1510 South Third Street (Anna Casey Glover)
Residence of Anna Casey Glover from 1897-1912
This was the home of Madame Glover, one of Louisville’s leading dressmakers. In Madame Glover’s time, clothing was crafted by hand instead of mass-produced in factories. Many women entering the workforce in the 1800s and early 1900s chose dressmaking as a career. For a time, it was the fourth most popular women’s occupation. The work was rewarding, both in its creative aspects as well as financially. A dressmaker producing clothing in the latest fashion was well-known, highly valued, and sought after by wealthy women. Dressmaking was also viewed as a suitable career for women because sewing had ties to women’s traditional roles.
Madame Glover was born Anna Casey in Ireland in 1861. Her family immigrated to Louisville when she was a young child and she began working in the seamstress trade as a teenager. The death of her father in 1883 pushed her further into the workplace. She was soon in charge of one of the dressmaking departments for the firm Sharpe & Middleton, where she worked for three years. Two of her younger sisters also worked at the store, located on 4th Street in downtown Louisville, a popular shopping district. At Sharpe & Middleton, Anna specialized in creating wedding dresses for Louisville’s brides, and made “more trousseaus than any dressmaker in town.” (A trousseau was a collection of clothing gathered by a bride before her marriage.)
In 1886, Anna Casey married Walter E. Glover wearing a stylish dress that testified to her taste and skill. Her husband was soon known as one of the best-dressed men in the city. Mr. Glover was in the insurance and hotel businesses, but over the years one of his primary enterprises became managing his wife’s dressmaking business as she became an independent dressmaker, "Madame" Glover. This arrangement suited Glover; she was free to design while her husband handled the business affairs and kept the books. Young women entering society as debutantes were frequent customers at Madame Glover’s 4th Street shop, ordering numerous reception dresses and ball gowns. Debutantes might require as many as twelve to eighteen dresses for a season. The local newspaper reported that “all of the debutantes of the early 1900s were gowned in Madame Glover’s exclusive shop.”
Demand was brisk and Madame Glover employed more than 70 girls to assist with basic sewing tasks, with some specializing in lace, tailoring, or fur. Keeping up with the current fashions demanded much of Madame Glover’s attention. Paris was considered the capital of the fashion world and innovations by the city’s fashion leaders were eagerly adopted in the United States. Madame Glover often traveled to Paris for inspiration, making more than 100 trips to Europe for cloth and trimmings over the course of her career. She is credited with introducing Louisville to one of Paris’ latest fashions in 1910: a slim, tight skirt called the hobble skirt.
Madame Glover’s husband died in 1912; she gave up her business and home in Old Louisville soon afterwards, moving to New York. She was remembered in Louisville as a woman who dressed beautifully, a perfectionist, a devout Catholic who was kind to the less fortunate, and a person with a large circle of friends.