Joe and Lil Shapiro collection of laundry ephemera (MS.2014.002)

Biographical note

This collection was compiled by Joseph S. Shapiro, Brown class of 1957, and his wife, Lilian Shapiro. Joseph Shapiro was the owner of the Lundermac Company, Inc., which managed and supplied self-service laundries in apartments, condos and dormitories across New England. Lundermac was founded in 1940 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, by Lilian Shapiro's father, Gerard Wolfe. Joseph Shapiro learned the business from Wolfe, beginning as a salesperson in 1961 and rising to President of the company in 1988, when the company was moved to Dedham, Massachusetts. The company was sold to the Mac-Gray Corporation based in Waltham, Massachusetts, for $11.5 million in 2010.

The Shapiros began their collection, according to a July 13, 2003 article in the Boston Sunday Globe, in the summer of 1980. While picking up one of their children from camp they spotted an old washer in an antique shop in New Hampshire. They began collecting antique washing machines of all kinds and later any laundry related material such as washboards, clothespins, wash paddles, soapboxes, toys, puzzles, advertising, trade cards and store displays. The material classified as laundry ephemera was donated to the Brown University Library in 2010.

Parts of the Shapiro's collection were exhibited at the Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington, Massachusetts, from July 2005 to March 2006. The exhibit was entitled "Blue Monday: Doing Laundry in America".

Lilian Shapiro passed away on April 10, 2011, in New York City, at the age of 74. Joseph Shapiro died on October 18, 2015 in New York City at the age of 84.