My great-grandmother, Helena “Lena” Riley, was listed as a “folder” in the 1907/8 Goldfield City Directory. What did she fold―sheets, towels, table cloths or pants? And where did she fold them? From 1905-1909, Lena lived in a modest, 2-room frame house with her prospector husband Jesse and their two children, Rowena and Joe. Also listed at that address in southwest Goldfield were relatives Joseph Riley and Jeremiah Riley.
Rowena and Joseph Riley with family burros. Author’s Goldfield photograph collection.
Their house sat on two lots at the southeast corner of Third Street and Oasis Avenue and overlooked the red-light district and downtown Goldfield to the northeast. Jesse owned burros, Lena raised turkeys, and the family had a big, black, floppy-eared dog that loved to sit on top of the burros for photo shoots.
The Rileys lived within a few blocks of Rabbit Springs and that was likely their water source early on and they may also have purchased from a water wagon. With space and water so scarce, did Lena fold (or do other laundry functions) at this busy residence? And wouldn’t she have called herself a washer woman, or laundry woman, or laundress, as opposed to a folder?
Perhaps Lena worked at a local laundry business. In search of some information on what a commercial folder did during that period, the amazing 15th U. S. Census, published in 1930, gives us a clue. Using occupational titles and categories from the three previous censuses (1900, 1910, 1920), along with birth and death records during those years, the 15th census listed pages and pages of job titles related to working in the clothing industry. Within just a corset factory, a woman could be a “…baster, binder, boner, box maker, button sewer, or eye letter,” and even a “folder.” The country’s factories were classified by the type of clothing that they made and folders were listed for nearly every type of factory: shirt, collar or cuff, suit, cloak, overall, and handkerchief—to name just a few. Not surprisingly, there were no listings for folders in the felt-hat factories.
To my knowledge Goldfield didn’t have any of the factory types listed above, so I looked to the industry classification of “laundries,” but that didn’t have an associated job title of folder. So, was my great-grandmother being pretentious and trying to make a laundress job sound more important or specialized? Perhaps. But she also may have been telling it just like it was—she walked to work somewhere, she folded textiles of some description, and she was paid something for her services.
The New Woman Wash Day.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
In her book Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880-1940, Arwen P. Mohun explains the presence of laundries in countries accustomed to filth and grime. “Rising standards of cleanliness provided a crucial cultural context for a nascent laundry industry. New habits and practices emerged gradually over the course of the century. Looking backwards, these changes were stunning. Mountains of filth disappeared from the streets; overwhelming clouds of body odor that had hung over public gatherings became an experience of the past; vermin that had tortured rich and poor alike disappeared; and a host of skin-transmitted and waterborne diseases no longer made miserable or carried away whole sections of the population.”
Men historically owned and operated our country’s laundries, but “Laundry is women’s territory,” according to Joan Wang in her article, “Gender, Race and Civilization: The Competition between American Power Laundries and Chinese Steam Laundries,” published in the American Studies International in February 2002. According to Wang:
1907/8 Goldfield City Directory, page 273
In many parts of the world, the laundry is still done as it has been for many thousands of years. Women haul their baskets to the nearest river or carry water inside, pound the clothes clean on the rocks or washboards, and spread them in the sun to bleach and dry. Women are also the guardians of knowledge about the processes involved. They teach their daughters how to make soap, and – in other parts of the world – to adjust an iron, brew starch and remove stains. The tools and the knowledge of laundry related work have traditionally belonged to women.
Men, on the other hand, have typically avoided doing laundry for reasons beyond the difficulty or triviality. The man who washed beside a washtub or picked up an iron took the risk of unsexing himself.
1907/8 Goldfield City Directory, page 274
The Goldfield area had plenty of laundries. Three laundry businesses that came onto the scene prior to 1907 were The Columbia Steam Laundry Company (Columbia), the San Francisco French Laundry Company, and the Nevada Baths and Laundry Company.
The Nevada Baths and Laundry Company, with its planned baths, published a nice article in the Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune (GNWT) on December 30, 1904, announcing a “modern, 3-story ‘dobe [sic] brick structure being built at 121 Crook Avenue, with a first-class steam laundry plant, a barber shop, seven bath rooms with porcelain, nickel-trimmed bath tubs, and a complete Turkish bath outfit.” The partners, Claude M. Smith, L. T. Lacy, F. R. Burrows, A. H. Morgan, P. L. Bald
win and A. E. Hall, planned to spend $15,000 on furnishings.
