Spaulding FibreSpaulding Fibre became a manufacturer of leatherboard (made from leather scraps and wood pulp), transformer board, vulcanized fibre, bakelite (under the trade name Spauldite) and Filawound (fiberglass) tube. Operating in Tonawanda from 1911–1992, it became the major employer in the city. The company was founded in 1873 with a leatherboard mill by Jonas Spaulding and his brother Waldo in Townsend Harbor, Massachusetts. They did business as The Spaulding Brothers Company. Jonas Spaulding had three sons: Leon C., Huntley N. and Rolland H..

With industry expanding, Jonas established leatherboard mills at Milton and North Rochester, New Hampshire, in part to allow his sons to join him in the business. The New Hampshire mills operated under the name J. Spaulding and Sons. After Jonas Spaulding's death in 1900, his sons (by then living in New Hampshire, where they had corporate headquarters at Rochester) continued to operate these mills successfully. They brought the Townsend Harbor mill under the J. Spaulding and Sons banner in 1902.

With continued success, the three Spaulding brothers added a vulcanized fibre operation in Tonawanda, New York in 1911. They added a fourth leatherboard mill in Milton (second in this community) in 1913. The mayor of Tonawanda, Charles Zuckmaier, had solicited the Spaulding brothers’ business in Tonawanda.[5] An official ground-breaking ceremony was held on July 17, 1911, for the new plant, a $600,000 investment by J. Spaulding and Sons. Operations at the plant began on April 1, 1912, with 40 employees. The daily capacity of the plant at that time was five tons of fibre sheeting and one ton of fibre tubing.

Around 1927, the sons changed the name of the company to the Spaulding Fibre Company. In the 1930s, they added a second product at the Tonawanda plant: Spauldite, a "me too" phenol formaldehyde resin material made to compete with Bakelite. The trademark now owned by Spaulding Composites can be applied to laminates made with other natural or synthetic resins as well.

After Huntley Spaulding, the last of the three brothers, died in November 1955, the Spaulding Fibre Company became part of a charitable trust previously set up by Huntley and his only sister, Marion S. Potter. The trust was created to disperse their remaining wealth within 15 years of the death of the last sibling. Marion S. Potter died on September 27, 1957.[6]

The company in Tonawanda flourished under foremen, superintendents and workers from the local blue collar workforce. It also attracted new residents who came for the jobs. One was Richard Spencer, who left the oil fields of Bradford, Pennsylvania, to be a superintendent for two decades. He managed through several labor strikes and periods of economic unrest for the company.

In 1956 the Tonawanda plant completed an expansion that doubled the paper mill and the vulcanized fibre-making capacity of the plant. In addition, after the death of Huntley Spaulding, corporate offices relocated to Wheeler Street from Rochester, New Hampshire. In the 1960s, the Tonawanda plant added a third product line, Filawound (fiberglass) tubing.

The 50th anniversary of the Wheeler Street Plant in 1961 was marked by a special 22-page section in the Tonawanda News. The Wheeler Street Plant reportedly covered 610,000 square feet (57,000 m2), employed 1500 workers, and had an annual payroll of $9,000,000. The company paid $153,818 in city taxes that year and was Tonawanda’s largest tax payer. The plant was nearing its peak, but there was more expansion to come.[7]

In 1966, the charitable trust sold the Spaulding Fibre Company to Monogram Industries. The Tonawanda plant began a slow decline during a period of industrial restructuring and product and manufacturing changes. In 1984, Monogram Industries sold the Spaulding Fibre Company to Nortek. In 1988, Nortek changed the company name to Spaulding Composites. Spaulding Composites closed the Tonawanda plant on August 24, 1992.

By the time the plant closed, employment had declined to 300. Since the closure of the Tonawanda plant, Spaulding Composites twice filed for bankruptcy. The plant site had a footprint of 860,000 square feet (80,000 m2).[8] It fell into disrepair and, because of the wastes of the industrial processes, was classified as a brown field site under environmental regulations.

In 2006, the Erie County Development Agency contracted for demolition of the derelict facilities. It was punctuated by the felling of the 250-foot (76 m)-tall smoke stack that dominated the site.[9] (This event is documented with a handful of videos on YouTube.) Cleanup of the site was declared complete