The History of Mold-A-Rama Inc., Brookfield, Illinois.

The inventor, Tike Miller (J.H. Miller), did not set out to create one of the most unique vending machines ever constructed. He merely wanted to replace a broken piece for his Holiday Nativity set. When he went to the department stores, they only sold complete sets. Seeing the need, he and his wife started making plaster Nativity pieces in their basement. Soon, he had a factory, making dozens of plaster figurines that he sold in those same department stores.

In later years, Miller crafted additional lines of figurines. They made a line of Space Invaders, Jungle Animals, Holiday Specialties, and his famous Dinosaurs. The difference in these figures was that they were made with waxy plastic instead of plaster. It is thought that this is where Miller first started his experiments with plastic and his new plastic injection process. Using his plastic injection molding machines, Tike made hundreds of wax/plastic dinosaurs in his Quincy, Illinois, factory.

1965

In the late 1950s, Tike Miller sold the rights to his idea of a souvenir-making machine to Automatic Retailers of America Inc. (ARA). For the next few years, he worked with ARA to develop a new vending machine that could make a wax souvenir for anyone with a quarter. A new division of ARA was born, and the term Mold-A-Rama entered the public vernacular.

Debuting at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, the bubble-topped machines created waxy, plastic models of the Fair's showcase building, the Space Needle, a monorail, a Buddha, a 3D sculpture of the Fair's logo, and other fun designs. At 50¢ each ($5 today), the souvenirs weren't cheap, but the experience of watching the statue created before your eyes must have convinced fairgoers they were seeing the future of manufacturing. 

The William A. Jones Company was founded on April 22, 1971, when Jones purchased his first Mold-A-Rama machines from Roy Ward in Chicago.

Roy was an employee of the original Mold-A-Rama Inc. and purchased several machines and two operating locations, Brookfield Zoo & The Museum of Science and Industry, both in Chicagoland, from ARA. When they decided to dissolve the Mold-A-Rama division of ARA, he operated for only a few years and then decided to sell his machines and retire.

Jones was a Michigan State Graduate working as a supervising accountant at Interstate United, a vending & food service Company much like ARA. After a particularly long day, Bill told soon-to-be retiring coworker Doris Ward, "Why don't you have your husband sell me his business so I can get out of this rat race the same time you do." She replied, "Roy and I were discussing finding a buyer last night." A year and a half later, after working with Roy on weekends, Bill Jones acquired all the Mold-A-Rama machines in the Chicago area.

The production of the Mold-A-Rama machines ended in the mid-1960s.

By 1971, the original Mold-A-Rama Inc. had dissolved entirely, and ARA grew. Today, that company is known as Aramark Food Company (worth $10.5 Billion today). A handful of small businessmen saw the potential in Mold-A-Rama machines and kept them out and running. One of them was Paul Nathanson, an operator out of Minnesota. Paul and Bill soon began working with each other, sharing purchases of custom-made parts. They loaned each other materials and helped each other when needed. Paul Nathanson was one of the original franchisees of Mold-A-Rama and had several working accounts and many more machines than William. But in the early eighties, Paul decided he wanted to call it quits, and William bought him out and became the Midwest's biggest operator of Mold-A-Rama machines.

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Some years after Mold-A-Rama Inc. was dissolved by ARA, Tike Miller was back to wearing his inventor hat. Recognizing Aluminum's value and popularity, his newest creation reclaimed this precious metal and then paid the recycler cash for the aluminum cans they had deposited. Years ahead of its time, the “Golden Goat,” as it was called, could fit in any supermarket parking space, taking up only a couple of parking spaces. Tike Miller was truly ahead of his time.

William A. Jones Co. had expanded from just the Chicago area to four states, and William brought in his sons Paul and Bill Jr. to help run the business. The Mold-A-Rama machines just keep getting older and older but are a favorite for visitors at major attractions nationwide.

At one time in the early 1970s, Mold-A-Rama machines were ubiquitous in museums, zoos, and other attractions all over the US. They were injection molding machines, and the plexiglass bubble allowed you to see a tiny part of the process — basically, the two halves of the mold coming together. Then, when they separated, you saw your molded statue in all its shiny plastic glory as a spatula-like device scraped the statue off the base underneath, dumping it into a slot for your convenient retrieval. There were dozens of designs in various colors — some specific to the place — like Disney theme parks and Sea World — while others were more generic.

The Complete Set of Disney Characters. ©Moldville

Mold-A-Rama — Disneyland Toy Factory. 25¢

There were animals, vehicles (including the Space Shuttle), things like Santa, Christmas trees, and even the Houston Astrodome. The statuettes grow frail as they age and become more susceptible to catastrophic breakage after a couple of decades. 

The Mold-A-Rama figures were a delightful treat from childhood. People remember the excitement fondly at feeding quarters into the machine, waiting while the loud rumbling and hissing of the pneumatics involved, and finally, seeing the molded creation revealed before it was unceremoniously dumped into the retrieval slot. It was still quite warm at this stage, and the instructions on the machine cautioned the new owner to hold the figure upside-down by the base until it had cooled to prevent any still-liquid plastic from spilling out through the two holes in the base. The hot plastic smell was unique and highly memorable even to this day.

