JOHNSON CITY (WBNG) — “Endicott-Johnson was a shoe manufacturer, they had several buildings and they made more every year, so it dominated this whole area in terms of employees and they got to the point where they were making hundreds of thousands of shoes a day” said Broome County Historian Roger Luther.
At the time, due to the volume of shoes being made by the company, the scraps began piling up as well.
However, the company knew what they were going to do.
“They took the scrap they added a mixture of paper and water and formed these little composite blocks and used as foreign and on the bottom of each of those blocks was wire reinforcement so the idea was that you would install the same way that you would install wood floor installer in several of the EJ buildings and it worked great,” Luther said.
Flooring existed in buildings around the Southern Tier as an alternative to wood, linoleum, or tile. One of the last buildings to still house the material today is a church in Downtown Johnson City.
In 1942, the building which sits on the corner of Baldwin and Main Streets, known at the time as the Lestershire Methodist Church, decided to make an addition to the building as a gift from the Johnson family. The current Pastor of the church, Carolyn Stow, said it was named after one of George’s family members.
“Sarah Jane was Charles and George’s mom and this church used to be the Lestershire Methodist Church and they were attending here this is their family church they actually got the church started when they came into the area mom was a Methodist woman and a churchgoer they approached the Lestershire Church and said we would be happy to give you a church building,” Stow said.
According to Stow, the Johnson family was kind to many of the churches in the community, however, they considered the Sarah Jane Johnson church their own place for worship.
“Faith was an important part of the Johnson family life and I also know that the company invested in the holistic employee and recognize that their faith life was just as important,” said Stow.
The church was one of the first to appear in news articles regarding the leather flooring but is now one of the last remaining structures to house the rare material.
Stow said it continues to be used today.
“Red cross does blood drives in here we hosted yoga things during COVID because we have the space and so now we’re at a place where we’re finding folks who know how to maintain a leather floor being unique doesn’t always have its advantages,” she said.
