastrick, was converted to manufacturing use by the early 1880s.

The building's first industrial occupant was ready-made clothing manufacturer John Calder & Company. Like other local clothing manufacturers, Calder farmed out much of the work to local women who sewed garments at home. The firm employed close to 800 people by the 1890s.

After Calder died in 1900, three of his former employees continued operations under the name Coppely, Noyes and Randall. Like many clothing producers, this company modernized production and moved away from outwork labour. By 1905, most of the 500 men and women on the company's payroll worked inside this building. Coppely, Noyes and Randall, along with the Coppely Apparel Group and Cambridge Clothes, still manufacture clothing here, more than a century later.

Workers in this plant were organized under the banner of the United Garment Workers of America before the First World War. Today they are represented as UNITE Locals 219-C and 1441.

James Stewart & Company Foundry once stood on the parking lot to the north of this building. Stewart worked as a pattern-maker at the McQuesten, Fisher & Company foundry in town, before starting his own business in 1845. Twenty-five years later the MacNab Street foundry had grown to be the second largest stove shop in town, employing over 60 men and boys. Workers in this plant were organized.