In 2011, Jones Co. changed the company name to Mold-A-Rama and incorporated. Now, the largest operator of Mold-A-Rama machines in the Midwest is once again known as . . . Mold-A-Rama Incorporated.

Bill Jr. died in 2014. In 2015, William A Jones decided to step back into semi-retirement.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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2022 MOLD-A-RAMA MACHINE LOCATIONS

        Mold                                        Location

 

BROOKFIELD ZOO, CHICAGO, IL

3 Monkeys (Teal)             Tropic World Entrance

Tree (Green)                     Bookstore Annex

Santa (Red)                     Bookstore Annex

Reindeer (Brown)             West end of Pachyderm Building

Choir Girl Ornament (Blue)     Bookstore Annex

Rhino (Army Green)     East end of Pachyderm Building

Seal (Pink)                     Bookstore Annex

Gorilla (Black)                     Tropic World Entrance

Large lion (Orange)            Restrooms Coast Gifts & Café Del Sol

Penguin (White)             Restrooms Coast Gifts & Café Del Sol

Walking Bear (tan)             Underwater viewing Great Bear Wilderness

Polar Bear (White)             Underwater viewing Great Bear Wilderness

Otter (Silver)                     Just inside the Swamp exit

COMO PARK ZOO, ST. PAUL, MN

Gorilla (Black)                     Primates Building

Sea Lion (Red)             Aquatic Animal Building

Vintage Lion (Yellow)     Large Cats Building

Polar Bear (Light Blue)             Aquatic Animal Building

FIELD MUSEUM, CHICAGO, IL

Quetzalcoatlus (Light Blue)     Upper level in front of Evolving Planet

T-Rex (Red)                     Upper level in the rear hall of Evolving Planet

Apatosaurus (Green)             Main level in front of Africa

Bushman Gorilla (Brown)     Main level in front of Becoming Jane

Stegosaurus (White)     Ground level by Sea Mammals

Ankylosaurus (Green)             Ground level by Sea Mammals

HENRY FORD MUSEUM, DEARBORN, MI

Weiner Mobile (Orange)              In front of Plum Market Kitchen

Mustang (Orange)            In the back of Liberty & Justice for All

Abraham Lincoln (White)    In the back of Liberty & Justice for All

Rosa Parks Bus (Green)             Corner of Liberty & Justice for All

Mickey Mouse (Red)     Giant Screen Theater

Henry Ford(Gray)             Giant Screen Theater

Model T (Black)             Made in America Manufacturing

Kennedy Limo (Black)             Presidential Vehicle Wall

Train (Silver)                     In front of the Allegheny Train

Gasser (Blue)                     In front of the Allegheny Train

MILWAUKEE COUNTY ZOO, MILWAUKEE, WI

Bat (Black)                                  Outside exit of small mammals building

Elephant (Grey)             Outside of Conservation outpost

Tiger (Orange)                     North end of Feline House

Giraffe (Red)                    Across from Giraffe yard west side of the Mall

Gorilla (Black)                     Indoor Gorilla Exhibit

Lion (Yellow)                     South end of Feline House

3 Monkeys (Brown)             Outside the west wall of Primate House

Skull (White)                     In front of the Polar Bear exhibit

Ghost (Purple)                     On the East side of the mall, across from the Giraffes

Panther (Tan)                     Walkway near Flamingo Cafe’s Patio

Standing Frank (Green)             Under the Mold-A-Rama tent next to the train station

Eagle (Blue)                     Under Mold-A-Rama tent next to the train station

Seahorse (Silver)             Outside the west wall of Primate House

MUSEUM OF SCIENCE & INDUSTRY, CHICAGO, IL

Tractor (Green)             By the farm exhibit

U505 (Gray)                     Lower level near U505 entrance

Baby Chicks (Yellow)     Main level in Genetics across from hatchery

Train (Black)                     Main level by Great Train story

Chicago Skyline (Red)             Main level near the silver elevator

Robot (Silver)                     Inside Mold-A-Rama exhibit

Monorail (Green)             Inside the Mold-A-Rama exhibit

HMS Bounty                     Inside the Mold-A-Rama exhibit

Choir girl ornament (White)     Inside the Mold-A-Rama exhibit

SAN ANTONIO ZOO, SAN ANTONIO, TX

Elephant (Gray)             Across from the Jaguar before Riverview

Giraffe & Baby (Orange)             Across from the Jaguar before Riverview

Flamingo (Red)             Next to the Crossroads Cafe

3 Monkeys (Green)             Next to the Crossroads Cafe

Rhino (Brown)                     Near Carousel Ticket Booth

Lion (Yellow)                     Across from Lory Landing

Hippo (Blue)                     Across from Lory Landing

Kangaroo (Pink)             Near Carousel Ticket Booth

The Abingdon Sanitary Manufacturing Company, Abingdon, Illinois.

The Abingdon Sanitary Manufacturing Company was founded in 1908 and produced vitreous (resembling glass) china plumbing fixtures. 

