PRINCETON — Resuming our look at the history of Mercer County, courtesy of Kyle McCormick’s “The Story of Mercer County,” (Charleston Publishing Co. 1957), we now look at one of Princeton’s mainstay businesses of times past, the Maidenform Brassiere Company.

The company was established in 1922, with one plant in Bayonne, N.J., then additional plants opened in New Jersey, West Virginia and Puerto Rico.

The Princeton plant, the oldest of three established in West Virginia, was opened in 1943. The first location was on Straley Avenue in the Fred Gilbert Activity Center. Due to rapid expansion, an annex was opened on Mercer Street at the close of World War II. In March 1951, the Thorn Street Annex was put in operation.

The last home of Maidenform in Princeton was purchased from H.P. Hunnicutt in December 1951. Previously, the South Walker Street building housed Hunnicutt’s Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. operation. By June 1952, all three operations in Princeton were combined in the plant. In September 1953, the company employed 763 people, its highest number pre-1957. In 1957, more than 700 people were employed, 15 of them male, with an annual payroll in excess of $1 million. The plant stayed open until the late 1980s.

Maidenform was the fastest-growing concern in the area, employing more than any other company in the region. The factory workers were represented by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

Sam Laufer served as the local manager for most of Maiden Form’s history in Princeton.

To comment on this column write to me care of Mercer County Memories at P.O. Box 1199, Princeton, WV 24740 or email me at delimartman@yahoo.com or jharvey1@frontiernet.net. If you have pictures you wish to share, we’d like to use them with the stories. Please make copies and send them to us. If you want to send original photographs and wish them returned, send a SASE. We look forward to your submissions and ideas. We need your input with photographs encouraged, especially in areas as yet uncovered in this column.