What Was Here?...at Willow and Allen

At the corner of Willow and Allen streets in Waterloo, across from the former St. Louis Catholic School (see blog post St. Louis Catholic School), sits an empty lot that has been mostly vacant for many decades. 

Click to enlarge. The corner in question: Allen and Willow streets in 2012.

Since the City of Waterloo recently bought the space, along with the school building itself, the corner has gotten a lot of attention in the  neighbourhood. Its future is an open question, but its past is a bit less of a mystery...

Walking through this quiet intersection, looking at the empty corner, can your imagination conjure a looming, four-storey factory built right to the edge of the sidewalk and stretching far back along both streets? 

Between 1903 and 1930, that’s exactly what occupied this lot. Prior to 1903, it was undeveloped:

Click to enlarge. Part of a c.1895 birds-eye view of the town of Waterloo, looking NE, created by the Toronto Lithographing Co. Note the open corner lot at Allen and Willow streets, marked X. Image courtesy Waterloo Municipal Heritage Committee.

A 1902 article in the Waterloo Chronicle-Telegraph described Waterloo upholsterers Emil Schierholtz & Company as having “outgrown their premises” (in the Devitt Block, now demolished, on Erb Street near King). The same article said the company was planning to “erect a large new building of their own next year in connection with which they have asked a number of concessions from the town.” It was also noted that Schierholtz was forming a new company, to manufacture furniture frames.

“Concessions” requested by Schierholtz from the Town of Waterloo included a factory site provided free-of-charge, a ten-year exemption from property taxes on the site, and an interest-free start-up loan of $5000. In return, the company agreed to conduct business for ten years and to employ at least forty workers. 

The proposal was drafted as a bylaw and put to a public vote, and was passed by a nearly 8-to-1 majority. 

In early 1903 construction began on the new Schierholtz furniture factory at the corner of Willow and Allen streets, within the growing residential neighbourhood.  Charles Moogk, Waterloo Town Engineer and a talented designer/builder with no formal training in architecture, provided the building plan. Further research is needed to determine how and why that particular site was chosen. Perhaps one of our readers knows the answer?…

As an aside, from 1902 to 1904 other entrepreneurs, including William Greene and G.C. Raehr, received similar inducements from Waterloo to build factories in town. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Berlin (Kitchener) and Waterloo courted industrial development by offering financial incentives to manufacturers. The resulting Greene collar-and-cuff factory operated for about ten years at William and Willow Streets, at the edge of Mary-Allen, and will be the subject of a future blog post (also see maps, below).  The proposed Raehr shoe factory has a good story attached to it; click the text link to read more about it in a newspaper article by Jon Fear. 

Although the Schierholtz factory was completed and occupied by the end of 1903, the new venture didn’t last long. In his book New Hamburg as it Really Was, Ernest Ritz recounts how a 1907 fire at the factory prompted Schierholtz & Co. to move to New Hamburg. Financial incentives offered by New Hamburg also played a part in the decision.

According to a 1972 article published by the Waterloo Historical Society, Eben (E.O.) and Ira Weber, and their father, Louis, bought the Waterloo factory from Schierholtz and partners, and began operating it. 

Click to enlarge. An idealized impression of the factory at Willow and Allen streets, c.1908. The artist has taken liberties, suggesting a much grander building and busier streets than was the case – a common practice when publicizing industrial buildings in that era. Allen Street is depicted as buzzing with streetcar and automobile traffic, as well as many pedestrians. Reproduced from The Twin-City Berlin & Waterloo and Their Industries, Commercial, Financial, Manufacturing; published 1908 by authority of the Board of Trade. Image courtesy University of Waterloo Library.

Click to enlarge, then open in new tab for full size. A section from the 1908-1913 fire insurance map of Waterloo, showing the Waterloo Furniture Company factory, lower right. It appears to have been served by a rail link to the spur line that passes through Mary-Allen to this day. The factory track cut through the area comprising today’s Mary Allen Park. Note, at the top of the map, at William and Willow streets, another factory: W.A. Greene, makers of shirt collars and cuffs. It was built around the same time as the furniture factory, but was vacant when this map was updated in 1913. Greene lived a while at 59 George Street, and had previously been involved in the large Williams, Greene & Rome Company of Berlin (Kitchener), a manufacturer of shirts, collars and cuffs. Image courtesy Waterloo Public Library, Ellis Little Room of Local History.

Click to enlarge, then open in new tab for full size. A close-up of the preceding map, showing the Waterloo Furniture Company factory and outbuildings. Image courtesy Waterloo Public Library, Ellis Little Room of Local History.  

The Webers’ Waterloo Furniture Company factory is described in the 1908 publication The Twin-City Berlin & Waterloo and Their Industries, Commercial, Financial, Manufacturing, as well-lighted and made of brick, with “a frontage on each street of about 100 feet.” 