The company introduced the first colored plumbing fixtures in 1928 and made all the fixtures used at the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair (a nice contract). To stay in business during the Great Depression, the company started producing artware in 1934 made out of the same material.

Abingdon Little Old Lady with Flower Basket Cookie Jar.

Abingdon Depot.

Between 1934 and 1950, millions of pieces were produced; over 80% of the pieces were sprayed, and 95% were made in a glossy glaze. Increased demand for plumbing fixtures caused the company to stop producing artware in 1950.

Stone Quarry near Abingdon, Ill.

The lead found at the Abingdon Pottery factory site most likely came from lead glazing, which gave the fixtures and pottery pieces their shine.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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BATHROOM FIXTURES

The First Pay-TV Service in the World was "Phonevision" by Zenith, aired in 1931 on Chicago's KS2XBS (Channel 2).

Phonevision was a project by Zenith Radio Company to create the world's first pay television system. It was developed and first launched in Chicago.

E.F. McDonald's vision wasn't that far from what some early pioneers intended for radio. Though he continued to call himself "the father of the radio," Dr. Lee de Forest (inventor of the "audion" vacuum tube and the "discoverer" of regeneration if the courts are to be believed) turned his back on the broadcast frenzy. He was appalled by the crass commercialism already in place by the 1930s. De Forest thought that the public should be allowed to sit down and enjoy a concert, a history lesson, or just simply the news of the day without being huckstered by a fast-talking shaving cream salesman.

But it was not to be. It all boiled down to economics and time. Radio needed commercial sponsorship if it was to survive and grow. As the industry was abandoning the mechanical era and embracing the new electronic era of television research, design and manufacture, it became abundantly clear that if television was to survive and surpass radio as the popular medium, it needed the cash flow that only commercial television sponsorship could provide. McDonald, chairman and owner of independent radio manufacturer Zenith Radio Corporation in Chicago, firmly believed De Forest's thinking. Zenith had experimented with "subscription television" as early as 1931. 

Phonevision Program Guide cover.

By 1947 they had a working system and, in 1951, coined and trademarked the name "Phonevision" to identify their efforts. After receiving FCC approval, a 90-day test run was conducted utilizing 300 families from the Lakeview-Lincoln Park Chicago area. This area was chosen due to the limited broadcast range of the station.

Chicago Broadcast TV Networks 1950-1954.

KS2XBS was located at the Field Building downtown, and its Phonevision central distribution center was at 3477 North Clark Street. The lucky 300, equipped with a set-top converter (the first in a long line of boxes to sit atop the TV) and a dedicated telephone line, enjoyed first-run movies that were supplied under a special deal with Zenith and some of the major film studios. A typical broadcast day for Phonevision subscribers might include The Enchanted Cottage, a Robert Young film from 1945 (very recent compared to the movies available on television at the time). The film would be shown three days in a row, scheduled at different times each day. The station would receive the movie two days in advance and store them in a special film vault. Jerry Daly, along with his projectionist staff of Jim Starbuck and Roland Long, was responsible for the safety of the film. Television, in the beginning, was considered Hollywood's mortal enemy. But McDonald and Zenith were determined to prove that the two could work side by side. For the not-so-low price of $1 ($3.25 in 1951), folks could see a major motion picture in their living rooms without commercial interruption.

The experiment was attracting citywide attention. People tried to build or buy pirate boxes to circumvent the system and avoid payment. In the first month of the test, only the video was scrambled. The audio was as clear as a whistle; many sat through the scrambled picture and just listened. The second month, however, changed all that when Zenith began to scramble the sound, making all those pirate boxes obsolete. 

The people who paid for their Phonevision service were required to do the following to watch their movies. Call the Phonevision operator and ask to be "plugged in."  Daisy Davis and Dean Barnell supervised the operators day and night. The subscriber would turn to channel 3 on the television and turn on his Phonevision converter, which would be patched into the antenna terminals on the set and a phone line. According to The Zenith Story, an in-house 1954 publication, those families averaged about 1.73 movies weekly. Not quite enough to qualify as a commercial success. The results were disappointing as McDonald had hoped to transform KS2XBS into commercial licensed WTZR.

The experiment was plagued by technical problems right from the beginning. Passing planes and trucks was known to wreak havoc on the signal making the experience less than enjoyable. This was, of course, provided you even received the scrambled signal. But Zenith refused to give up and, in 1953, was ready to try again.

But by this time, commercial television was firmly in place, and the advertisers (who told the networks when to jump) generally frowned upon the "alternative" to commercially sponsored television. Educational television, though noncommercial, was not considered a threat. By 1953, all of the experimental licenses in Chicago had been replaced by commercial ones. Zenith, so involved with its Phonevision system, apparently didn't see or chose to ignore the situation, and KS2XBS found itself in a difficult situation.

1953 was the year that brought together The American Broadcasting Company and United Paramount Theaters. Because licensees could only own one television station in the same market- a problem quickly arose. UPT, through its Balaban & Katz subsidiary, owned WBKB Channel 4. ABC-TV owned and operated WENR-TV on channel 7. CBS, itself lagging behind for a completely different reason- its Peter Goldmark-designed field sequential color television system, did not own a station in the Chicago market. Its shows were carried mainly by WBKB. CBS quickly coughed up $6 million for the station in a sweetheart deal arranged by CBS head Bill Paley and ABC head Edward Noble.

