Forty Years of Leather: A History of the Harris Family Business

The story of Leather Corner Shoe Repair began 45 years ago with one man’s dream to make a pair of pants for himself. Today, standing in his shop, Timothy Harris sports a pair of leather pants-boots, his own design, and a shirt, with raglan sleeves, which meet in the center-back and run up to the collar in a kind of turtle neck. The shirt also zippers down the front - and the sleeves. But, his craftwork had humbler beginnings. He remembers his first pair of pants with a laugh, “I had to keep cutting down the pattern until I could barely squeeze into them.”

At the time, Timothy had been working at Raymond Corporation. “I hung out in the saddlery and watched the guy make saddles,” he continued, “And then the parts washer - the saddle maker next door - went blind, so I bought hides off of him for a dollar a piece and started making stuff.”

Tim had always been good with his hands. Even as a paperboy in the ‘50s, he fixed up his own bicycle. A natural autodidact with a penchant for handiwork and painting, Tim taught himself the craft of leatherwork through trial and error - and periodic visits to the library. After marrying Philomena Harris in the late ‘60s and having their son, Richard, he taught her the craft as well. For Tim, leatherwork is creative - an art and an outlet.

In many ways, leatherwork is the same as sewing, I learned. Tim takes a person’s measurements, constructs a custom pattern, and then cuts the leather and sews it together. To do this work, he has to buy single hides for $325-$400 wholesale, enough material to make one jacket. Crafting and repairing leather shoes requires an entirely different set of skills. “You gotta come up with shoe lathes - with a hinged section, so you can fold the heel up. And then you sand and shape that to the shape of the shoe. And you get all the foot measurements and you look at the shape of the arch.” Tim’s passion for leatherwork was obvious - as was his expert knowledge, of both the technical process of production and the global leather industry.

In 1972, when he lost his job at Raymond, he and Philomena passed a shoe repair in the Binghamton Plaza. “My wife says, 'You do leather work - go in there and they'll hire you.' And I did. And they did. After two weeks, I was running the shoe repair." From then on, the Harris’ dedicated themselves to leatherwork.

“The cobbler shop was a crazy place,” Tim exclaims. “There was an Argentinian man in there. Him and his wife had fled Argentina because of the disappeared. I started making stuff with him and he would sell the stuff in NYC and we hooked up with other Argentinians in NYC and then we all moved to NYC and worked in a place called Rona. We were doing wholesale - we were doing Macy's, everybody. So we were doing the whole crafts show, five floors of a hotel with the vendors and everybody walking around handing out contracts. They tried to move it to California, but my wife's family was here, so we didn't go to California; we came back up here.” Back in Binghamton, the Harris’ bought out the bankrupt Shoe Repair, where Tim had gotten his start. Four decades later, they’re still in business.

The leather industry certainly hasn’t remained the same, though. In the ‘70s, custom leather was in vogue. “We were making Walter Dyer type stuff,” Tim says, “The latted gold laced together pocketbooks. And some French coats, pants, vests." There was the lawyer’s wife, who commissioned a four-piece suit of pure white leather. And the head veterinarian for New York State, who requested a big leather bag. Even Sting came into the shop with the Police to inquire about leather pants for the whole band after playing a show at the Broome County Arena.

When the demand for custom leather died off in the ‘80s, “then shoe repair came back up. And then we used to make a lot of sandals. The Jesus sandals,” Tim recounts. Today, most of the Harris’ business comes from bikers who need patches sewn to their motorcycle jackets. They haven’t sold custom leather garments for years.

When asked why the market has dropped out for custom leather, Tim outlines a long history - of tanneries and craft leather shops dying off over decades, first in the Southern Tier, then the Northeast, and then the US entirely. Environmental regulations increased. Real wages declined. American craft leather surrendered to the new Asian market. Endicott-Johnson shoe factory - with which Tim had contracted for a time to make custom prototypes - left town. Leather shops in the Southern Tier closed, one by one - Leather Lines, which was filled with the custom creations of its owner; Leather Bound, whose owner stuffed a whole car with wholesale coats from a Pakistani train container. Oakdale Mall forced The Leather Attic out by tripling their rent in an effort to rent only to chains. A saddler in Greene, who had set up shop in an abandoned railroad station, shipped saddles to Texas to stay afloat.

But, like the eye of a hurricane, the Leather Corner Shoe Repair has remained in its original location at 33 West State Street in Binghamton for forty-five years, while the world economy has transformed around it.