historical sketch courtesy of the
The Printz-Biederman Company is one of the oldest American manufacturers of women's apparel. It was organized in December 1893 in Cleveland, Ohio by master tailor Moritz Printz. A native of Austria, Printz came to Cleveland in 1872 to work for his brother-in-law, cloak manufacturer David Black. The head designer for D. Black and Company, Printz stayed in Cleveland when Black moved his company to New York in 1894. Along with his sons, Alexander and Michael, and his son-in-law, Joseph Biederman, Printz founded the Printz-Biederman Company as a partnership. The company incorporated in 1904 with Alexander Printz as president, a position he held until 1954.
Operating from a loft at 102 St. Clair, Printz-Biederman grossed $100,000 in its first year of operation. In 1903 the company moved to 71 Bank Street (1213 West 6th Street) and remained in that area until 1934, when it built a new plant at 1974 East 61st Street. Sales reached $6.44 million in 1922, and the firm merged with H. Black and Company that year. By 1933 it had sales offices in New York, Boston, and Chicago in addition to Cleveland. When Max Reiter, co-founder of Ritmore Sportswear Company took over Printz-Biederman in 1954, it employed 1,000 workers, two-thirds of them in Cleveland, and annual sales were $8 million. During the 1960s and 1970s the company lost business. In the late 1970s, its line of products was limited to ladies' suits and coats, and the firm employed only 40 Cleveland workers. The Printz-Biederman Company closed in 1978.
The Printz-Biederman Company Records, 1914-1957 and undated, consist of minutes, reports, agreements, correspondence, historical sketches, and publications relating to employee representative bodies which operated in the plant, and letters, telegrams and other writings to and from Abraham Katovsky and David Dubinsky of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union Also includes catalogs and advertisements of the company's clothing.
This collection will be useful to researchers studying the garment industry, organized labor, and the Jewish community in Cleveland, Ohio, in the twentieth century.
The collection is arranged by subject and document type and then chronologically.
The researcher should also consult PG 461 Printz-Biederman Company Photographs; MS 4029 Leo W. Neumark Papers; and PG 319 Leo W. Neumark Photographs.
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[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 3870 Printz-Biederman Company Records, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Gift of Judah Rubenstein in 1980.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.