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Subscription broadcast television used a method referred to as "narrowcasting." Employing this method, a station would transmit a scrambled picture and a code encoded in a single sideband of the audio signal. A set-top decoder would read the code and descramble the picture. Different "levels" of service (in reality, differing codes) would allow the subscriber access to the service's regular programming, special events, and late-night adult programming.

But the sale was not without its conditions. For several years, Milwaukee's WTMJ-TV and KCZO, a Kalamazoo station, had been broadcasting on channel 3, and this caused interference problems for both stations. The FCC ordered WTMJ-TV to move to channel 4 and WBBM-TV to channel 2.

McDonald cried foul and petitioned the FCC to allow Zenith to continue its experiments on channel 2 since "they had occupied the channel since 1939" when W9XZV, Zenith's original station on channel 1,  first went on air on March 30, 1939. A shuffling of VHF allocations found the station at the number two position. But there are no squatters' rights in broadcasting. Whether it was because of the deep pockets at CBS or just the FCC's disappointment with Zenith's less-than-desirable results of its Phonevision experiments, the commission stood firm. It was the second time Zenith's channel position was challenged. Before the war, NBC had threatened to petition the FCC for the W9XZV channel 1 license. On July 5, 1953, WBBM-TV moved to its current home on channel 2, and Zenith signed off for good.

Oddity Archive: Episode 89 – Prehistoric Pay-Per-View

The 50-second show's opening will test your memory and prove your age.

This wasn't the end of Phonevision, however. Zenith conducted another experiment with an improved system that would have been tried on KS2XBS. In 1954, Zenith used New York station WOR-TV, and this experiment was considered a success over the Chicago version. In the same year, Zenith also tried its Phonevision system in New Zealand and Australia. By the early seventies, Zenith was still trying to make its Phonevision a successful commercially viable venture, this time in Hartford, Connecticut, and again as late as 1986 using the Centel Cable system in Traverse City, Michigan. None were successful enough.

The idea of a pay television system in Chicago lingered in obscurity until the early eighties when the changing face of broadcast television inspired one major network to re-examine an old idea.

It was not until 1983 that Chicago saw another pay television experiment. This time ABC would use its WLS-TV to try a strategy to increase competition between cable television and home video. 

In Chicago, viewers were offered three choices in subscription television: a service called Sportsvision, which had been formed by a partnership between White Sox owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn and media mogul Fred Eychaner, who, through a series of intricate deals, brought WPWR channel 60 to the Chicago airwaves and split the license with Marcello Miyares who ran WBBS; ON-TV, a service of Oak Communications Inc., which purchased forty-nine percent of struggling UHF outlet WSNS channel 44 to air its content on that station as well as others in large metropolitan areas across the country; and Spectrum, a division of United Cable, that purchased airtime from WFBN channel 66, which was actually licensed to Joliet.

MY ARTICLE ─► Chicago Radio Laboratory (CRL) [Zenith Radio Corporation], Chicago

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

People's Pure Ice Company, Chicago, Illinois. Founded 1901.

People's Pure Ice Company started in the 1890s and originally consisted of four buildings at 34 Clybourn Place. Today's location would be Cortland Street at Winchester Avenue. 

The plant was built on one floor and was the first plant in the United States to utilize the "closed system" throughout. Nowhere within the buildings or about the plant is any escaping steam visible or is any water to be seen. All the machinery and apparatus, steam condensers, ammonia condensers, reboilers, water filters, etc., are all enclosed, and the steam passes in a continuous course, absolutely unexposed, from the boilers to the cans in the freezing tanks.

The model plant where all this was satisfactorily accomplished was known as the ice factory of the People's Pure Ice Company, Chicago, which was erected in 1901.

The "Ice and Refrigeration" Newsletter,  March 1, 1904 (pdf), an 11-page article, with lots of pictures. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Rudimentary Road Construction History in Early Chicago and Eastern United States.

prelude

To the pioneers moving west from the east coast towards the Mississippi River, a road was any kind of a worn track or path leading to a designated point. Some paths were well defined by animal migration.  

Don't miss my in-depth study of pre-paved Chicago: Plank Road History in the Chicago Area.

A TRAIL THROUGH THE PRAIRIE

The Romans claimed to be the first to construct a cobblestone road which appeared on Rome's unparalleled network of about 75,000 miles worth of roads beginning in the Third Century (201-300AD).

Note: The curbs double as a pedestrian walkway. Spain.

The Roman roads were notable for their straightness, solid foundations, cambered surfaces (slightly arched to facilitate drainage), and the use of a form of concrete made from pozzolana (volcanic ash) and lime to set the stones.

The term "Cobblestone" (River Rock in North America) was derived from the ancient English word "cob," which had a wide range of meanings, one of which was "rounded lump" with overtones of a larger size. "Cobble," which appeared in the 15th Century, simply added the diminutive suffix "le" to "cob" and meant a small stone (usually ten inches or less) rounded by the natural flow of river water. 

