Real Silk Lofts (Indianapolis, Indiana)

USA / Indiana / Indianapolis / Indianapolis, Indiana / North Park Avenue, 611
 apartment building, 1980s construction, 1920s construction, building/structure that has been renovated/restored/reconstructed
www.vanrooy.com/silk.html
(317) 684-7300

An Indianapolis company was once the largest U.S. shipper of c.o.d. parcel post packages.
The year was 1934, and the company was Real Silk Hosiery Mills. Sprawling across several city blocks in the Lockerbie neighborhood, Real Silk had its own post office within the mill to handle more than 3 million packages a year.

Real Silk was founded by Indianapolis brothers Jack and Lazure Goodwin in 1922. From their five-story mill on Liberty Street, the Goodwins and their brilliant sales manager, W.C. Kobin, hit upon the idea of selling socks and hosiery door-to-door. Real Silk and its army of 10,000 salespeople -more than double the 4,000 Fuller Brush sales force that was symbolic of door-to-door sales -became one of the premier success stories of the Roaring '20s.

At its peak in 1929, Real Silk sold more than 12 million pairs of womens' silk hosiery, and had a capacity of making more than 21 million pairs of socks and stockings a year - about 6 percent of the total annual U.S. production. It had nine acres of production facilities under roof in Indianapolis and Dalton, GA, and its 4,000 workers made it one of the three biggest manufacturing units in the industry.

Real Silk expanded rapidly during the 1920s, building the Dalton plant in 1924 and buying Thieme Brothers' hosiery mill in Fort Wayne in 1925. The purchase of the Thieme Brothers' mill led to major expansion of the company's Indianapolis mills in 1926 and again in 1929.

The April 1929 expansion - in which Real Silk spent more than $1.5 million and began to add more than 1,000 workers - was ill-timed. The collapse of the stock market in October severely depressed Real Silk's markets, and the company lost heavily when the price of raw silk plummeted in 1930. By 1932, Real Silk's deficit was nearly $1 million, and the company owed more than $3 million to the Chase and National City banks.

The outside directors of the company turned to Gustave Efroymson, former president of H.P. Wasson Co. in Indianapolis. A legendary retailer, Efroymson quickly moved to cut costs. By 1934, Real Silk was on its way back to profitability. Even an April 1934 strike, which turned into one of the city's more violent labor disputes of the 1930s, didn't put roadblocks in Real Silk's financial recovery plans.

Efroymson was one of Indianapolis' true entrepreneurial success stories. His family had been principals in the predecessor of Citizens Gas, and Efroymson had helped build the Occidental Building downtown. During the 1920s, Efroymson helped organize a coalition of Jewish and Catholic businessmen in the city to fight the Ku Klux Klan, a then-pervasive force in state politics.

Real Silk's business boomed during World War II. The company's war contracts division started with a handful of employees in 1942. By the time the war ended three years later, more than 1,500 people were making silk parachutes in the Indianapolis plant.

The end of the war, however, spelled. the beginning of the end for Real Silk. The discovery of nylon in the late 1930s created an inexpensive synthetic chemical competitor for silk. Gus Efroymson's death in 1946 left the company in the hands of his son, Robert A. Efroymson. Over the next 15 years, the younger Efroymson gradually divested Real Silk of its manufacturing operations.

In the mid-1950s, Efroymson registered Real Silk Investments Inc. as a closed investment trust. In 1961, the trust converted the 425,000 square-foot mill in the 600 block of North Park Avenue into the Printing Arts Center Inc., which housed a variety of printing and graphics arts businesses. In the mid-1980s, developers began converting the facilities into apartments and condominiums.
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Coordinates:   39°46'32"N   86°8'47"W

Comments

  • My Aunt Helen Bray worked at Real Silk. I believe back in the 1930's'
  • The company's Mississippi plant was located in Bay Springs, MS. Not sure when it opened but it closed in 1948.
  • Not GoodWIN but GoodMAN. Jack Goodman was my great uncle, and my father worked for the company for several years after WWII. See http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/EOI/id/4848 and please correct this entry.
  • Real Silk also had a Mississippi plant in Durant, Ms. My father worked there till the early-to-mid 50's. Maybe 1954 or so is when it finally shut down.
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