Automotive History Online

In 1863 George N. Pierce (1846-1911) came to buffalo from Friendsville, Pennsylvania at the age of seventeen. He married into a well-to-do local family, and ten years and several jobs later, he partnered with two other local men and formed a company known as Heinz, Pierce and Munshauer for the manufacture of refrigerators, birdcages, iceboxes and bathtubs.

Pierce was a partner until 1878 when he left the firm to establish a rival concern under the name of George N. Pierce & Company. In 1895 he stopped manufacturing these, too. He then continued as just a bicycle company. The earliest Pierce bicycles' nameplates used an arrow which was to become the familiar hallmark of all of Pierce's advertising and nameplates for decades to come. Pierce made what was probably the best bicycle of this era. It had a shaft drive, which was considered preferable to the chain at this time. State-of-the-art suspension came from a front fork of spring leaves and a telescopic shock absorber on the drop bar. It was called the Pierce hygienic Cushion Frame with an eye toward its healthful anti-vibration qualities. The company's 1887 model sold for $75.

By 1901 the Pierce Cycle Company had grown tremendously and was located in a five-story 75,000-square-foot factory at 6-22 Hanover Street in Buffalo. In 1891 Pierce moved into bicycles and then cars.

At this point George K. Birge and some friends bought into Pierce's business, which in 1899 Birge reorganized and brought in Scottish engineer David Fergusson. Reliance on steam power was abandoned, and in 1900 a gas-powered Motorette was placed on the market. Two years later the company was making its own engines and a year after that was selling the fifteen horsepower Arrow and the twenty-four horsepower Great Arrow. The Arrow automobile continued to be made in the same bicycle plant on Hanover Street until 1907, when the company split into two companies and the auto production was moved to a new plant that was built next to the New York Central Belt Line Railroad on Elmwood Avenue at Great Arrow - land once occupied by a portion of the Midway of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition - covering fifteen acres of land. The complex had one million, sixteen thousand four hundred square feet of floor space for over 10,000 workers.

The Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Co. was officially launched in 1907. In a fit of pique, Pierce withdrew from management in 1908 and the Pierce family sold its interest and left the company. . Birge was president of the auto company from 1908-1916. Pierce died from a heart attack in 1910 at his home at the Lenox residence hotel.. He was interred in a family mausoleum, built by his wife, Louisa, in the Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, adjacent to Mirror Lake in Section 23.

Pierce-Arrow affiliated with the Studebaker Corporation in 1928 but the relationship would be short lived. The Studebaker Corporation failed in 1933, a group of Buffalo businessmen led by George F. Rand Jr., bought control of the Pierce-Arrow operation and kept it open under the presidency of Arthur J. Chanter until 1938 when Pierce-Arrow also went bankrupt.