We know Cobbles as River Rocks in North America.

Cobbles were set in sand or mortar, a method of paving streets common from the 15th into the 18th Century, when hamlets and villages wanted to improve dirt road travel. These routes made travel more reliable and less weather dependent, and they also do not get muddy or rutted by rain like dirt roads do.

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In 1846, the City of London in the United Kingdom decided to replace its wood paving blocks with granite. Upon removing the old wooden blocks people were allowed to take the wood, most using it for heating by fireplace.  In the 1850s practically all of the carriageways had been paved with granite setts from Scotland. However, the streets were often muddy in wet weather and full of dust in the summer. ‘Scavengers’ were employed to clean the streets and cart away the mud and manure.

How the City of Chicago dealt with 1,660 tons of daily horse manure.

Flat stones have a narrow edge on pitched road surfaces. A thousand years passed before setts bricks were produced and used to construct roads. Setts consist of granite mined locally from [Illinois] quarries and shaped into rectangular or square bricks called Belgian Blocks, aka Chicago Street Paver Bricks.

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People often confuse Belgian block with cobblestone or call both by the same name. Nobody seems to confuse them with antique brick streets that were popular at the same time. Cobbles are very different from Belgian Blocks, and the difference is plain to see if you know what to look for. Belgian Blocks are rectangular or square, whereas cobbles are roundish and typically have smooth edges.

In contrast, Belgian blocks were quarried (limestone) and carry the shape and tool markings that come with the stone cutting process. The rougher texture may have given them a rough and noisy ride on carriages and today’s automobiles. Still, that rough texture and angular shape were imperative to creating a good solid foundation for the horse-drawn carts of those days.

There is also "Belgian Woodblock" (aka Nicolson pavement), which Chicago started using by 1853. The Belgian woodblock paving method was preferred because it was so cheap, but was unsuitable unless pitched and sanded over.

In the alley behind the Archbishop of Chicago's Mansion (built 1885) at 1555 North State Parkway before the replacement pictured below. Estimated at over 100 years old. Note how tree trunks were cut at 3 foot in length, laid out and burried 2¾ feet deep before pouring the fill and packing it down.

You can find this recently replaced Belgian Wood Block alley behind the Archbishop of Chicago's Mansion. The alley runs east-west.

Public cobblestone roads are maintained in many historic towns and districts in the country's eastern half. They are also used for new public and private decorative construction purposes, such as Koi ponds and water features.

Wisconsin River Rock Veneer.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Negro owned Chicago repair and gunsmith shop, 1899.

The only Negro owned gunsmith shop in the U.S., in 1899, was located at 2933 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois.

The Negro owner is in front of the counter.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Oliver Typewriter Factory, Woodstock, Illinois. (1895-1959)

The Oliver Typewriter is the invention of Reverend Thomas Oliver. Thomas Oliver was born in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada, on August 1, 1852. At an early age, he became interested in mechanics. After moving to Iowa in 1888, Reverend Thomas Oliver began to create a typing machine out of strips cut from tin cans and rubber. It was claimed he had never seen a typewriter of any kind before. 

After patenting several designs in the early 1890s, Reverend Oliver was able to find investors interested in his machines. With the help of investors, a brick building was leased to Oliver to manufacture his typewriter. While visiting Chicago to promote his machine, Oliver encountered a businessman who became interested in the typewriter and bought the stock held by the initial investors. Oliver received a 65% interest in the company and set out to continue the development of his typewriter.

The Oliver Typewriter Company officially opened in 1895, with headquarters in only two rooms on the ninth floor of a building in Chicago. In December 1896, manufacturing was moved from Dubuque, Iowa, to a factory on a 12-acre lot in Woodstock, Illinois. Since the Oliver Typewriter Company outgrew its office space six times in ten years, construction of a new office building began. From 1907 to 1926, 159 North Dearborn Street in Chicago served as the world headquarters for the Oliver Typewriter Company.

A minor recession from 1921 to 1922 caused a large number of customers to default on their payments resulting in the repossession of their Oliver typewriters. The board of directors voted to liquidate the Oliver Typewriter Company in 1926. 

In 1928, The Oliver Typewriter Company was sold to investors who formed the Oliver Typewriter Manufacturing Company Ltd. in Croydon, England. Around this time, the British company started selling licensed rebranded machines produced by various European nations. In 1958, the Byron Typewriter Company (formerly the Barlock Typewriter Company) of Nottingham, England, was purchased by the British Oliver Company. The licensing ventures were ultimately unsuccessful, and in May 1959, production of all Oliver typewriters ended.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

RR Donnelley, Chicago, Illinois.

The rapid growth of RR Donnelley's business required the erection of a new building at Plymouth Court and Polk Street, south of the Loop in an area that would soon be called Printing House Row (known today as Printer's Row). The architect of the new plant was Howard Van Doren Shaw, who had attended Yale with T. E. Donnelley. When the first phase was completed in May 1897, it was immediately touted by the press as the largest and most modern plant in one of the most important printing districts in the country.

Note the Chicago Street Paver Bricks.

