The J.W. Sefton Manufacturing Company, Chicago. The Birthplace of Corrugated Cardboard. (1888-1930)

The J.W. Sefton Manufacturing Company made corrugated cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes. They started small in Anderson, Indiana, location in 1888. Three years later, J.W. Sefton moved the company to Chicago, buying the Manilla Paper Company. Sefton also had a plant in Brooklyn, New York.

A Sefton worker in his warehouse truck. Circa 1912

In the 20th century, the J.W. Sefton Manufacturing Company’s Chicago offices were buzzing with the arrival of a potential new customer: a glassware manufacturer from Oklahoma. The glass was shaped like a globe, and it was popularly used for gas street lamps. 

Sefton was in a fledgling sector of making the newly invented corrugated board from yellow straw, referred to as strawboard. The company had started manufacturing wooden butter dishes. However, this changed when Jeffrey T. Ferres, an employee, patented a new principle to an existing ‘corrugator,’ known as a pressure-roll single facer. 

Unfortunately, the glass executives were not convinced a rigid and pleated strawboard box would be better than their current wood box filled with excelsior (shredded wood). 

Wood packing was the only option until then. It was expensive. Further, fragile items like glass globes often broke during transit. 

The novel idea of a corrugated box had the added benefit of reduced weight, but it was unproven in the days when everything had to travel by train. Despite Sefton’s sales team citing how glass products were already being shipped to as far off as California, the glass executives weren’t biting; they needed a better sales pitch. 

Therefore, Sefton’s design team got to work and designed a square carton with die-cut sunburst trays at both ends. The globe was now firmly suspended without touching the sides of the box. Now, for the demonstration. A dozen glass globes were packed in these newly designed cartons, taped shut, and brought to the top floor of Sefton’s Chicago building. Each box was booted down the stairs in a stairwell, floor after floor, until they arrived in the basement looking battered. When the cartons were opened, the glassmaker was surprised, as none of the globes were broken. This moment in time would be instrumental in bringing the corrugated carton out of the dark shadows of irrelevance and mistrust.

The genesis of modern corrugated production began at J.W. Sefton’s factories in Chicago and Anderson Indiana. In 1930, Sefton was purchased by Container Corporation of America.

The Sefton Manufacturing Company, 1301-1341 West 35th Street, Chicago.

After expanding over the years, the company built a state-of-the-art facility on 5-acres at 1301-1341 West 35th Street in Chicago's Central Manufacturing District in 1916.

The Container Corp. of America was founded in 1926 by uniting several smaller-sized manufacturers of paper boxes and containers that included 14 plants around the country. The enterprise had its national headquarters in Chicago. 

By 1930, the Container Corp. of America purchased Sefton Manufacturing Co. and operated four plants around Chicago, including those formerly owned by the Chicago Mill & Lumber Co., and the Robert Gair Co.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Municipal Restaurant & Luncheonette, Southeast Corner of 63rd Street and Cicero Avenue, Chicago. June, 29, 1934

We are at the southeast corner of the airport property, the northwest corner of 63rd Street and Cicero Avenue. We are looking northwest.
The Municipal Restaurant & Luncheonette is on the Southeast Corner of the airport property. See Map.

Note the airplane on the south side (left) of the restaurant at the Chicago Municipal Airport.

Municipal Restaurant & Luncheonette, Southeast Corner of 63rd Street and Cicero Avenue, Chicago.

Originally named Chicago Air Park, Midway Airport was built on a 320-acre plot in 1923 with one cinder runway mainly for airmail flights. In 1926 the city leased the airport and named it Chicago Municipal Airport on December 12, 1927. By 1928, the airport had twelve hangars and four lighted runways for night operations.

A major early morning fire on June 25, 1930, destroyed two hangars and 27 aircraft, "12 of them tri-motor passenger planes." The loss was estimated at more than two million dollars. The hangars destroyed were of Universal Air Lines, Inc., and Grey Goose Airlines, the latter under lease to Stout Air Lines. The fire followed an explosion of undetermined cause in the Universal hangar.

In 1931 a new passenger terminal opened at 62nd Street. The following year the airport claimed to be the "World's Busiest," with over 100,846 passengers on 60,947 flights. More construction was funded in part by $1 million from the Works Progress Administration; the airport expanded to fill the square mile in 1938–41 after a court ordered the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad to reroute tracks that had crossed the square along the northern edge of the older field. 

In the 1940s, the Trivic Airport Pines Restaurant was at 55th Street and Cicero Avenue, at the Northeast corner of Midway.

In July 1949, the airport was renamed Chicago Midway International Airport after the Battle of Midway. In 2002 Midway welcomed the return of international service after a 40-year absence with the opening of the new Federal Inspection Service facility in Concourse A.

Today, Midway has 5 runways and 43 gates in three concourses; Concourse A has 19 gates, Concourse B has 26 gates, and Concourse C has 3 gates.

Additional Reading:

Marshall Field & Company, Cloud Room Restaurant in the Chicago Municipal Airport (Midway).

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

History of the Hotel Galt, (Miami Hotel) Sterling, Illinois.

The Hotel Galt in Sterling, Illinois, was completed in 1890. It was also called the Miami Hotel because it housed the Miami cocktail lounge. The Miami Lounge was a popular mob hangout. The building burned down in December 1971.

The Hotel Galt in 1890.

The Hotel Galt in the 1940s.

Firefighter Arlyn Oetting recounted the day he got the alarm call:

The 1971 fire that destroyed the former Miami Hotel of Sterling was one of his most memorable fires. The hotel was across the street from the former Sears building downtown.

As the captain turned the corner, all he said was, “Get some help!” Oetting recalled.

“The fire was coming out the front doors of the hotel, as far out as the parking meters on the sidewalk,” he said. “When they got there, they laid a big hose line and started attacking that fire. My lieutenant and I dropped some hoses in front of the door and went down and hooked up to a hydrant there.”

Because the hotel had been remodeled numerous times, he said, the ceilings had been dropped. “The fire got into hidden spots and just ran rampant,” he said. “It went up and it started spreading.”

Oetting was stationed there most of the night and into the next day. Twenty-seven departments responded, he said. They fought the fire for more than 24 hours.

Amazingly, no one was injured.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.