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Former Locations of Companies Profiled in the Made-in-Chicago Museum. 5 mi. Cable Piano Company 57 Jackson Blvd Chicago IL 60604. National Washboard Co. 72 W Adams St Chicago IL 60603. Zeno MFG Co. 150 W Van Buren St Chicago IL 60605. Rand McNally 536 S Clark St Chicago IL 60605.
Aug 1, 2016 · The Old Chicago Markets. Chicago was once known as the “Bread Basket of the Midwest” – and for good reason, as much of the country’s meat and produce passed through its markets. As America was growing and expanding, the bounty of food needed to feed the masses demanded an aggressive system of collection and well-organized channels of ...
- Kim Grimm
Oct 7, 2015 · The Newberry holds Chicago city directories back to 1844 and many are available on ChicagoAncestors.org. There are also business-only directories from 1839-1943. The library holds many years of the residential telephone directories (“White Pages”). The classified directory (“The Red Book”) is available for some years in the 1920s, 1930s ...
By 1920, the ILGWU claimed a membership of 6,000, two-thirds of Chicago's women's clothing workforce. The mid-1920s turned out to be a high point. With a larger share of the national market than before and with labor relations stabilized through collective bargaining, Chicago's clothing industry was faced with new challenges.
- Clothing and Garment Manufacturing
- History of Bell & Howell, Part I: When Donnie Met Bert
- II. Howell at The Moon
- III. For Whom The Bell Tolls
- IV. Make Your Own Cinepictures
- V. The War Boom
- VI. Our Post-War Museum Pieces in Context
- VII. The Golden Child
- VIII. The Iris Closes
As the folklore goes, the namesakes of B&H first crossed paths in a Chicago machine shop, although accounts of the exact when-and-how vary significantly. The Crary Machine Works on Illinois Street is a popular choice for the “where.” Albert Howell(b. 1879) grew up in the lumber region of northern Michigan, moving to Chicago with his family at the a...
“If you already own a B&H camera,” another ’40s era Bell & Howell promotional pamphlet would later claim, “you will be interested in learning how your camera had its genesis back in the days when your father was going to ‘nickel shows.’ You own a thoroughbred, and here we give you its pedigree.” That pedigree—a proud selling point of B&H products f...
As mentioned, Don Bell didn’t necessarily take this massive new success in stride. While he was out selling the Bell & Howell name across the country, he started developing a growing paranoia about how the business was being run back in Chicago. One of Bell’s own hires, general manager Joseph McNabb, became a particular thorn in his side. Things re...
“Unsatisfied to stop with giving 15 million people a day a movie show to go to, Bell & Howell has turned the back yard, the golf club, the athletic field, or the deck of a liner into a Hollywood ‘lot’—has made it not only possible but easy and inexpensive for the individual to take and show his own movies.” —Filmo Topics, 1932 Along with opening of...
“Skylights once brought sunshine to Bell & Howell employees in the Larchmont Building,” Chicago Reader scribe Wende Zomnir wrote in 1994, looking back at the history of the old factory shortly before its conversion into lofts. “But in the early 1940s, the skylights were covered with black tar to conceal wartime tasks performed for the U.S. governme...
It was during these same years of transition, surrounding the deaths of McNabb and Howell and the rise of Percy, that the items in our museum collection were all at the apex of their popularity. The Filmo Auto Load 16mm Movie Camera and Filmosound 179 Projector had both debuted during the war years, while the 8mm 172 camera came along a few years a...
There were plenty of raised eyebrows, both in Chicago and around the world, when the Bell & Howell board named Charles H. Percy the successor to the late J.H. McNabb in 1949. The choice was far less of a surprise in the B&H offices, though, where Percy—despite not having yet turned 30—had already spent 12 years as the boss’s handpicked heir. Much l...
After Percy left, the humorously named Peter Peterson took over as Bell & Howell president, and he mostly followed in his predecessor’s footsteps, investing in new opportunities and expanding B&H’s marketplace into radio equipment, copy machines, and communications tech for the space-age. In 1970, five years after Kodak shook up the industry with i...
Early 20th century Madeline Blast furnace [1] The Inland Steel Company was an American steel company active in 1893–1998. Its history as an independent firm thus spanned much of the 20th century. It was headquartered in Chicago at the landmark Inland Steel Building . Inland Steel was an integrated steel company that reduced iron ore to steel.
For more than four decades, 410 Sheridan Road was home to the Spiegels, founding family of the Chicago-based mail order company, Spiegel Inc., and its iconic “Spiegel Catalog.”. Universally known to consumers in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, the company opened its doors in 1865 under the name “J. Spiegel & Company” and remained a ...
