H.B. Claflin & Company was a Manhattan (New York) based dry goods

Dry goods

Dry goods are products such as textiles, ready-to-wear clothing, and sundries. In U.S. retailing, a dry goods store carries consumer goods that are distinct from those carried by hardware stores and grocery stores, though "dry goods" as a term for textiles has been dated back to 1742 in England or...

 business which was incorporated in 1890. The company acted as
wholesalers who were middlemen between manufacturers and retailers of dry goods. The corporation became insolvent in June 1914, with a
debt of $34,000,000. Judge Learned Hand

Learned Hand

Billings Learned Hand was a United States judge and judicial philosopher. He served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and later the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit...

 of the United States District Court

United States district court

The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...

 in New York appointed receivers for the firm on June 25, 1914. The trade of the wholesaler was negatively affected by the migration of the dry goods industry to uptown Manhattan.

History of business

H.B. Claflin & Company began operations in 1843, many years before its official incorporation. In 1868 the company retained the same principal leaders from its start, namely Horace Brigham Claflin

Horace Brigham Claflin

Horace Brigham Claflin , American merchant, was born in Milford, Massachusetts.Claflin was educated at Milford Academy, became a clerk in his father's store in Milford, and in 1831, with his brother Aaron and his brother-in-law Samuel Daniels, succeeded to his father's business...

, E.E. Eames, and E.W. Bancroft. The main building of the business fronted Church Street (Manhattan)

Church Street (Manhattan)

Church Street is a short but heavily travelled north/south street in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs along the eastern edge of the site of the World Trade Center destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Its southern end is at Trinity Place, of which it is a continuation...

 for one hundred feet and extended along Worth Street for another four hundred feet. It continued along West Broadway (Manhattan) for one hundred feet. All of its buildings occupied an area encompassing 48000 square feet (4,459.3 m²) in 1868. It employed 700
people full time and up to 1,000 persons during the busiest seasons. The various departments of H.B. Claflin & Company dealt in lace goods, white goods, flannels, blankets, hosiery, shirts, underwear, shawls, hoods, scarves, and gloves.

In 1914 the Claflin stores in New York were C.G. Gunther's Sons, Lord & Taylor

Lord & Taylor

Lord & Taylor, colloquially known as L&T, or LT, based in New York City, is the oldest upscale, specialty-retail department store chain in the United States. Concentrated in the eastern U.S., the retailer operated independently for nearly a century prior to joining American Dry Goods...

, James McCreery & Company, O'Neill Adams Company, H. Batterman Company,
Brooklyn, New York, and the Bedford Company, Brooklyn. Claflin interests controlled an additional thirty stores located in various parts of the United States.