No Nonsense: Fifth Avenue lingerie from Brooklyn factories

Store: Kayser Hosiery
545 Fifth Avenue at 45th Street

German immigrant Julius Kayser didn't start off being so intimate with women. When he opened his first factory in 1880, he specialized in simple cotton gloves, and soon moved to the silken kind, the sort a proper woman wore to the opera or a masquerade ball. He even patented a 'process for reinforcing fingertips' which quickly made Kayser a rich man.

By 1913, Julius had expanded to hosiery, veils, swimwear and undergarments that were sold in all the most notable department stores. He employed a staggering 2,500 people in Brooklyn (in today's DUMBO area and later in Clinton Hill**) and several other New York state plants, manufacturing not only standard 'knit' underwear but the more exotic 'Italian silk underwear'.

Kayser brought his selection of women's delicates to 545 Fifth Avenue in the 1930s, with a renovation a decade later that included an 'extensive use of mirrors, both inside and outside the shop'. [source]

Further innovations -- like the 'nimble toe' pantyhose -- brought further expansion in the 1950s and a new three-story store at 425 Fifth Avenue and 38th Street, which featured a 1,200-seat 'Theater of Intimate Apparel' for fashion shows and a rooftop garden to display swimwear and outdoor fashions.

Kayser is still atop the women's undergarment pile. The company joined with Chester H Roth in 1958, and the merged company Kayser-Roth debuts the affordable No Nonsense brand of undergarments in the 1970s. I'm not sure if the current company still makes silk gloves, which got them started in the first place.

**222 Taaffe Place, to be exact. I just wanted to say that because Taaffe Street is one of my favorite street names in New York for some reason.

Love on the airwaves: New York's first female radio operator

She's not exactly a Howard Stern or a Robin Quivers, but Anna A. Nevins does deserve to be considered as something of a radio pioneer in New York.

One hundred years ago, 'wireless telegraphy' was mostly used to communicate with vessels crossing the Atlantic Ocean. And these weren't signals with human voices, but rather in the dots and dashes of Morse code. Experiments with sending vocals over the airwaves were already being conducted in New York by Lee De Forest as early as 1907, but radio wouldn't seriously be considered as a means of voice transmittal for almost another decade.

It was a tool mostly used by the U.S. Navy and commercially by the telegraph companies. It was from the ashes of a De Forest company that the United Wireless Telegraph Company was formed in 1906. It heralded dozens of receiving stations throughout the country and, in particular, three in New York. Their corporate office at 42 Broadway was one, extremely convenient to the offices of the major passenger ship lines of the Cunard (25 Broadway) and the White Star (9 Broadway). They had another out at the luxury hotel spot Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, where some wealthy New Yorkers spent the summers.

But by far the most notable of these wireless stations in Manhattan was atop the original Waldorf-Astoria, one of the most famous hotels in the world, at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. (Above: Drawing of the Waldorf-Astoria in 1904 by Joseph Pennell.) From here, operators could send messages to ships hundreds of miles away and even to other cities like Chicago. "The operating room is a model in every respect," claimed Modern Electrics Magazine in September 1909. "This station without a doubt is the most popular one in New York.... [T]he lofty aerial stretches its wires clear over one side of the famous roof garden."

Below: the United Wireless telegraph station atop the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 1909

But they had another badge of pride -- America's first female wireless operator. Young Anna A. Nevins, 22 years old, worked eight hours a day at the Waldorf-Astoria station, considered by her colleagues "an expert in wireless instruments" By virtue of her sex, this was a news item in papers across the country in 1909.


It was not entirely shocking to see a women at a telegraph desk, but the newness of wireless technology and challenges of early radio would have made Anna's skills rather unique. It's believed she trained under De Forest as early as 1906.


The juicy spin, of course, was romance. According to reports, Nevins had a beau "Jack" on the steamship Oceana (below)), a Hamburg-American line traveling to destinations in the West Indies. The young wireless operator would send 'messages to her sweetheart' over the wireless, alleged as far as 1,000 miles away, engaging in an 'aerial conversation' believed to be the longest exchange of its kind for the day. (Then again, this sounds like newspaper hyperbole!)


Did reporters seem fascinated to ask about what it was like to be the sole woman working within a new technology? Not when you can ask her about love! In a syndicated article from 1909, she's quoted as admitting, "Yes I know the young man. When he's in town, I see him. But almost every day I hear from him."


The Waldorf station was the jewel in United Wireless' crown. Unfortunately, United's reputation as a corrupt company tied to Wall Street shenanigans and perpetually hounded with legal issues caused its demise in 1912, when it was sold to American Marconi. As for Anna, I can't locate any trace of her after these initial reports. Perhaps she met and married 'Jack', whoever he was. Hopefully, years later, she was asked more interesting questions of her career.