MADE IN HAMILTON
20TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 9
CARR FASTENER COMPANY, 1921

Look at the inscription over the front entrance of this former factory. It provides one of the few clues to this building's industrial past. In 1919, the Carr Fastener Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts proudly announced its plans to construct its Canadian factory on this site.

By the next summer eleven men were working in the unfinished factory making snap fasteners to hold the side-curtains of early "open" automobiles. In 1928, the Hamilton plant became the United-Carr Fastener Company after its parent company merged with the United States Fastener Company of Boston.

The company soon broadened its product line to include fasteners for clothing, auto-mobiles, boats and airplane curtains, as well as radio tube pins, clips and sockets. The plant itself was dramatically expanded. By the late 1930s, over 150 men and women were working here.

After the Second World War, the company added the production of precision-made parts such as pen and pencil components, television connectors and screw shells for electric lights and fuses. By the 1960s, production had been transferred to a 75,000 square foot facility in Stoney Creek.

In common with other groups of Hamilton workers, United-Carr employees formed their own credit union. These provided one of the few sources of credit available to workers.