The Quaker Lace Company manufactured Nottingham Lace (darned lace) and was one of the textile firms founded by Joseph H. Bromley (1800-1883) and his seven sons in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1894. The firm was well known for manufacturing fine lace tablecloths, and during the 1950s, in the Eisenhower era, the White House was a customer (pattern 6280, size 83" x 352").
The textile mill, located at Fourth and Lehigh Streets in Philadelphia, was originally incorporated as Lehigh Manufacturing Company. As the company expanded in the early twentieth century, the name was changed to Quaker Lace Co. Business began to decline in the 1960s, and in 1993, it declared bankruptcy and was liquidated the following year.
Bromley was an English immigrant and started a carpet factory with a single hand loom in 1845. This company was in the Kensington section of Philadelphia and grew to be one of the city's largest textile enterprises. When his children joined the firm, it was renamed John Bromley and Son in 1856 and later John Bromley & Sons in 1860. In 1868, the Bromley sons began to strike out on their own in Philadelphia's booming textile industry and they stayed true to the ingrain carpet industry until 1889.
In 1889, Bromley's sons John H. (1844-1918), Joseph H. (1852-1931), and Edward (1861-1915) established the Bromley Manufacturing Company to produce lace curtains. The Bromley brothers were the first to make a serious effort to weave lace in America on a large scale, and after some difficulty, were able to induce large numbers of skilled Nottingham weavers to emigrate. During the depression of 1893 to 1898, the Bromley began shifting most of their capital from carpets into new product lines. The Bromley firms were a series of inter-linked proprietorships and partnerships that were entirely self-financing. The profits of the carpet business enabled the Bromleys to overcome the barriers to entry posed by the high cost of lace-weaving machinery.
Joseph H., John H., and Edward Bromley formed the Lehigh Manufacturing Company in 1894. The firm constructed a new lace curtain factory at 4th and Lehigh. Three years later, Joseph withdrew from the older Bromley companies, and John and Edward withdrew from Lehigh Manufacturing. The company opened a new factory at 22nd and Lehigh that was said to be the largest in the world. Joseph, along with his sons, continued to operate the 4th Street plant under his own name as an individual proprietorship, also known as the Joseph H. Bromley Mill. The Bromleys also established the North American Lace Company around 1902 and the National Lace Company around 1904.
In December 1911, Joseph H. Bromley consolidated his efforts to a forth Quaker Lace Company. The expansion of the American Lace Industry had been facilitated by a 1900 tariff revision that raised the duty of lace goods and suspended the duty on imports of lace-making machinery until 1911. However, the lace tariff was reduced to its former level by the Wilson administration in 1913, and several firms started since 1901 failed.
At the same time, consumer taste began shifting away from lace curtains. The Bromleys were thus impelled to redirect their investments in lace. The large 22nd Street mill was closed in 1916. Quaker Lace then took over the 4th Street mill where they manufactured tablecloths, scarves, napkins, doilies, and government camouflage and mosquito netting during World War I. Unlike smaller textile firms, Quaker Lace was responsible in-house for the complete manufacturing process including winding, warping, threading (brass bobbins for Nottingham lace), weaving, mending, wet process like dying and bleaching, folding, and packing.
After World War 1, Joseph H. Bromley gave the old 22nd Street mill to his son Charles S Bromley (1882-1950), who converted it to a hosiery mill in 1919 under the style of Quaker Hosiery Company. Fueled by the popularity of silk stockings in the late 1920, the full-fashioned hosiery industry boomed in Philadelphia. Quaker directed the bulk of its new investment into its hosiery company during this decade.
The Bromley enterprises initially survived the structural changes that precipitated the decline of the Philadelphia textile industry. In the 1930s, the Bromleys began to move their investments out of Philadelphia with the purchase of the Riverside Mills in New Jersey, the Mayfair Mills in Athens, Georgia, and the Smoky Mountains Hosiery Mills in Kingsport, Tennessee. The depression proved a difficult time for the hosiery industry, and on December 23, 1940, the Quaker Hosiery Company was dissolved. Assets of the hosiery company were conveyed to the Van Pelt Realty Corporation. On June 20, 1942, the Quaker Lace Company merged into Van Pelt Realty, which subsequently changed its name to the Quaker Lace Company (briefly referred to as Quaker Lace Company (new)).
Quaker lace continued to operate as the textile industry moved into terminal decline. In the 1960s, the knitting operations were moved to Lionville, Chester County, Pennsylvania and Winthrop Maine. Bleaching, drying, and cutting continued at the 4th Street plant. The final blow came in the 1980s with the closing of department stores that were the company's principle outlet. Quaker Lace declared bankruptcy in 1992, and its properties were sold at auction in 1993. The 4th Street plant was destroyed in an eight-alarm fire on the night of September 19, 1994. The arson was ordered by drug dealers to end police surveillance of the neighborhood from the abandoned building.