 Corning's Factory Whistle
Corning's brass factory whistle gleams in the early morning sun. You can be sure these men working on it don't care to be that close when it goes off.
It's one of those things that you get so used to, the only time you notice it is when it isn't there. That's the way it is with the company whistle. It blows eight times a day, Monday through Friday - seven times on Saturdays.
Deceptively small for the amount of noise it produces, Corning's whistle is 20 inches high and 8 inches in diameter. It sits atop the company power plant building hard by the south side of the Chemung River where it's easily spotted at 6:45, 7:00, 7:45 and 8:00
a.m. when the column of steam is readily visible. It also goes off at noon, 12:45, 1 and 5 p.m. The five o'clock whistle is not sounded on Saturdays. The siren also sounds at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve.
In times past, the whistle signaled workers throughout the valley that it was time to head for work, start work, break for lunch or quit for the day. With no manufacturing to speak of in the immediate vicinity and with lunch times considerably flexible, the whistle is now more tradition than call to action… except for the 12:45 blast that lets everyone know lunch hour is almost over.
On the morning of June 23, 1972, it sounded the alarm that the dikes had been breached and floodwaters were pouring into the city's low-lying areas north and south of the Chemung River. With no power, the whistle was out of commission. When it sounded again after a week's silence, it was a morale booster… Corning Glass Works was back in business and a semblance of normalcy was returning to the valley.
Corning's whistle was made by Star Brass Company, which has long since gone out of business. Those with an ear for music might detect it in the musical scale of C and has three separate chambers to sound notes C, E and G.
In 1953, company employees claimed the whistle wasn't working properly, thus making them late for work. The whistle was found faulty and was replaced by one with a much lower pitch. Residents in Big Flats and Campbell, both about 10 miles distant, complained they couldn't hear the replacement whistle. Residents living closer to the plant said it sounded like the Queen Mary was coming up the river. Indeed, so deep was the tone that it caused startled people to drop things they were carrying. A dropped purse is no big deal… but a dropped piece of glass… well, that just was not good. As a result, it was decided to repair the old whistle and re-install it.
Campbell Rutledge, Jr., liked to relate the tale of the jewelry shop owner on Market Street who habitually looked at the large clock in his display window each evening as the whistle sounded. If it was off even a minute, he would re-set it. Often, at noontime, he noticed a man who would pause outside the store, look at the clock and then his watch, and then continue up the street. One day, the jeweler happened to be in the doorway when the man approached so he asked the man why he seemed to check the clock in the window whenever he went by. The man replied, "I'm the guy who blows the factory whistle. Just want to be sure of the time."
In truth, in the early days, the whistle was blown manually by an employee who relied not on the Market Street jeweler's clock, but on a phone link to the Western Union-Naval Observatory to assure the correct time. If the assigned employee forgot to blow the whistle or was late, there were standing orders not to blow the whistle at all lest sounding the whistle at the wrong time would confuse everyone within earshot - in other words, everyone in the valley.
Before automatic machine production, factory shifts generally ran from 7 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 or 6 p.m. With many factory employees living within walking distance of the workplace, the whistle at 15 minutes before the hour got them on their way so they would be at their work stations at the appointed time at the start of the day or at the end of the lunch break. In the 1920's the 7:45 and 8 a.m. whistles were added for the benefit of office workers whose days started at 8.
When, in 1972, a newcomer to Corning wrote a letter to the editor of The LEADER complaining about the factory whistle's high decibel level, a survey of about 150 residents asked if the whistle should be silenced. Of the 75 who replied, 90 percent favored keeping the whistle. And so it has remained… a symbol of our community much like the Centerway Clock Tower… a reminder of our community's past.
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