This
is the detailed and fascinating history as recalled by Mr. Gumbinner
in his memoir and became available thanks to his son Fred.
As this is quite long, I will divide in numbers of sections for
upload.
Polychrome:
Polychrome
was started by Mr. Halpern in the middle of the 1935 depression to
mix and sell printing ink. At that time, he was also associated with
Arthur Kallet and Fred Schlink in starting Consumers Union, which he
had to leave when he opened a business. He and Arthur Kallet
remained close friends and Mr. Halpern helped him when he left
Consumers Union and started Medical Letters. Polychrome started
coating stencils in a loft on 4th Ave., then University
Place, Manhattan. Mr. Halpern lived in the Gramercy Park area with
his wife Freda Bonime. She was his first cousin.
Before
I joined Polychrome in 1944, Resin Realty, Mr. Halpern’s real
estate company bought the property at 2 Ashburton Ave. from Standard
Oil. The main building which was very solidly built had a row of
offices on part of the 2nd floor. There was also a brick
building across the yard which we called the ink house since it was
used for grinding inks and pigments. Along side of it were three
temporary sheds. One of which was used for mixing the stencil
coating solutions. These temporary sheds were still there 35 years
later.
When
I joined Polychrome, Elmer Crabbs was the sales manager, Kay Moutal
the purchasing agent and Mr. Halpern’s secretary, Fred Pollack was
in charge of stencil coating, His brother-in-law Ernest Brunner the
plant manager, Walter Shaw the shipping clerk, Fred Generlette mixed
the coating solutions and made the inks. Polychrome had an office in
New York. Robert McCabe was the office manager and possibly Walter
Danzler was a salesman, who, when he was fifty, had a son younger
than his grandsons. Fred Hozeny, who had a boiler engineer license,
was the maintenance superintendent. Several women coated and mounted
and packed the stencils. Among these women were Helen Stensgard, who
became a supervisor and her mother. In the forties, a man, I
believe his first name was Peter, was hired as a paper cutter. He
turned out to be a union organizer for the paper makers union. He
did organize the plant. A few years later, the bosses of the paper
makers union fled to Liberia when the government charged them with
stealing the union’s money. The employees then joined a Teamster
local. Peter left and was replaced by Ray Lauzon who had worked in
the printing industry. He was an excellent operator. Ernest
Brunner left Polychrome to set up a business in one of the Otis
Elevator Buildings on Woodworth Ave. to make backing sheets. Cort
Briggs who was a chemist, was hired as the plant manager. After a
few years he left and started a business in Ossining, NY, making
paints.