Interior view shows the sewing room at the Spirella Company located at 211-215 S. 11th Street, Lincoln, Nebraska. Women use Singer sewing machines set up along both sides of long tables. Two-bladed fans are set on poles at intervals along the tables.
According to the Lincoln City Directory Company, 1918, Ira B. Saunders was General Manager of this plant. Spirella produced made-to-measure corsets not sold in stores but rather by over 5,000 local "corsetieres" such as Mrs. Magnolia Duke of North Platte, Nebraska, who were trained in the fitting of the garments (article in The North Platte Semi-Weekly Tribune, September 1, 1911). The Spirella Company started out in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and expanded is operations with plants in Lincoln (to supply clients west of the Mississippi) and Niagara Falls, Ontario (for Canadian clients), as well as locations abroad in England and Germany. Their headquarters and all manufacturing was eventually to move to a central location in Niagara Falls, New York (advertisement in The Ladies Home Journal, March 1917). The Spirella advertisement in the American Federationist (1917, v.24, p. 919) specifies their "corsets are made in Spirella's daylight factories under safe, sanitary, convenient, comfortable working conditions with well paid, contented, skilled workers who find joy in their work." The picture titled "Deputy 11th Street Building" ( http://memories.nebraska.gov/cdm/ref/collection/ts/id/115 ) in Nebraska Memories shows the front of their building which boasted a metal fire escape from the top floor down.
