TMC Mamarneck Plants

This page contains images from TMC's hometown, Mamaroneck, NY

Spencer Place

TMC's first corporate home and manufacturing site was a rented building (AKA "the police garage") at 121 Spencer Place in Mamaroneck.  The company's corporate meetings were held here from September 1949 through October 1952, just before the company moved to its permanent headquarters at 700 Fenimore Rd in late 1952 or early 1953.   I don't have a picture of the 121 Spencer Place site as it appeared in the late 40's, but here are contemporary ones:

Street view of 121 Spencer Pl. The right wall of 125 Spencer Place is visible on the left of the photo.	This view is from the west (right) side of the building..	..as is this one.  As you can see the building is quite deep!

The building is about 5,000 square feet.  Neil de Pasquale recalls that in the early days, the company concentrated on high-margin items including their innovative broadband transformers and antenna couplers made with the transformers.  There are several early Sales and Service Bulletin, for example, for the SFO teletype regenerator, that lists Spencer Place as the company's address, so it's almost certain that equipment was manufactured here as well.

In 1949 the company also rented space (or perhaps the entire building) next door at 125 Spencer Place from the Donald Art Company.  The building is shown in photos below, taken in 2013.  125 Spencer is used today in exactly the same way as it probably was in 1949, as a place for small businesses to rent office space. 

125 Spencer Place as it appears today.

112 West Boston Post Road

TMC used the top floor of a building on the Old Post Road in Mamaroneck in the early 50's, but I believe this space was only used for corporate meetings, including the meeting of the Board of Directors in June and August of 1952.  Below is a photo of this handsome building:

135 Hoyt Avenue

TMC may  have built this building and occupied even earlier than the eventual headquarters at 700 Fenimore Rd.  The Hoyt Avenue plant today:

135 Hoyt Ave as it appears today	Front View		Side view from west

I paced off the dimensions of this one-story commercial building, and it's about 44' across the front and about 100' deep.  Ray remarked in a newspaper interview in the early sixties that TMC moved into a series of plant buildings in the 1950's, each of which shared one characteristic:  they were too small on the day the company moved in!

604 Fenimore

At some point TMC moved some of its operations into this building, a block south of 700 Fenimore Road.  Today the building is an auto body repair business, as shown on the right.

604 Fenimore as it appeared when TMC occupied the building in the early 50's.	604 Fenimore today, an auto body shop	Another shot, taken 9/15.

700 Fenimore

This is the location most of us associate with the company.  Neil de Pasquale says the company moved to this building in the mid-50's.  The Board of Directors met in January 1953, so I believe the company's operations were being relocated to the new factory in late 1952.

700 Fenimore.  This shot must have been taken in the mid-50's, early 60's, since the building has only one floor (compare with the picture to the below).	MARS van parked in front of 700 Fenimore.  This shot shows the building as it now appears, with 2 stories.  The 2nd story was added in the early 60's.	700 Fenimore at Christmas time	Photo of the famous TMC 3-D logo, taken in 2011.  700 Fenimore now houses Majestic Kitchen, a fabricator/installer of high-end kitchens.  TMC World-Wide still has an office in the building, however.
Front view of 700 Fenimore after 2nd story had been added.	A winter-time view of the front of the plant.	PH 538.  No other info.	This is a contemporary view of the rear of the plant, showing the parking lot for Majestic Kitchen.  This photo was taken during a visit in 2012.
This is a shot of the famous 3D TMC logo on the front of 700 Fenimore Rd, taken in November 2011.  Since then the sign has had to be removed because of safety concerns.  Have no fear.. the sign is safely stored!	This is a shot of the prototype metal shop area at the rear of 700 Fenimore, where engineers could get prototype mechanical assemblies fabricated.  This shot, taken in 2011, shows the "smoke-signals" painting that graced the 1972 Annual Report cover.  This area has been completely cleaned out since the photo was taken.  The small machine tools are at TMCHistory's QTH.. :)	By September 2015, the famous TMC 3D sign had been removed for "safety reasons", and Majestic Kitchen's signs are in full force on the outside of 700 Fenimore.  Don't worry.. the TMC sign is safe and sound in North Carolina.. :)	This innocent looking water course is the Sheldrake River, which flows along the northern boundary of the 700 Fenimore Rd property, just to the south of I-95.  This river courses through downtown Mamaroneck and eventually dumps into the Atlantic near the marina.  I had wondered by so many TMC manuals suffered water damage.. evidently this little river floods on a regular basis!

I've made several visits to 700 Fenimore over the past few years, and have taken a bunch of photos of the inside of the building.  You can see the beginnings of a virtual tour by clicking here.

700 Waverly Avenue

A few blocks SW of 700 Fenimore, TMC built a manufacturing facility at 700 Waverly Ave.  I'm not sure exactly which year this plant was built, but it is listed in the 1960 Annual Report.  Sometimes referred to as TMC Industrial, this facility was run by Conrad Gebhardt.  It did castings and machining for TMC products.  It also housed the production lines for the GPR-90, DDR-5,-6,-7, and -8's, and eventually the DDR-10.  Epoxy and plastic castings were made at the  plant as well.  For some reason there are a heck of a lot of pictures of the Waverly plant.. the company, or perhaps Conrad, were really proud of the facility, and it was quite handsome.  At some point in its history, a penthouse was added to the building (you can still see it in satellite views of the building); TMC training program was housed here before moving out to Clarkstown/Nyack.

