Gordon McKay

Gordon McKay

Gordon McKay (1821–1903) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was trained as an engineer, worked on a railroad, and then on the Erie Canal before he purchased a machine shop. Around 1844 McKay established this business, which grew to employ over 100 men. He later met J.C. Hoadley, a future business partner who would become known for creating portable steam engines. ^[1] Eventually the company became known as McKay and Hoadley, ^[2]

In 1852, the workshop moved to the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, where McKay eventually became the treasurer of the Lawrence Machine Shop. He met Lyman Reed Blake, who had applied for, and received, a patent from the United States government for his sewing machine for helping attach the soles of shoes to the upper of the shoe. This early sewing machine helped facilitate the production of low-cost shoes by eliminating the heavy work of hand sewing. Blake sold the patent to Gordon McKay a year afterwards for $80,000 in cash and a $62,000 share of future profits, and became an employee. McKay improved Blake's rather cumbersome system, and with the advent of the American Civil War his Gordon McKay Shoe Machinery Company made large profits through the manufacture of much needed boots. McKay's most original idea was to lease the machinery rather than sell it outright, collecting a small royalty on each pair of shoes made with his equipment, and over the years he amassed considerable wealth. By 1876, McKay was earning a staggering $500,000 per year in royalties.^[3]

In its licensing and royalty arrangements, McKay's company received the legal assistance of Gardiner Greene Hubbard,^[4] who later became the first president of the Bell Telephone Company, which evolved to become the AT&T Corporation. As with McKay's company, the Bell Telephone Company chose to lease, rather than to sell its product, which in the case of the Bell Telephone Company became telephone service, and not the telephones themselves.

(I remember in my childhood of the 1950s and 1960s that the phones were owned by Western Electric and rented, never sold. I will add more information about McKay from newspaper clippings soon.-cwn)

This from the Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield MA, By Brian Sullivan, Berkshire Eagle Staff Posted: 09/01/2011 12:05:19 AM EDT Updated: 09/01/2011 01:02:08 PM EDT

There are some obvious errors.

Thursday September 1, 2011 in celebration of Pittsfield's 250 Anniversary.

There's nothing like owning a new pair of shoes, unless it's owning the machinery that made those shoes.

McKay Street and the parking garage still carry his name, but that doesn't really reveal all that Gordon McKay did for the city of Pittsfield. Maybe if he had bequeathed upon his death $25 million to Pittsfield instead of Harvard University, from where he graduated, he might have a statue on Park Square.

But give McKay credit. He had a vision, followed through on it and earned his millions the old-fashioned way -- he worked for it. He just happened to fall into the right idea at the right time.

Shoes? You bet. He revolutionized the industry.

Born in Pittsfield in 1821, McKay invented a shoe-nailing and "shoe-lasting" machine and made great improvements in a shoe-sewing machine.

McKay, of course, could not make all the shoes for the world by himself. So after locking up a strict patent he leased his equipment and two-stepped his way to the bank on a regular basis.

But McKay was about more than shoes. Before he turned 30 in the year 1850, he realized that the city needed a water supply source and chaired a committee settled on Ashley Lake as that resource.

McKay was a civic-minded force. His other accomplishments -- none of which need to be a backdrop to any of the previously mentioned -- include the following: He was:

. The chief of the Fire Department for a time. . In charge of the Berkshire Jubilee celebration in 1844. . A leading member on the committee to build the Berkshire Medical College on South Street. . A member of the committee that in 1851 that built the new First Congregational Church on Park Square, which replaced the old Bullfinch-designed church.

His last known gift to the city of any note was the iron fence that surrounded the former House of Mercy when it was located on the corner of Tyler and lower North streets.

McKay, who for years lived on the corner of South and East Housatonic streets, checked out in grand style. His remains are in a magnificent mausoleum at Pittsfield Cemetery, a structure designed by Mary E. Tillinghart 10 years before McKay's death. Built of Lee marble, the cathedral walls were first put on exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World Fair before being shipped back to Pittsfield.

McKay may be known now as a downtown street and a parking garage, but obviously he was something a bit more special than that.

Legacy

McKay was not a graduate of Harvard, nor even of high school, but was a self-taught engineer and self-made businessman. The entrepreneur became close friends with Harvard geology professor Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, who would later become dean of the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1891. In 1893, McKay placed an initial $4 million in trust for Harvard. Thanks to his own desire for the development of better training which would result in more thoroughly educated engineers, and Shaler's friendship and investment advice regarding gold, Gordon McKay left his estate to Harvard. Life trusts delayed the full transfer of the principal of the estate to Harvard until 1949. By then the total amounted to $16 million, the largest single gift received by the University until then and still one of the most generous so far when adjusted for inflation.^[5]

His legacy today supports over 40 Professorships, one of the most significant monetary contributions to academic salaries. The terms of his will read, in part : "I direct that the salaries attached to the professorships maintained from the Endowment be kept liberal, generation after generation, according to the standards of each successive generation, to the end that these professorships may always be attractive to able men and that their effect may be to raise, in some judicious measure, the general scale of compensation for the teachers of the universities …” ^[6]

Notes

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