If you’ve ever been anywhere in Toledo, you’ve likely heard the nickname The Glass City. Whether it’s The Glass City Center, The Glass City Riverwalk, The Glass City Marathon, or referring to the Toledo Art Museum’s Glass Pavilion, the nickname is everywhere and rightfully so. Toledo has certainly earned the title, and while many Toledoans know that’s our city’s nickname, how many know the history behind it?
Libbey Glass Factory
Toledo’s involvement in the glass industry is the main reason behind the city’s nickname. In the late 1800s Toledo was one of the largest glass manufacturers in the country which came about when Edward Libbey moved his glass factory, the New England Glass Factory, from Massachusetts to Toledo in 1888. Libbey decided on Toledo for a few reasons such as the natural elements like the Maumee River connecting to the Great Lakes, cheap natural gas, and a large amount of high silica sand which is a primary ingredient in glassmaking. Additionally Toledo provided a significant railroad hub and a large population of boys that could be staffed at the facility. In 1892 Libbey renamed his glass company The Libbey Glass Company. During the early years in Toledo, The Libbey Glass Company focused primarily on making brilliant cut glass which is heavy lead glass tableware with lots of geometric or floral patterns all cut by hand.
Despite the excitement of the new glass company in Toledo, there were some issues that arose such as problems with the equipment, especially the furnace which is essential for creating glass pieces, and a lot of the workers were not happy with the adjustment from the bustling city life they knew to the quiet midwest. So Libbey went to Pennsylvania and West Virginia to find new skilled glass blowers to hire. One of which was Michael J. Owens who started as a glassblower, but became the plant superintendent very quickly.
Flat glass production
While The Libbey Glass Company focused on making glassware, the Toledo area was also producing plate glass. Edward Ford started up the Edward Ford Plate Glass Company in Rossford in 1898 making the first case of plate glass a year later. Libbey and Owens joined in this production as well, starting up another company which later merged with Ford’s to be called the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company focusing on the production of flat glass which would be used in commercial buildings and windows for automobiles.
Owens’ innovation
Around this time, Owens was also working on developing a machine that ultimately would revolutionize the way glass bottles were produced and manufactured. The Owens Bottle Machine Company was formed in 1903 and was developed due to Owens’ creation of the Owens Bottle Machine which was the first of its kind. Rather than handblowing every bottle, this machine allowed for mass production of glass bottles, and in addition it ended the reliance on child labor in the glass industry.
Prior to the invention, boys as young as seven were working in glass factories across the country in deplorable conditions where they would often be physically and verbally abused all while having virtually no opportunities to ever move up into better positions due to union contracts. Child labor laws were not really enforced during that time period. Owens’ invention did the work that children would often be assigned to do and eliminated their jobs thus helping to end child labor in the glass industry.
How Owens-Illinois and Owens-Corning came to be
In the early 1920s, both Libbey and Owens died, but the glass companies that they began continued growing and changing. Owens-Illinois, or O-I as many Toledoans might know the company, was the formation of the Owens Bottle Glass Company and the Illinois Glass Company, which was also a major glass manufacturer further west. The companies merged in 1929 and eventually purchased the Libbey Glass Company, and also began working with plastics and glass fibers…