The Engineering and Research Corporation’s ‘Rosie the Riveters’: women war workers in Riverdale, Maryland
- Eloise Sinclair
- Jul 28
- 7 min read
Today, Rosie the Riveter is a familiar icon of female empowerment. Yet, the lives and experiences of the 3 million women who inspired the figure, are far less well known. Many such women worked at the Engineering and Research Corporation’s (ERCO) factory in Riverdale, Maryland, located within four miles of the District of Columbia. In 1942, ERCO became one of the tens of thousands of factories to welcome women to the factory floor. They joined the workforce and operated riveting, punching, and welding machines in order to produce munitions for the war effort.
“Rosie the Riveter”
In 1942, Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb introduced “Rosie the Riveter” in a song of the same name. In this song, Rosie is an assembly line worker who earned an “E” for Excellence award from the Army and Navy for her contributions to the war effort.
Whether Rosie was based on a single woman and who that woman was is open to debate. Some sources claim that she was actually Rose Will Monroe, a riveter at the Willow Run Bomber Plant near Detroit, Michigan who was featured in a promotional film for war bonds. Others say that it was Naomi Parker Fraley who was photographed wearing a polka-dotted bandana while working in the machine shop at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. Could one of ERCO’s women workers be another contender?
The Engineering and Research Corporation (ERCO)
ERCO was famous for making the Ercoupe, the airplane that “anyone could fly.” It was first tested at College Park Airport in 1937, which was less than a mile from the factory. However, production of the aircraft halted in 1941 to produce artillery for World War Two.
The war led to manufacturing labor shortages and in December 1942, ERCO finally recruited women to work as riveters, punchers, and welders. Before starting in the factory, newly hired women attended night training classes at Hyattsville High School to prepare for the highly specialized work in the many machine shops and offices. Among the first women to start at ERCO was Agnes Milstead who is represented in the museum’s ERCO Collection.
By December 1944, 400 women were employed at the factory producing gun turrets and drop tanks. By the end of the war, ERCO's workforce had grown dramatically, expanding from 500 to 3,800 employees, with women making up approximately 40% of the workforce. Nationally, 6.6 million women entered the labor force and held more than one third of all jobs in manufacturing.
Once completed, the ball turrets, named for their spherical shape would be attached to the top or bottom of a bomber aircraft’s fuselage. The gunner would sit inside the turrets to fire the guns, either together or separately. The turret included an interphone with a direct line to the aircraft pilot.
In mid-1943, the ERCO ball turret became the preferred choice for the US Navy’s Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberator and PB4Y-2 Privateer patrol bombers.
Drop tanks are external fuel tanks which were carried by fighter pilots to have extra usable fuel. They could also be dropped to reduce weight or as improvised bombs.
In 1943, ERCO received an “E” for Excellence award from the Army and Navy for their contributions to war production. Each riveter was presented with a pin in a lavish ceremony on February 20th at the Ritchie Coliseum, University of Maryland, College Park, complete with music, speeches, and the raising of the Army-Navy flag outside the factory. The event was even broadcast on the radio.
Calvert Homes
The larger number of workers and working families created a need for war-time housing close to factories. The newly established National Housing Authority built 700,000 dwelling units across the country to accommodate the 4,000,000 war workers and their families. In the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area, 44,400 new units were built. 500 such homes were built across the railroad tracks from the ERCO Factory in 1943. They were called “Calvert Homes” after the College Park neighborhood they were located in, Calvert Hills. They were designed to fit every family, regardless of size, and to accommodate employees of all salaries. The monthly rent typically ranged from $33 to $55—equivalent to approximately $652 to $1,087 in 2026 dollars. Each house had a private bath and shower, cooking and heating stoves, and an icebox. There was also a nursery and a school located inside the housing community, enabling women to work longer hours and children to travel to and from school on foot and without crossing busy streets.