6110.20-1.  Overall view of the Waverly plant.	6110.20-2.  Nice shot of the elegant front door of the plant.	No data.  Waverly plant at night.	The building still exists, and is currently a Toyota Dealership.  You can still see a vestige of the elegant entranceway at the left of the photo.
Another contermporary view of the Waverly plant.  The left wing of the plant dissappeared at some point over the years.	This building is right next door (to the east) to the present-day Toyota dealership, and I believe this building was part of TMC's plant in the 60's.  There is a railroad spur directly behind these two facilities, which must have been convenient for shipping the large systems that TMC produced.	Another view of the former Waverly Ave plant, now a Toyota dealership.	The Toyota dealership has been at 700 Waverly for some years now and the entrance looks much nicer--this was the view in September 2015.
DDR-5A test setup on the production line, most likely at Waverly Ave.	638.23-1.  DDR-5A's on the production line, almost certainly at the Waverly Ave plant.	This photo labeled "Facilities Waverly" and dated Nov 24, 1964.

I  visited Mamaroneck in 2013, and Neil de Pasquale kindly arranged a visit and tour of the Toyota dealership that occupies 700 Waverly Ave today.  Below are some photos from that tour.

This is the service entrance for the dealership, and was probably the lobby in the TMC plant.	This shot shows the very nice "white glove" service area for the Toyota dealership.  This area would have been part of the production floor in the TMC plant.	This little building sits to the left (east) of the Waverly plant and was evidently always a separate part of the plant.	This is the stairway (no.. not to heaven) up to the rooftop to allow access to the Annex.
This shot shows Neil chatting with the Toyota service writer, who kindly provided us a tour of the rooftop area and the "Annex" as it appears today.	This is the Annex, looking east, past its entrance door.  The Annex served as TMC's training facility in the 60's, before the facility in West Nyack was constructed.	This is the west side of the Annex.. I paced it off, and the space is about 40' on a side, much larger than I had thought!	Another shot of the Annex exterior.
These three shots show the interior of the Annex as it appears today.  There's hardly a hint of the original layout with its classrooms, as the Annex has served several purposes in the intervening years, including an apartment!  Nowadays the Annex contains the dealership's security system and storage.

431 Fayette Ave

Immediately behind 700 Fenimore is a large parking lot, and immediately behind that at 431 Fayette Ave. is a frankly fairly ugly building that Ray bought at some point to serve as a transmitter assembly plant.  The company's sales were growing so rapidly that many buildings around Mamaroneck were pressed into service in the late 50's for this purpose.  Over the years, the company acquired an unfortunate amount of dead inventory, and these parts lived in, and eventually took over, the entire top floor of this building.  Transmitter manufacture moved out to the Clarkstown (West Nyack) plant in 1961, but the inventory stayed put until the 1980's.  In the early 80's this facility was used for GPT-10K and -40K refurbishment, which took place along the wall facing the left-hand photo, on the left. Both photos were taken in 2011.

431 Fayette Ave building as seen from the back of 700 Fenimore.  The area now occupied by the parking lot between the two buildings used to be the site of a large antenna tower.	431 Fayette as seen from Fayette Ave.	This is a photo of 431 Fayette looking east along Fayette Avenue.  As of 9/15, the building houses a garden store.	A 9/15 view of the south wall and entrance to the building.
I had never bothered to look around this building until 9/15, but it turns out to be a very interesting building historically.   Built in the 1880's the building housed a Gutta Percha factory--this was the insulation material that enabled all of the early underwater cables including Cyrus Field's trans-atlantic one.

705 Fenimore Road

Directly across the road from 700 is 705 Fenimore Road.  Ray either bought or rented this building in the mid-50's when sales of the GPT-750 exploded.  The photo below was taken in 2011.

I believe the well-known photo of Tony Faiola working "on the line" on a GPT-750 was taken inside this building.  To the right is a scan of a sale bulletin based on the same image.  This bulletin provides additional information about the building, referred to as "Plant No. 5" and the customer for the GPT-750 production, the Federal Civil Defense Agency.

Tony Faiola working on the production line for the GPT-750.  These appear to be -1 units, so the date must have been before mid-1959.

"TMC Plant No. 5 which has recently been opened is being used exclusively for the production of GPT-750 transmitters.  The above photo shows production units being readied for shipment to the Federal Defense Agency.  These transmitters, together with the GPR-90 receiver form the nucleus for the new FCDA regional HF Control Station.   Similar transmitters are already in operation in Korea and Turkey.  Shipment will be made shortly to Indonesia under an ICA sponsored program.

Center Avenue

TMC used a couple of building on Center Avenue, about a block east of Fenimore, as training facilities in the mid-50's.  Subsequently, the "penthouse" Annex atop the Waverly Ave plant became the training classroom.  Eventually training was moved out to the Clarkstown (West Nyack) plant location, where it had its own building.

323 Center Ave, photographed in 2012.	325 Center Ave.	Another view from slightly farther east of 325 Center Ave.