Montrose’s Noon Whistle

From 1929 until 1960, a steam whistle, just like a train whistle, would sound off at noon each day in downtown Montrose. It was a powerful whistle and could be heard two miles away. The whistle was part of the fabric of the community and old timers remembered depending on its loud toot to know when was lunch break. The whistle came from Thompson Brothers Cleaners then located right on Honolulu Ave. at 2275. (That’s where the venerable Critters store was, along with Wood and Things.) They did laundry, dying and dry cleaning. When Thompson Brothers Cleaners opened in 1929, they mounted a whistle on their roof, powered by steam from their steam plant.

Steam for a cleaning service? What was the steam for? This led me down an educational rabbit hole for laundry and dry cleaning, which I hope you will find as interesting as I did.

Commercial laundry services, popular in large cities, were labor-intensive operations. Steam powered machinery became increasingly available after the mid-1800s and the “steam laundry” became a common feature in American cities. The steam boilers powered the big washing machines as well as providing the hot water, and provided steam for the steam presses. These industrial plants were mainly operated by armies of poor women, called washerwomen, overseen by a few rich men. The washerwomen had a pugnacious culture and pushed back hard on their bosses, producing some epic late-1800 labor clashes.

The French were the supposed originators of dry cleaning, using solvents to remove stains, and thus was born the term “French Laundry.” Although the French have the reputation of being the fathers of dry cleaning, it was actually a Black American who first invented the process. A New York tailor, a free Black man, filed a patent for dry cleaning in 1821, long before the French grabbed the title. As the first African American to be granted a patent, he was the subject of much controversy and resentment. He plowed his earnings from the patented process into the abolitionist movement.

Okay, so I went way down the rabbit hole. Back to Montrose and Thompson Brothers Cleaners.

They had steam power for their cleaning operations and they had attached this steam whistle on the roof of the building in 1929. Initially the whistle was sounded by hand at noon each day, but eventually they attached it to a time clock and it blew automatically. The only time it was sounded outside of the regular noon blast was on the day WWII ended when it joined the celebratory horn honking in Montrose.

But in 1960, Thompson Brothers stopped using steam in their operation and the steam whistle was silenced. It sat quietly atop their roof until 1966 when Thompson Brothers moved to their new location at 2020 Thompson Court. (They are still there today, behind Black Cow Restaurant.)

So what happened to the whistle? Soon after the move, the editor of the Ledger, the local paper, inquired about the whistle. That led the Thompson family on a search. It wasn’t on top of the building anymore. They found the demolition company that had cleared out the old location on Honolulu. The demolition company remembered the odd steam whistle. They had sold it to an antique dealer. The Thompsons tracked down the dealer. He still had the whistle, and sold it back to them for $25. The Thompsons brought it back to Montrose and sounded it a few more times, presumably with compressed air, before retiring it permanently.

The Thompson family sold the business many years ago. A few years back I was manning the booth for the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley at the Montrose Harvest Market. A couple of guys came up and we got to talking. Turns out they were Thompsons, probably grandkids. Did they still have the whistle? Yes, but it didn’t work anymore; I think they said it was bent. We talked about restoring it, but nothing ever came of it, and I guess it’s still in someone’s garage somewhere.

Typical of the pursuit of local history: rabbit holes, vague stories from the past and missed opportunities.