To secure a Calvert Home, ERCO workers had to complete an application and an interview. Although ERCO workers had priority over war workers at other factories, obtaining a unit was not guaranteed. The Boswell family made the first successful application and moved into their new home in October 1943. It had twice as much room as their old apartment in DC’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and cost $34 a month, rather than $60.
Fun at ERCO
Working at ERCO was tough and exhausting, but there were plenty of opportunities to unwind, socialize, and forget about the war for an hour or two. ERCO employees, or ERCO-ites as they were known, formed a number of sports teams and organized regular competitions. These included a women’s basketball team and women’s bowling team; the latter was known as the ‘ERCOquettes.’ Employees also produced and published a magazine, called The Tale Spinner, which they distributed every two months. Issues featured articles about social events, gossip columns, and cartoons.
Although women’s contributions to war-time production and sports activities were highlighted in The Tale Spinner, women were also mocked in cartoons like the one below.
This man expresses frustration with his wife for being too attached to her job at ERCO. She is shown making fried eggs for him with a blow torch while still wearing her work overalls and goggles. This depiction of women workers differs from recruitment posters which emphasize the value of their contribution to the war effort. It is unclear whether this cartoon is simply making light-hearted fun of ERCO's women workers or reflects male workers' attitudes toward these women and their expected roles in the workplace and the home.
Women were also often the focus of a series of illustrations titled, “Don’t be a Jerco.” In the first example below, they are ridiculed for not taking proper safety precautions and endangering themselves. In the second illustration, it is the man who is being criticized for injuring himself, but the blame is still clearly placed on the woman worker. Depicted in figure-hugging overalls, she is a distraction to male workers, who hampers their situational awareness and productivity.
It is not clear how typical satirical cartoons about riveters were. Interestingly, the “We Can Do It” poster, which is by far the most well-known Rosie the Riveter image today, was not widely circulated during the war. In fact, it was only displayed for two weeks in factories in the western Pennsylvania area. Perhaps, the images of and views of women workers during World War Two were more varied than we might at first assume.
The end of the war
After the war, many women were forced out of their war-time jobs to make space for returning men. These women had little choice but to return to lower-paying positions. A US Employment Service poll found that 41% to 61% of post-war openings for women were clerical, service, or sales jobs, but only 15% to 18% of displaced women workers wanted to work in those fields. The majority wanted to continue to work in factories and use the skills they had honed during the war years.
Examining College Park Aviation Museum’s ERCO Collection, it is unclear if any of ERCO’s women workers were able to keep their jobs. This photograph from November 1945 does feature a woman on the factory floor. However, she does not seem to be working on the assembly line and could be on the floor for another reason; she could be delivering a message. Women had always worked in the ERCO offices as secretaries.
Another photograph of the assembly line, taken on the same day shows several men working on the planes and no women. No additional photographs of women working on the shop floor after the war have been uncovered in the museum’s ERCO archives which include photographs through the 1950s and 60s, suggesting that they may have been pushed out.
The end of the Calvert Homes
In 1945, public housing units, like the Calvert Homes, were transferred to private developers and authorities. The subsequent rent increases meant that many ERCO employees and their families could no longer afford to live there. Most of the homes were taken over by ex-servicemen attending the University of Maryland under the provisions of the GI Bill. All 500 units were demolished in the 1950s.
ERCO’s women workers are the classic Rosie the Riveters; they worked long hours, operated heavy machinery, and won awards for their contributions to wartime production. These women played an incredibly important role even if it was only for a short time. They proved that women could successfully carry out traditionally male jobs and paved the way for women to be welcomed into different sectors of the workforce in the following decades.
The featured photographs and magazines are just some of the items which have been rediscovered in the museum’s vast ERCO collection. As the museum continues to catalog its collection, it is uncovering more peoples’ valuable and inspiring stories and experiences and would love to learn more about women and men who worked at ERCO from the 1930s through the 1960s. Please leave a comment if you have any information you would like to share.
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