Martin Shirt, Abbatoir move closer to demolition
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - The former Martin Shirt Factory building on East Poplar Street, seen on May 29, 2024.
SHENANDOAH – The long-abandoned Martin Shirt Co. factory and Shenandoah Abbatoir building are moving closer to demolition.
Schuylkill County Commissioners voted Wednesday to seek bids for those projects as well as demolition projects in Coaldale and Girardville.
Bids are due by Oct. 21 at 4pm and are expected to be awarded in mid-November.
The demolitions will be funded through a state grant administered by the county.
The Martin Shirt Factory and the Shenandoah Abbatoir are two large, imposing structures comprising a campus along East Poplar Street and Abbatoir Road.
They’ve been abandoned for decades. Martin Shirt closed in 1996, and a 1995 photo of the Abbatoir on the Schuylkill County Parcel Locator shows signs of decay at that time.
Owned by Glenn Paterson, now deceased, the Martin Shirt building has caught fire twice in the past 12 years.
The Martin Shirt Co. plant has sat abandoned since its 1996 closure. Daniel Saluta owned the company and had announced plans in late 1995 to sell the plant and keep its 55 employees. A month later, those plans were scrapped, the plant was closed, and 55 people were out of a job.
Saluta — through Martin Blouse Co. Inc. — held onto the plant until 2004, selling it for just $600 to Glenn Paterson, listed owner of other dilapidated, collapsing, or now-demolished properties in town. The plant has suffered the same fate.
Paterson passed away in 2019.
The Abbatoir was built by architect Percy Kley and was a major firm in Shenandoah’s heyday, according to the Evening Herald’s Shenandoah Chronicles series, published in the 1990s.
In 1922, the company was the largest meat processing and packing plant in Schuylkill County. Home of the Nonpareil ham, the company processed up to two railroad cars of hogs each day.
Advancements in refrigeration made meat packing facilities in every town — like the Abbatoir and the Armour plant, which later became United Wiping Cloth — obsolete and the Abbatoir closed some time in the midcentury. It had changed names to the Top Packing Company before closing in 1947. At the time, it was one of the leading industries in town and second only to mining in employing men.
It is unclear if it ever reopened. It sold to Michael Wozniak in 1955. He was listed as owner of the property until 2011.
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