Unfortunately, less than a year after that grand announcement, the business was foreclosed on by the State Bank & Trust and ordered to sell all its assets. The planned adobe structure never materialized as planned. An auction was scheduled for December 1, 1905, at the laundry’s frame structure at 121 Crook Avenue, and a peek at the list of assets to be sold makes it clear the partners likely did spend $15,000 (or more) on furnishings:
The San Francisco French Laundry Company was also short-lived. A co-partnership notice in the GNWT on November 17, 1905, announced the new laundry business with partners W. W. Stansbury, E. J. Autard, Mrs. W. W. Stansbury, and P. Pillat. Less than one month later the same paper printed a “Notice of Dissolution of Partnership.” The four primary partners dissolved the partnership and sold the business to Mr. Augustas Ferran and Mr. Pierce Pellat.
For this article I chose to focus on three laundries in Goldfield where Lena Riley may have worked as a folder. Two of these were steam laundries: Goldfield Steam Laundry and Troy Steam Laundry. The Goldfield French Laundry was a family-run laundry that provided reliable service for over four decades.
1909 James Parks Goldfield Map with historical laundries shown
The Goldfield Steam Laundry Company appeared on the April 1905 Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map, in the upper left of the map page, (see below) in Block # 43.
The Sanborn Company was conducting city surveys all over the country to assist insurance companies in their fire-risk assessments of insured properties.
The map shows a good-sized building about mid-block on Third Street, between Miners and Hall avenues. Shown are two water tanks five feet above the ground at the northwest corner of the building, and a steam boiler next to the tanks. Under the title of the laundry was this note: “Power: steam‒fuel: wood. No fire app.” By September 1905, the laundry company was placing ads like the one in the “Goldfield Souvenir Official Program for Railroad Day 1905,” which listed the telephone number 186 and guaranteed “first-class work”.
The Goldfield Steam Laundry incorporated on October 8, 1906, and jumped right into community involvement. The March 23, 1907, GNWT published an extensive list of Business Men’s and Mine Owners’ Association members that included “Goldfield Steam Laundry Co., by Strong.” C. B. Strong was the manager of the laundry.
In the 1907/1908 Directory of the City of Goldfield, several fun, small ads were placed along the tops of various pages. The telephone number was now 183 and the ads were fun:
Mr. Neat Dresser: Do we get your laundry work? We simply must have it or a good excuse! Phone 183. NEW GOLDFIELD STEAM LAUNDRY.
Out Hunting. Our drivers are out hunting for your bundle. Why not save them the trouble by calling up phone 183. NEW GOLDFIELD STEAM LAUNDRY.
WASH DAY AGAIN—Take our advice and send your bundle down to the New Goldfield Steam Laundry. Good pure water and lots of it is what we use to make our clothes so nice and clean. New Goldfield Steam Laundry.
The company’s official listing on page 95 of that directory said, “GOLDFIELD STEAM LAUNDRY CO, C B Strong Manager, “Good work,” “Quick work,” “Clean work.” Phone and we’ll call. Office and Plant foot of W Hall. Tel 183.”
By the 1908/1909 city directory publication Strong was listed as the “Vice President, Treasurer and Manager of the Interstate Lumber and Mill Co., Manager Goldfield Steam Laundry, W. Hall, near 2d. Tel 183.” So Strong managed two very different businesses at the same address.
In 1907 (January-July) the Goldfield Telephone Directory showed telephone number 183 and location description as “Foot of Hall st.” A second telephone directory in 1907 (August-December) showed telephone number 3073 and address at Hall and Second streets.
The Goldfield Steam Laundry Company would not show up in any future business or telephone directories, which can be explained by a GNWT article published on August 22, 1908: “Petition has been filed for a receiver for the Goldfield Steam Laundry.” It appears the laundry business ran into legal trouble after only about three years, but the property where the laundry was built has its own interesting story.
