The Rise and Fall of the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory in Jamaica Plain

Join the Jamaica Plain Historical Society for our February event. Fifty years ago, in February 1976, a suspicious fire consumed a massive old factory building at the corner of Centre and Bickford Streets in Jamaica Plain. Displacing roughly a hundred artists-in-residence, the old factory had once been home to the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company, employing up to five thousand workers at its peak. Marking the 50th anniversary of that devastating fire, this presentation explores the origins of the Plant shoe factory in 1896 and its mercurial French Canadian owner, Thomas Plant, known for his pioneering business and corporate welfare practices. We’ll also discuss the thousands of immigrant workers who labored there and sometimes challenged Plant’s anti-union policies. We’ll then follow the story forward to the closing of the plant in the early 1950s, the 1976 fire, and the transformation of the site into the Stop And Shop supermarket and mini-mall in the 1990s. 

Our speaker is Dr. Lynn Johnson, Research Professor of History at Boston College and a contributor to the Global Boston project. This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

The program will use a hybrid format. Please attend in person if you would like, or you can sign up to attend via Zoom using this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UmK0fP7mQzyE4yEDHrAx9Q

Please note in the case of heavy snow this event will only be held on Zoom.