Inside were a composing room, electrotype foundry, press rooms with twenty-two cylinder presses, eight high-speed rotary perfecting presses, twenty job presses, one rotary offset press, folding machines, gathering machines, and patent binders, with an annual capacity of 2.5 million books and 75 million booklets. A second phase of the building was completed in 1901, nearly doubling the manufacturing space.

The business expanded so quickly that within a decade, the Plymouth Court building was cramped. RR Donnelley executives planned a new plant on Calumet Avenue, between 21st and 22nd Streets. Again, Shaw was asked to design the building, an eight-story Gothic structure with a tower that was completed in several phases over the next seventeen years.

Once completed in 1929, the Calumet Plant was the largest building in the United States devoted to printing. It contained over 1.1 million square feet of floor space. The daily capacity of the case bindery was 25,000 books; the mail-order bindery could deliver several hundred thousand catalogs and telephone books.

The building's exterior featured terracotta shields with fanciful designs evoking English heraldry and the marks of history's great printers. The initials of T. E. and Reuben H. Donnelley and of Howard Van Doren Shaw were carved on either side of the portal of the 22nd Street entrance.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of the Western Electric Plant, Hawthorne Works, Cicero, Illinois.

THE HAWTHORNE WORKS

The Hawthorne Works was a large Western Electric Company factory complex in Cicero, Illinois. 

Cicero began as separate settlements that gradually expanded into one community. On June 23, 1857, a local government was organized for the district named "The Town of Cicero." Railroads, immigration, and the Civil War contributed to economic growth in the new township, which by 1867 incorporated the municipality and the Town of Cicero.

By 1889, Chicago had annexed more than half of the original Town. An 1899 referendum ceded the Austin neighborhood to Chicago, and in the following year, land containing a race track was transferred to Stickney Township. The Town of Cicero retained less than six of the 36 square miles carved out in 1849.

Cicero comprises eight neighborhoods, each with its own district names and characteristics. Two were named for businesses: Hawthorne for an 1850s quarry, the first industry in what later became Cicero, and Grant Works after an 1890 locomotive factory. The other six are Boulevard Manor, Clyde, Drezel, Morton Park, Parkholme, and Warren Park.

The grazing cow in the foreground is apparently undisturbed by the rapid expansion of Hawthorn Works nearby. This 1907 view from Cermak Road shows the first Telephone Apparatuses buildings shortly after completion, and the corner building with its distinctive water tower did not start until 1912.

1920

1925

The Hawthorne Works complex was built at Cicero Avenue and Cermak Road. The facility consisted of several buildings and contained a private railroad, "Manufacturers Junction Railroad," to move shipments through the plant to the nearby Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad freight depot. In the first decades, the factory complex was significantly expanded.

Charles M. Prchal was born in 1896 in Golcuv Jenikov, a small town southeast of Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in the Czech Republic. In August 1911, he journeyed alone to America and settled in Chicago, furthers his education at night school, finds employment at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works, and builds a lifelong career there. It’s a scenario repeated thousands of times at General Electric's Hawthorne Works, but it’s backed by fact, not legend. 

Charles M. Prchal

Prchal joined Western Electric in 1918, just as the Hawthorne Works launched another of its frequent expansion projects. He worked days while studying architectural drafting and structural engineering at night school. 

His first big assignment was the design of the seven-story tower at the northwest corner of the Works complex. The 183-foot-tall red-brick spire housed the elegant executive offices on its top floor. At its dedication in 1919, Western Electric president Charles DuBois proclaimed the structure the symbol of Hawthorne’s past and future, created by “hard work of hand and brain, and square dealing with everyone.” At the Works Silver Jubilee in 1978, Prchal agreed that the tower had “always been a symbol of the promise of sixty years ago—the promise of a great manufacturing plant and its thousands of employees producing important equipment.”

Later in his career, Prchal designed the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove and the domed mausoleum at Chicago’s Bohemian National Cemetery. He also served for thirty-two years as the president of the American Sokol, an organization dedicated to preserving Bohemian culture and providing guidance to youth through social and athletic programs. After a forty-three-year career, Prchal retired from Western Electric but remained active as a lecturer, author, and member of many social and fraternal societies until he died in 1980.

Although his most impressive design has been gone since 1987, the image of Mr. Prchal’s tower still represents the Hawthorne Works to everyone who recalls its glory days. And his life story illustrates the accomplishments of the many humbly-born immigrants who found an outlet for their potential during America’s industrial golden age.

In 1915, Western Electric was associated with one of the worst accidents in Chicago's history. The SS Eastland, a boat filled with Hawthorne Works employees and family members attending the company's annual outing, capsized at its dock in the Chicago River, killing over 800 people.

A view of the hospital and gas plant in a garden setting.

Researchers at the Hawthorne Works pioneered new technologies such as the high-vacuum tube, the condenser microphone, and airplane radio systems during the 1910s.