1905 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map-sheet 2
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
1906 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, sheet 2
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, sheet 3
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
The 1906 and 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps show the incremental growth of the buildings on the laundry site on Third Street.
[Note: The Sanborn maps had their own unique numbering system. The Sanborn map block # 43 correlates to the James Parks 1909 Goldfield town site map block # 29. That map was shown earlier.]
In 1982, Hugh A. Shamberger published his popular book The Story of Goldfield, in which he mistakenly showed on his hand-drawn map of Goldfield, the laundry sitting on the northeast corner of block # 28.
The laundry actually occupied several lots on the west side of block # 29, which was on Third Street, between Miners and Hall and avenues.
Available location information from early telephone and city directories and billheads is very confusing: “Hall and Second Sts.,” and “Hall St. near second street,” and “Foot of Hall St.” It’s easy to see the difficulty in determining exactly where this laundry sat.
Application by W. T. Hall for ownership of Lots 11-20, Block # 29, approved September 29, 1909.
Additional location information comes from a wonderful legal document called an Application, filed by W. T. Hall with Judge Theron Stevens, who was Goldfield’s official judicial trustee responsible for dispensing ownership on Goldfield lots. On September 29, 1909, Judge Stevens approved the transfer of title to W. T. Hall for lots 11-20 in Block # 29.
The application submitted to Judge Stevens listed the improvements on the 10 requested lots, and this fills out much of the story for us. On application 2391 (found in the Esmeralda County Recorder’s Office), W. T. Hall describes this:
Improvements, Three Houses of Three rooms each. Two Houses of Two rooms each. One house of one room each. One building 30 x 80 feet. One stable about 30 x 30 feet. Store house 20 x 20 feet. Two wells with capacity of 8,000 to 10,000 Gal. per day from the Goldfield Steam Laundry Co.
Was W. T. Hall a new owner of the site or did he build and grow the laundry from scratch four years earlier? The 1907/8 Goldfield Business Directory states, “Hall, Walter T, Jr, Interstate Lumber and Mill Co., nr 2d.” Hall also was assigned the same telephone number (183) as the laundry. Was Hall Avenue named after Walter Hall? I won’t pursue Hall’s history now, but it appears the laundry business failed around mid-1908, but the property continued to be used for Hall’s lumber and mill company.
Goldfield Steam Laundry building during flood on
September 13, 1913. Image # 0655
courtesy of the Central Nevada Historical Society.
“Location of a steam laundry is quite important,” or so said laundryman C. A. Royce in his colorful 1894 book called The Steam Laundry.
Royce addresses the importance of location like this: “…in seeking a location, go where the demand is superabundant and the supply is lacking or incomplete; in short, go where the laundry business is not overdone.”
He didn’t think to advise companies to build a steam laundry on high ground. The Goldfield Steam Laundry Company sat on low ground in what I’ll call the Second Street Gulch. If you look at the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, you’ll see a thin, wavy diagonal line running from the First Street and Crook Avenue area, in a northwesterly direction through block # 43. The note along that line says, “Line of Bank average 10’ high.”
The laundry sat in this low ravine area, well below the surrounding ground east and west of it. Damage to this location is evident from the September 13, 1913 flood photograph. The large Goldfield Steam Laundry building is still standing, but flood waters inundated the many houses and structures built on both sides of block # 43.
[Note: Hugh Shamberger misidentified this laundry in his book, calling it the Goldfield French Laundry. That laundry, on the northeast corner of Main Street and Crystal Avenue, did sustain some building damage during the 1913 flood, but continued to operate for many more years.]
1917 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, sheet 3.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
In 1917, a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map surveyor came back to Goldfield and resurveyed the city. A glance at Sanborn block # 43 shows about 7 structures of various sizes still standing on the east side of the block along Second Street.
The rest of the buildings on that side of the block, and all of the Goldfield Steam Laundry’s structures on the west side (Third Street) are covered over by correction tape.
The large laundry building may have been usable after the flood of 1913, but it was definitely gone by October 1917.
Earth Pro Map (2020) showing historical laundries and the 2nd Street Gulch through west Goldfield.
Goldfield’s Dirty Laundry, Part 2” will cover the history of the Troy Steam Laundry and the Goldfield French Laundry.
