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History of the Mohawk Valley: Gateway to the West 1614-1925
Walter Thomas Langdon

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[This information is from Vol. III, pp. 568-571 of History of the Mohawk Valley: Gateway to the West 1614-1925, edited by Nelson Greene (Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1925). It is in the Reference collection of the Schenectady County Public Library at R 974.7 G81h. This online edition includes lists of portraits, maps and illustrations. As noted by Paul Keesler in his article, "The Much Maligned Mr. Greene," some information in this book has been superseded by later research or was provided incorrectly by local sources.]

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Walter Thomas Langdon, president of the Langdon & Hughes Electric Company of Utica, was born in Poughkeepsie, Dutchess county, New York, on the 17th of January, 1882, his parents being Dr. Charles Henry and Emma (Lutz) Langdon. His father, who was assistant superintendent of the Hudson River State Hospital, died in the year 1905.

Following his graduation from the Poughkeepsie Military School in 1902, Walter Thomas Langdon spent two years in the employ of the firm of Frost & Sheldon, electrical contractors in Albany, New York. In 1904 he went to Washington, D. C., where he was a student in the Bliss Electrical School and graduated therefrom in 1905. Subsequently he was employed in the testing department of the Havens Electric Company of Albany until 1907, when he came to Utica and during the succeeding four years filled the position of superintendent with the B. & C. Electrical Construction Company. On the expiration of that period, in 1911, in association with Dennis A. Hughes, he incorporated the Langdon & Hughes Electric Company in Utica with a capital stock of ten thousand dollars, later increasing same to one hundred thousand dollars. Through the intervening years to the present they have built up an extensive business as jobbers, wholesalers and retailers of electrical appliances and also as electrical engineers and contractors. Finding their original quarters on Liberty street inadequate, they removed to No. 12 Catherine street, but as their growing business demanded still more space, they bought their present site at No. 233 Elizabeth street in 1917 and erected their own building. In 1922 they purchased the adjoining lot and constructed thereon another building, so that their property today covers sixty-five by one hundred feet on Elizabeth street and extends through to Post avenue. The buildings on this site are three stories in height with basement. The corporation also owns a two-story warehouse, one hundred by twenty five feet, on Post avenue. Their traveling representatives cover the Mohawk valley and the Adirondacks and Southern Tier. Employment is furnished to sixty-five men on an average. The firm has installed the electrical outfitting in many of the largest structures of central and northern New York, of which a few are here mentioned: The Junior high school of Amsterdam; the high schools at New York Mills, Clayville, Herkimer and Yorkville; the Kernan, Brandegee, Wetmore, Roscoe Conkling and Utica Free Academy, all schools of Utica; the Mayo and Paul office buildings; the Mary Imogene Hospital of Cooperstown, New York; Faxton and St. Elizabeth Hospitals of Utica; the Gaiety Theatre of Utica; the Norwich Theatre of Norwich, New York; the factories or mills of the Utica Steam & Mohawk Valley Cotton Mills at Utica; the Clayville Knitting Company, the Utica Knitting Company, the McLoughlin Textile Company, the Bossert Corporation, the Remington Arms Company, the Savage Arms Corporation, the clothing manufacturing establishment of Kincaid & Kimball, the Stephen Sanford Carpet Mills and many others. The company has also completed contracts for work in its line in the bank of the Citizens Trust Company, in the roundhouse and shops of the New York Central Railway in Utica and in many of the finest residences in central New York. The Langdon & Hughes Electric Company enjoys an unassailable reputation for integrity as well as for efficiency in service and the two officials in charge may be justly proud of their success, which is due to their constant attention to all details. It is a fact well known that the men who compose the Langdon & Hughes Electric Company not only stand above all their competitors but that a contract assumed by them is not considered filled until all details have been tested and approved.

In early manhood Mr. Langdon was united in marriage to Miss Elizabeth Fitzgibbons of Potsdam, New York. His name is on the membership rolls of the City Club and the local organization of the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks. He is always courteous, genial and obliging and he stands with those men of sterling worth whose well spent life is attested by the number and kind of their friends.

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