By 1917, the Hawthorne Works facility employed 25,000 people, many Cicero residents of Czech and Polish descent, who produced telephone, cable, and every major telephone switching system in the country. In 1900, 676,733 Bell Telephone stations were owned and connected in the country. By 1910, three years after Hawthorne Works opened, these 25,000 employees produced 5,142,699 telephones, and by 1920, 11,795,747 Bell telephones. Over 14,000 different types of apparatus were manufactured at the plant to provide the telecommunications infrastructure for this exponential growth. During the plant's early years into the 1920s, Western Electric was also a major producer of household appliances.

During the Great Depression (1929-1933), the company laid off thousands of workers, but business recovered during World War II. During the war years, when it was subject to federal rules for government contracts, the company began to employ negroes for the first time.

On the eve of World War II (1939-1942), roughly 90% of demand for Western Electric's products came from one customer, the Bell System. By mid-1941, 85% of the demand for products came from the federal government, for which the company provided more than 30% of all electronic gear for war, including radar equipment.

When World War II (1939-1942) started, the U.S. government called on Hawthorne Works to engineer and manufacture mass quantities of the most modern and capable communications and radar equipment.

The area where lead sheaths were placed around the cord.

Employees rolling the telephone wires.

The Hawthorne Works produced a large output of telephone equipment. In addition, Western Electric produced various consumer products and electrical equipment, including refrigerators and electric fans. 

The works employed up to 45,000 employees at the height of operations in WW II. Workers regularly used bicycles for transit within the plant.

WESTERN ELECTRIC PERKS LEAD TO EMPLOYMENT LONGEVITY

Hawthorne Works benefited greatly by keeping workers happy. There were company-owned, not-for-profit restaurants and cafeterias within the complex. Employees of all statures could have quality hot breakfasts and lunches at drastically reduced prices. 

Other perks included a hospital and numerous "first-aid" rooms spread around the complex; a shoe store; eye care, glasses, and repairs; a store that carried items like men's ties, greeting cards, sundries, snacks, and even women's nylons.

Hawthorne recognized individual milestones in employment with service pins and a dinner. Retirement celebrations were quite elaborate. The entire department would be invited to a fancy dinner, a boutonnière for the retiree, and a corsage and beautiful flower arrangement for the retiree's wife.

THE HAWTHORNE CLUB

• Club Evening School offered over 60 subjects, i.e., English, Languages, First Aid, Drafting, Accounting, Telephony, and more.
• Health Appearance Personality course, free of charge for women only.
• Hawthorne Club Library est. 1940.
• Athletic Activities: Baseball, Basketball, the Albright Gymnasium, Tennis, Golf for Men and Women, Bowling for Men and Women, Horseshoe Courts, and the Rifle Club.
• The Club's services included a Notary Service, Classified Ads, Young Men's Activities, Theater Bureau, and a Travel Bureau.

As a means of providing outlets for the many Hawthorne Works employees who have interests or hobbies in common, a number of associated clubs have been formed; the Boot and Saddle Club, Camera Club, Chess and Checker Club, Coin Club, Excursion Club, Flower and Garden Club, The Forum, Players Club, Hunting Club, Fishing Club, Male Chorus, Mixed Chorus, Science Club, Stamp Club, and the Flying Club.

BOOKLET: The Hawthorne Club was founded for Fellowship. 

Western Electric Hawthorne Works Albright Gymnasium and outdoor track at Cermak & 52nd Avenue. (1930s)

But the pièce de résistance was the yearly "Hello Charley Girl" contest.

The Origin of 'Hello Charley.'

Newcomers were often confused during the Merrimack Valley Works, North Andover, Massachusetts (opened 1953), "WE Valley Girl" Contest by long term employees referring to the Queen as the "Hello Charley Girl."

Originally a vacation queen contest. The winner took the name of the greeting that Western Electric employees used when discovering a fellow "Westerner" on vacation. 

Why "Hello Charley" and not Phillip? 

 

The greeting grew from an incident involving Charley Drucker, a benefits serviceman in the old days of the Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois. A pensioner whom he had visited wrote him a letter addressed "Charley, Western Electric." Since the retiree had not remembered Charley's last name, the letter made the rounds until finding the right Charley. 

Since this letter people began addressing each other as "Charley Western." Soon the greeting spread throughout the company. Every location nationwide has its vacation queen.

The "Hello Charley Girl" being crowned the winner in 1948, posing for a formal portrait.

THE DEATH OF THE HAWTHORNE WORKS

The Hawthorne Works announced its closing in 1983 because most of its operations had been distributed to more modern facilities around the country. In 1986, the shutdown was completed. The Foundry and most Telephone Apparatus buildings were demolished between 1975 and 1983. The remaining Telephone Apparatus buildings and the Executive Tower were razed in 1986 and 1987. The rest of the Hawthorne Works was demolished in 1994.

The only survivors are the Water Tower and the Cable building at 4545 West Cermak Road.

The property was purchased in the mid-1980s by the late Donald L. Shoemaker and replaced with a shopping center.

Due to Hawthorne's significance in industrial manufacturing in the United States, the Hawthorne Works was the site of well-known industrial studies.

THE HAWTHORNE EFFECT

The Hawthorne effect is named for the Hawthorne Works. North American Quality pioneer Joseph Juran referred to the Hawthorne Works as "the seedbed of the Quality Revolution." The career arcs of other notable quality professionals, such as Walter Shewhart and Edwards Deming, also intersected at the Hawthorne Works.

