In 2010, when I visited Erie for probably the third time in my life, I wandered around the streets of industrial areas looking for photo opportunities. I was interested in finding old, run down factories, but at this point in time had no idea what kind of history I was actually capturing in these photos. Ten years later after a recent trip to Erie, I decided to revisit some of these photos and do a bit of research into what used to occupy one specific factory I had captured; the abandoned Cohen Industrial Supply Co. building.

Before being occupied by Cohen Industrial Supply, this building was home to the Shaw Piano company. Shaw Piano was created by Congressman Matthew Griswold on March 28, 1890. He ran the company with James H. Shaw as vice-president, his son, Matthew Griswold, Jr. as treasurer, and Henry J. Raymore as secretary and general manager. In addition to Shaw Piano, the Griswold family also owned and operated the Griswold Manufacturing Co.

Griswold was also credited for helping the development of downtown Erie with a post office and railway station. In honor of his efforts, the Griswold Plaza in Erie was named after him.

Shaw Piano’s first vice-president, James H. Shaw was born in York, Maine in 1847. He moved from there to Boston and began his career making piano cases. After some years, Shaw traveled to Hudson, Massachusetts and worked with a man named Kaler. After only a year of being in business, a fire broke out and destroyed their entire establishment. All that was saved from the blaze was one piano. After the fire, Shaw left and traveled to New York City and partnered with B. N. Smith & Shaw case makers. He later went on to be superintendent of the case making department at Colby & Duncan. In continuing his love on working with pianos, Shaw then took the opportunity to step in as vice-president of the Shaw Piano Company. On April 28, only nine months after Shaw Piano began its operations, Mr. Shaw died; leaving his position as vice-president to Matthew Griswold, Jr. With this, Marvin E. Griswold then stepped in as treasurer.

Shaw Piano had become known for their high quality pianos, which were offered at a more affordable price than their more expensive, higher end counterparts built by Steiff Pianos. In 1895, the company had hired Charles Reinwarth to help them further enhance the build quality of their pianos. Reinwarth had invented many improvements for machines being used to cover piano strings. His inventions improved the ways in which wire was would around steel wires to create the strings. One addition was a device, which held the main wire on each end and in one steady and continuous motion, wound the wire around it.

Originally, the company had operated out of a different location at 1124 Peach Street, but after only two years had decided to make the move into a larger location on West 12th street in Erie; the factory you can see today.

The company was purchased in 1900 by Charles M. Stieff, Inc. of Baltimore, Maryland; the very company that Shaw compared their pianos to. He had then moved the company to 1640-42-44 Grosuch Ave. The Charles M. Steiff Piano Company continued to produce the pianos under the Shaw name, until discontinuing it soon before the Great Depression.

With the factory now empty, Matthew had decided to move Griswold Manufacturing into the 63,550 square foot space in 1903. The company operated here, producing much of their famous cast-iron cookware. Originally founded in 1865 by Matthew Griswold and his cousins J.C. and Samuel Selden, the company would begin by manufacturing separable butt hinges at a building called the “Butt Factory” beside the Erie Extension Canal. In 1870, they had begun making skillets, pots, grinding mills and waffle irons. As the company grew, so did its product list. By the 1880s, they had also added tobacco cutters and a wheeled spittoon, which Griswold had patented. Into the 1900s, the company would add kettles, Dutch ovens, roasters, a grid iron and various pots and pans. Between the 1920s and 1930s, Griswold had added enameled items and electrical items to their product line.

One popular feature of some of Griswold’s products was the inclusion of the “Booklet on Waterless Cooking,” written by Miss Etta Moses. In the late 1800s, Miss Etta Moses had begun working for Griswold with the job of responding to those sending in mail asking for advice on using the company’s products. Around 1920, she began publishing recipes and advice on cooking with cast iron under the pen name “Aunt Ellen.” Her “Booklet on Waterless Cooking” was given free with any purchase of the company’s Tite-Top Dutch Oven. She was pictured in advertisements for the cook pot in journals such as Good Housekeeping. In 1928, Good Housekeeping published an advertisement showcasing the Griswold Electric Waffle Baker, inviting readers to write to Aunt Ellen for details on making the waffle cream pie. For years she helped housewives who had come to her for advice. After 53 years with Griswold, Miss Etta Moses passed away on May 3, 1948 at the age of 85. She was known coast to coast not only as Aunt Ellen, but as the first woman to boil water in an aluminum tea kettle.

The company’s cast-iron cookware was sold worldwide, and had gained a reputation for its high quality. The company’s most popular and successful products had remained their cast-iron stovetop waffle irons into the 1930s.

In the 1940s however, things would start to go downhill. Griswold at the time was also struggling with internal labor disputes and declining quality of their own products. The family continued to run the company until 1946, when Ely Griswold sold it to a New York investment group, and shortly after retired. Heading into the 1950s following World War II, Erie would begin to see an industrial decline, further hurting the company. More modern electric kitchen utensils were growing rapidly in popularity. The company began facing financial difficulty with a rise in competition from manufacturers of these more modern products, and could not keep up.

In March of 1957, the company was sold to McGraw-Edison of Chicago, Illinois. Later that same year, the company was sold once again to the Wagner Manufacturing Company of Sidney, Ohio. Things did not move as smoothly as hoped for the company, eventually leading to the closure of the Erie plant in December 1957. With its closure, sixty people were laid off.

The building was bought in September 1958 by Cohen Industrial Supply and Cohen Office Equipment Inc. Cohen had been a company for only 7 years at this time. The floors of the factory were remodeled to be display floors for office furniture and more. Cohen operated here for years until closing in 1981. The building had then become Cost Plus – a retail store selling home furniture, décor, curtains, rugs, gifts, apparel, coffee, wine, international food products and more. After Cost Plus moved out, the factory had sat abandoned for years until being purchased in 2012 by Greg Sutterlin of Conneaut Lake. It now operates as a haunted house called “Eeriebyss Factory of Terror.”

As an added bonus, during my trip out to Erie in February 2020, I noticed an old railroad obviously no longer in use. The tracks had sunk down into the ground, now leading to a pool of standing water. As my friend and I walked along the wall to pass underneath the bridge, we had noticed some strange looking carvings on the walls. The carvings looked familiar, but it wasn’t until we were on our way back that we realized what they could be.

Interestingly enough, we had stumbled upon a collection of what appear to be some very old mason’s marks. However, could they be hoboglyphs?

You can read about that part of this explore here