The description goes on:

“The plant is thoroughly equipped with the most modern machinery and appliances for the production of their well-known line of upholstered furniture. All goods sold by them are manufactured entirely on these premises by skilled mechanics.” 

In the years just prior to the First World War, Waterloo and Berlin together boasted almost twenty furniture factories, making furniture manufacture a leading industry in Waterloo County.

E.O. Weber went on to own additional furniture factories, in Preston and Kitchener, and was heavily involved in the development of the Westmount neighbourhood of Kitchener-Waterloo, as well as the Westmount Golf and Country Club.

Click to enlarge, then open in new tab for full size. Waterloo Furniture was a key location during the annual expo of Canadian furniture manufacturers in 1912, held that year in Berlin and Waterloo. At his factory, E.O. Weber maintained a large permanent showroom for the public. This 1911 advertisement ran in the trade journal Canadian Furniture World, a publication which also described the "twin cities" of Berlin and Waterloo as "the hub of the furniture manufacturing industry of Canada." Accessed at The Internet Archive.

Click to enlarge, then open in new tab for full size. A 1913 advertisement for Waterloo Furniture, from the trade journal Canadian Furniture World. Accessed at The Internet Archive.

Click to enlarge, then open in new tab for full size. A 1920 advertisement for Waterloo Furniture, from the trade journal Canadian Furniture World. Accessed at The Internet Archive.

E.O. Weber Furniture, as the business came to be known, prospered for a while, but fire would return to the factory at Willow and Allen streets. After twenty years of Weber ownership, at the end of a late workday in November 1928, a finishing room explosion and fire killed employee John Mitchell. A local newspaper reported that the ambulance driver who took Mitchell to the hospital was his own son. 

Along with the loss of life, the destruction of stock prepared for the Christmas season caused considerable hardship to the company. Financial losses at the time were an estimated $25,000. 

Only two years later, October 24, 1930, another Friday fire completely destroyed the twenty-seven-year-old building. The next day, The Daily Record ran a front-page headline that began, “Worst Fire In History Of Waterloo...”  

The fire started in the basement and spread quickly by way of an elevator shaft. No one was injured, although the factory reportedly was evacuated with no time to spare. 

Click to enlarge, then open in new tab for full size. Part of the front page of The Daily Record, October 25, 1930, with its lead story about the fire at the E.O. Weber factory. Image courtesy Waterloo Public Library, Main Reference Microfilm collection.

As described in the Record article, “flames shot 100 feet in the air as a crowd of 8,000 people gathered to witness the spectacle.” And as happened two years earlier, the fire struck, in the words of the newspaper, “just when the Waterloo plant was loaded with goods for Christmas shipment. Had the fire occurred a month later, at least $50,000 worth of stock would have been moved.”

At least forty employees were suddenly out of work. Weber estimated the total financial loss at $200,000, and his personal loss at $40,000. 

Click to enlarge. The E.O. Weber Furniture Company factory at Willow and Allen streets in October 1930, after it was destroyed by fire. The cars are stopped on Allen Street. The right-hand photograph is looking down Willow Street. Images courtesy University of Waterloo Library; E.O. Weber Papers.

Click to enlarge. The E.O. Weber factory at Willow and Allen streets in October 1930, after it was destroyed by fire. Image courtesy University of Waterloo Library; E.O. Weber Papers.

Click to enlarge. The E.O. Weber factory at Willow and Allen streets in October 1930, after it was destroyed by fire. This is a view of the Allen Street wing of the plant. Image courtesy University of Waterloo Library; E.O. Weber Papers.

Click to enlarge. The E.O. Weber factory at Willow and Allen streets in October 1930, after it was destroyed by fire. As above, a view from Allen Street; this one showing the tall smokestack. Image courtesy University of Waterloo Library; E.O. Weber Papers.

Two fires in a span of two years, with the second one in the midst of the Great Depression, proved too big an obstacle for E.O. Weber. While speculation about the company’s future swirled in the months that followed, Weber ruled out Waterloo as a potential site to rebuild, saying Kitchener might be a possibility. But in January 1931, when he announced the sale of his remaining furniture plant, in Preston, it spelled the end of his career as a furniture manufacturer.

The lot at Willow and Allen streets was cleared. Empty once again, on the 1942 fire insurance map it was marked “School Ground,” presumably for the use of St. Louis Catholic School across the street.

Research of the lot beyond its years as a factory site was not done for this article. But one local resident recalls that is was a baseball diamond in the 1970s…

Do you have stories about this space? Can you fill in more of the story from the 1940s on? Please submit your comments!

Many thanks to Susan Mavor at the University of Waterloo Library, and to Karen VandenBrink at the City of Waterloo Museum, for their generous assistance in providing information about E.O. Weber for this article.