The term "Hawthorne effect" refers to reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. The industrial psychology series of experiments began in 1924. It was first observed in data from the Hawthorne Works collected by psychologist Elton Mayo and later reinterpreted by Henry A. Landsberger, who coined the term in 1958.

This well-known and remarkable effect was discovered in research conducted at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works plant. However, some scholars feel the descriptions are apocryphal (of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as accurate).

The original research involved workers who made electrical relays at the Hawthorne Works. Between 1924 and 1927, a famous lighting study was conducted. Workers experienced a series of lighting changes in which productivity was said to increase with almost any change in the lighting. This turned out not to be true. In the study associated with Elton Mayo, which ran from 1928 to 1932, five women implemented work structure changes (i.e., rest periods). However, this methodologically poor, uncontrolled study did not permit any firm conclusions.

One of the later interpretations by Landsberger suggested that the novelty of being research subjects and the increased attention from such could lead to temporary increases in workers' productivity. This interpretation was dubbed "the Hawthorne effect."

RELAY ASSEMBLY EXPERIMENTS

In one of the studies, researchers chose two women as test subjects and asked them to choose four other workers to join the test group. The women assembled telephone relays in a separate room for over five years (1927-1932).

Output was measured mechanically by counting how many finished relays each worker dropped down a chute. This measuring began in secret two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they had a supervisor who discussed changes in their productivity. Some of the variables were:

• Given two 5-minute breaks (after discussing the best length of time), then changed to two 10-minute breaks (not their preference). Productivity increased, but they disliked it and reduced output when they received six 5-minute rests.
• Providing food during the breaks.
• Shortening the day by 30 minutes (output went up); trimming it more (output per hour went up, but overall production decreased); returning to the first condition (where output peaked).

Changing a variable usually increases productivity, even if the variable was just a change to the original condition. However, it is said that this is the natural process of the human being adapting to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment. Researchers concluded that the workers worked harder because they thought they were being monitored individually.

Researchers hypothesized that choosing one's coworkers, working as a group, being treated as unique (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the productivity increase. One interpretation, mainly due to Elton Mayo, was that "the six individuals became a team, and the team gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to cooperation in the experiment." (There was a second relay assembly test room study with less significant results than the first experiment.)

BANK WIRING ROOM EXPERIMENTS

The purpose of the following study was to find out how payment incentives would affect productivity. The surprising result was that productivity decreased, and workers apparently had become suspicious that their productivity may have been boosted to justify firing some workers later. 

The study was conducted by Elton Mayo and W. Lloyd Warner between 1931 and 1932 on a group of fourteen men who put together telephone switching equipment. The researchers found that although the workers were paid according to individual productivity, productivity decreased because the men feared the company would lower the base rate.

Detailed observation of the men revealed the existence of informal groups or "cliques" within the formal groups. These cliques developed relaxed rules of behavior and mechanisms to enforce them. The cliques served to control group members and manage bosses. Clique members gave the same responses when bosses asked questions, even if they were untrue. These results show that workers were more responsive to the social force of their peer groups than to the control and incentives of management.

INTERPRETATIONS

Possible explanations for the Hawthorne effect include the impact of feedback and motivation toward the experimenter. Receiving feedback on their performance may improve their skills when an experiment provides this feedback for the first time. Research on the demand effect also suggests that people may be motivated to please the experimenter if it does not conflict with any other motive. They may also be suspicious of the purpose of the experimenter. Therefore, the Hawthorne effect may only occur when there is useable feedback or a change in motivation.

Elton Mayo contended that the effect was due to the workers reacting to the sympathy and interest of the observers. He did discuss the study as demonstrating an experimenter effect but as a management effect: how management can make workers perform differently because they feel differently. He suggested that much of the Hawthorne effect concerned the workers feeling free and in control as a group rather than as being supervised. The experimental manipulations were influential in convincing the workers to feel this way, that conditions in the particular five-person workgroup were really different from the conditions on the shop floor. 

Harry Braverman pointed out that the Hawthorne tests were based on industrial psychology, and the researchers involved were investigating whether workers' performance could be predicted by pre-hire testing. The Hawthorne study showed "that workers' performance had little relation to their ability and, in fact, often bore an inverse relation to test scores." Braverman argued that the studies showed that the workplace was not "a system of a formal bureaucratic organization on the Weberian model, nor a system of informal group relations, as in the interpretation of Elton Mayo and his followers, but rather a system of power and antagonisms." This discovery was a blow to those hoping to apply the behavioral sciences to manipulate workers in management's interest.

Greenwood, Bolton, and Greenwood (1983) interviewed some of the employees in the experiments and found that the participants were paid significantly better.

Over 800 Western Electric Hawthorne Works Employees Died in the SS Eastland Disaster on the Chicago River on July 24, 1915.

Additional reading about the Hawthorne Effect (PDF):

Was there Really a Hawthorne Effect at the Hawthorne Plant? 

Rethinking the Hawthorne Studies: The Western Electric research in its social, political and historical context.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.