Places
Historical Places
Marble & Shattuck Chair Company
10200 Forster Avenue
Did you know that one of the nation’s premier chair manufacturers was once located in Bratenahl? The Marble & Shattuck Chair Company developed a national reputation for the manufacture of high-quality chairs and other furniture. The company produced a wide range of oak furniture types, including commercial chairs for banks and law firms and developed a highly sought after rolling swivel desk chair. At one time, Marble & Shattuck along with the Taylor Chair Company were considered the very best in the business.
The company was founded in 1886 by Barzilla L. Marble and Abner L. Shattuck in Bedford, Ohio. Marble learned his craft from Benjamin Fitch and William O. Taylor, Fitch’s son-in-law, founders of the Taylor Chair Company. The Marble & Shattuck Chair Company operated in Bedford for over a decade. On May 23, 1893, a major fire destroyed a building near the main workshop where oils, varnish, upholstery goods and other highly inflammable materials were stored. Shortly thereafter, A. L. Shattuck withdrew from the company and established his own chair company in Kent, Ohio.
On April 1, 1897, just after 11 pm, the Marble & Shattuck manufacturing plant in Bedford caught fire. Fire fighters discovered that both water hoses used by the company to combat fires had been cut. By the time new water hoses could be located and attached to available water supplies, the entire building and the company’s entire furniture inventory and supplies were destroyed. Arson was suspected.
Following this catastrophic fire, the management of the company became divided over the future of the company, primarily over the issue of where to rebuild. Eventually B. L. Marble left the company, purchased a small plant in Bedford and established the B. L. Marble Chair Company, which became nationally known and manufactured office and business chairs until 1985.
Marble’s former partners, A. B. Hunn, F. D. Hills and Charles Kluger, reorganized the company. On August 8, 1900, they acquired a five-acre lot on Foster Road in Glenville from Erasmus Burton and Darius Adams. They moved the operation of the Marble & Shattuck Chair Company to a new three-story, red-brick factory located at 10200 Foster Road. As part of the move, the company helped about thirty families to relocate from Bedford to Glenville, many of whom occupied homes on Burton and Foster Avenues. The factory’s south side was along the New York Central railroad tracks. The company installed a railroad siding, which was used to unload lumber and coal for boiler fuel and to load the manufactured furniture.
Marble & Shattuck expanded its product line in 1910 from making exclusively household chairs to primarily producing office furniture. During the First World War, the company contributed to the war effort by manufacturing wooden aircraft propellers for military use. As the company grew, sales offices were opened at Herald Square in New York City and near the Art Institute in Chicago.
At one time, Marble & Shattuck’s rolling swivel desk chairs were considered the highest quality in office furniture. The chairs were equipped with M & S No. 595 full ball-bearing all-steel mechanism “guaranteed 100% against breakage.” Company brochures detailed the features of this mechanism emphasizing its “scientific construction” which produced “the easiest rotating chair mechanism now in use in the office chair industry.”
The company’s wooden chairs used a patented wood base construction in which the base legs and the corner blocks were interconnected creating an especially sturdy base. Again, the interlocking construction was “guaranteed.”
On March 9, 1934, three men were dangerously burned by an explosion in the factory’s wood dust collection pipe. Flames leaped from the pipe opening behind two sanding machines. The clothing of two workers who were working at the machines caught fire. Another employee, working nearby, attempted to put out the flames, and the fire caught his clothing. Eventually other employees extinguished the flames. All three employees were admitted in critical condition to Glenville Hospital. One of the workers died five days later. The others recovered from their burns.
During the 1940s, the company’s business declined. In 1947, the Lakeland Freeway project took possession of the Marble & Shattuck property, and the company ceased operation. The freeway project demolished the Bratenahl factory except for a wooden garage building and adjoining lumber sheds that Bratenahl Village acquired as a service garage.
The company’s founder Barzilla Levi Marble was born on February 6, 1851, to Levi and Mary Marble. In 1871, he was given a position with the Taylor Chair Company and was quickly promoted to superintendent in 1880. He married Mary Mathews in 1873. They had three children: Bessie Lou (Walling), born on June 2, 1876, Lloyd J., born on January 20, 1879, and his twin sister Lynn was born January 20, 1879. Mary died on December 27, 1901. Barzilla then married Ellen Nelson Hamilton, who had two children from her first marriage. Ellen died on February 20, 1920. Barzilla died on January 3, 1932, and was buried alongside Mary and Ellen in Bedford Cemetery in Bedford, Ohio.