In December 1944, General Electric's (GE) Plastic Division signed a lease to occupy a small portion of the former Farr-Alpaca plant at 60 Jackson Street. Worthington Corp. had occupied most of the property, needing space to fill its wartime contracts.
Holyoke's GE division was an offshoot of its Plastic Division in Pittsfield, which was short of space to meet military production contracts. The Holyoke plant began production on January 15, 1945, manufacturing ammunition fuses for weaponry during World War II.
After the war ended and the company fulfilled its remaining contracts, GE needed to transition into peacetime production. The company saw the economic and workforce benefits of remaining in Holyoke.
In October 1945, General Electric leased the entire former Farr-Alpaca No. 2 plant on Jackson Street. It planned to employ 1,500 in the expansive 400,000 square-foot factory.
GE converted its Holyoke plant space to produce small transformers for rural installations. At the time, 3,000,000 farms, half the nation's total, were without electricity.
In August 1946, GE had 460 employees and planned to hire 100 additional employees monthly for the rest of the year. The conversion was successful, and in 1948, GE envisioned purchasing the entirety of the former Farr Alpaca Co. complex.
At its peak in 1949, 1,018 were employed at the Holyoke GE plant, and payroll reached $3.5 million annually. In 1955, on average, a Holyoke plant employee spent more on GE products at the factory store than any other plant in the country.
Orders continued into the late 1950s, and the plant branched out into producing larger transformers, continuing to engineer, innovate, and market to maintain production. It received a large order for precipitation transformers to clean the air emitted from steel mill smoke stacks.
By 1964, the plant was reduced to about 250 workers as the product lines were no longer profitable. The plant wound down operations, and some employees transferred to the Pittsfield plant. The Holyoke General Electric Company plant closed on August 27, 1965.
Citations:
Newspapers.com (paid subscription): Citations: Holyoke (Massachusetts) Transcript & Transcript-Telegram; publication dates are shown.
Holyoke (Massachusetts)Public Library, History Room, online Holyoke City Directories
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