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Milestones: Godfrey-Hoffman
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Business New Haven
11/24/2003
By: Mimi Houston
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Godfrey-Hoffman
2911 Dixwell Ave., Suite 301
Hamden, CT 06518
Tel: 203-248-4217
Web: www.godfreyhoffman.com
Milestone: 75 years
Timeline: When Gus Giordano founded a engineering company in 1924, the young Yale graduate seemed destined to create a lasting business. Fellow Yalie and partner Louis Stein became the first city employee to get a company car - even before New Haven's mayor. Not very many people had cars, though they still had to get to work somehow.
"My uncle remembers riding the trolley to do surveys," recalls Adam Hoffman, now owner of the firm that once was Giordano & Stein, Land Surveyors. "He went to work for them while he was going to school and he eventually took over the business. In 1962 he renamed it Bernard E. Godfrey Land Surveyors."
While it seems a natural progression to keep a thriving business in the family, this was a case where it almost didn't happen.
"I did work for my uncle when I was 17," begins Hoffman, "but I really didn't know what I was going to do. Then someone in the company had an accident. My uncle asked me to go around with him while he was surveying and carry his equipment. I found I really liked it - I liked being outside, in the field.
"Then I remember the minimum wage went up. That's what he was paying me. But my uncle didn't give me the raise. He was trying to get me to get serious about it and go to school for it. He had this all planned - he'd already talked to my father about it."
Hoffman remembers being angry about it for a good while, and then finally coming to the decision to join the business. He went off to school at Paul Smith College near Lake Placid, N.Y., where on top of books and equipment, Hoffman also had to invest in a good pair of snowshoes.
"They were required equipment," he laughs. "They also told us what coats to buy and the type of socks we needed. It really made a difference."
Hoffman joined his uncle in 1982, became licensed in 1988 and became a partner. Then his uncle changed the name of the firm to Godfrey Hoffman Associates. When Godfrey retired in 2000, Hoffman added "LLC" to the name, and plans not to change it again. Preparing to celebrate the company's 80th anniversary, Hoffman has tremendous respect for the work his forefathers did.
"We still have every map they drew," he states. "And we use them." But the methods and tools those earlier surveyors used have changed, he acknowledges.
"My uncle did a job in 1962," recalls Hoffman. "It was a 300-lot subdivision that actually never got built. It took three months for them to compute the calculations. In the 1990s I redid the calculations on the computer. I did it in a day. And I corrected a few mistakes, too."
Looking Back on a Changing Industry: Hoffman says that, like most industries, surveying has changed dramatically with the introduction of new technology.
"We can do 100 times more work than we used to do in the field" owing to computers, he says. "You used to go out and measure with a metal tape, and measure again to be sure, and if you came up with a different number you had to measure again. Now you go out with a computer, push a button and you know it's correct."
And Hoffman appreciates the integrity of his uncle and those fine men before him.
"People call us up because they know who we are," he attests. "We're very busy because we've got years of a good reputation for getting the job done and doing it on time. I remember when I was a kid on the job and I saw carpenters dragging their kids around. Now I work with those kids. Those kids asked their fathers who to call and they give them our name."
And so the phones at Godfrey Hoffman Associates, LLC continue to ring - some 80 years later.
"We do all kinds of work here - some residential, some commercial, some industrial - but nothing too large. We try and stay within New Haven County.
Hoffman says his employees are almost all very long-term.
"We're a nice team," he allows. "No one wants to leave.
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