A huge factory that formerly turned out threads for the Howard Clothes Company (a men’s haberdasher), and before that, gyroscopes, stands on the west side of the pedal to the metal Flatbush Avenue Extension between Concord and Chapel Streets is now a residential tower called The Howard. The superstructure for a huge neon sign that displayed the Howard Clothes name for Manhattan-bound traffic is still there; I remember riding in a car up the FAE and seeing only the H and W remaining. The company was founded in 1924 by founded by Samuel Kappel, Joseph Langerman, and Henry Marks and named after Langerman’s son Howard. Info on Howard Clothes has been somewhat sketchy (not even a wikipedia listing) but luckily, Consumer Grouch has a great page complete with newspaper ads. Howard Clothes remained in business until 1970; it competed with Bond and Eagle Clothes much of its existence and all three has massive neon billboards somewhere in NYC that are now all gone.
Interestingly, Howard Clothes founder Samuel Kappel had acromegaly, a disease of the pituitary gland that causes distorted facial features like those of 1930s-40s actor Rondo Hatton. The disease is treatable in the modern era.
The building was constructed between 1915 and 1916, architect Frank J. Helmle, and was originally a gyroscope factory built by inventor, engineer and industrialist Elmer Ambrose Sperry. With World War I on the horizon, America’s involvement seemed inevitable, and the gyroscope was a key air and sea navigation instrument. The company later developed the UNIVAC computer before being broken up with some divisions joining Honeywell and others Lockheed Martin.
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10/8/24