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Charles
Showers, an established cabinet maker from Harrodsburg,
Indiana, settled in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife and six
children on April 13, 1856. He set up a cabinet making
shop on Kirkwood Avenue and later, in 1868, opened a small
factory at 104 North Walnut which is on the east side to the
town square where the Wiles Drug Store stands today. The
little factory was fitted with various wood working machinery,
a second hand boiler and three employees to run its
operations. Neighboring business, soon however, voiced
their objections about the loud noises that emanated from the
little factory during its furniture production so Charles
moved his operation to the corner of Third and Grant
streets. To maintain the company's visibility on the
square, Charles opened a furniture showroom above what is now
Bloomington Hardware and displayed finished bed stands,
bureaus, chairs and coffins. During the Civil War, the
factory prospered from the production of coffins but when the
war ended, it went back to manufacturing furniture.
In 1867, Charles's two oldest sons, William n. and
James D. Showers, who had learned woodworking skills from
their father, bought out their father's interest in the
factory. Business was good and soon the brothers bought
a small building on the corner of Ninth and Grant streets with
$300 that they managed to save up. The company continued
to prosper and the brothers constructed another factory in
1872, then younger brother Charles joined up with the two
brothers in 1878 and the brothers another factory in
1880. The company grew from just 5 workers in 1870 to
over 50 workers in 1884 when the factory burned to the
ground. The city of Evansville, hearing about the
mishap, tried to persuade the company to move it's
operations to their area, but because the company had proven
to be such an important factor to Bloomington's local economy,
the city, in it's attempt to induce the firm to stay,
contributed nearly half of the total costs in building a new
factory on an open plot of land along Morton Street. The
company chose to stay and once again grew and prospered.
In 1907, James Showers became president of the Citizens Loan
and Trust Company and sold his interest of the company to his
brother William whose son, Ed W. Showers, would in time take
charge of the company during it's most prosperous years.
The Showers Company was one of the first businesses in
Bloomington to use electricity and the process of laminating
which was both developed and named by the company. They
acquired large tracts of timberland and sawmills while
adopting the slogan, "From the Tree to the Trade", and in
1910, the U.S. Census Bureau determined that the south end of
the main factory building was the exact center of the U. S.
population. By the 1920s the company was billing
themselves as "America's Largest Furniture Manufacturer",
having grown to four plants in Bloomington and in Iowa.
The Bloomington plants alone were producing up to 16 train car
loads of furniture per day and it was estimated that all of
the Showers plants combined were producing about 60% of all of
the furniture output in the United States, most of which were
being sold through various furniture stores and mail catalog
companies.
In the spring of 1925, the Showers
Brothers Company ventured into the new field of radio when Ed
W. Showers, who was now at the helm of the company, began to
notice that there was a growing popularity for radio tables
and radio console cabinets. The company brought out a line of
radio cabinets consisting of five different speaker cabinets,
a radio cabinet which was interchangeable with three different
tables to produce a variety of radio cabinet combinations, and
a complete console that would house both a standard radio
receiver and speaker, all of which were designed by Isaac
Bault, Showers chief furniture designer. In October of
1925, Showers was approached by the Ramway Radio Corporation
to produce console cabinets for the Ramway radio line.
Showers superintendent C. A. Sears designed the cabinet, which
was styled in an Italian Renaissance design. During the
production, Ramway shipped their chassis and speakers to the
Showers factory where they were fitted into the cabinets and
shipped out to the various Ramway dealerships. The over
all sales of the Ramway consoles, especially during the
Christmas season, so impressed Showers management, that they
decided to manufacture and market their own brand of radio
after they were finished producing cabinets for Ramway.
Showers felt they could produce a quality radio set that would
compete well in the radio market. The making of the
cabinets was no problem, that was their area of expertise, but
they had to develop the radio and speaker. During the
summer of 1926, a laboratory was set up in one of the
company's auditorium but this was only temporary and later the
laboratory was permanently located at the end of packing plant
#4. Showers hired two radio engineers, Ralph Cutts and
Charley Hotchkiss, to work in the laboratory and develop the
new radio receiver. Edward W. Showers and William Sears
kept in constant touch with the two engineers to the point, at
one time, when Edward Showers was ill and at home under orders
from his doctor, he surrounded himself with various types of
radios and refused to be held down on the project that he had
personally spearheaded. By the end of the summer the
company had their radio, which they named the "Consola".
The radio consisted of a metal front panel, that was specially
manufactured by Crow of Chicago, featuring gold flowers,
flower decorated knobs, and two dial pointers with the Showers
"S" logo at their base. The chassis, which was
manufactured by Showers, was made of aluminum. They
chose this metal because it was easy to cut, punch and bend,
therefore requiring less expensive machinery to work it.
The tuning condensers and potentiometers were made by national
brands but the manufacturer of the RF coils and audio
transformers is unknown. Judging on their crude and
simple construction, it's well to guess that they were made
locally, possibly by Showers. The speaker, called the
"Purotone", was developed by Dr. A. L. Foley, head of the
Physics department at Indiana University who, for 15 years,
worked on sound reproduction and acoustics. The box horn
was crafted out of spruce wood and fitted with a Utah
reproducer. The Consola was offered in three cabinet
models, the 556, a mahogany cabinet with the loud speaker
housed above the receiver, the 448, an Italian Renaissance
styled cabinet that closely resembled the Showers cabinet
originally manufactured for Ramway, and a table model cabinet
of simple design. To round off the line, individually
housed loudspeakers were offered in the forms of coffee
tables, magazine racks and pedestals, all containing the
Purotone speaker. These speaker cabinets were offered in
a choice of either a blended walnut finish, Chinese red or
green enamel. D. F. Fester and H. T. Roberts, directors
of the radio division, were put in charge of the road salesmen
and were successful in retaining every dealer that sold the
Ramway sets. They established a sales headquarters in
Chicago at 1517 Tribune Building, later to be moved to 914
South Michigan Avenue, to cover their western sales region.
For the eastern sales region, an office in New York City was
established. By September Showers was flooded with
orders and production was well under way for the upcoming fall
and Christmas season. It was at this time that Showers
introduced two new cabinets, the models 444 and 450.
During October, production reached more then 100 sets per day
and by November, Showers was so overwhelmed with orders that
they had their Burlington, Iowa plant took up the slack for a
while. After the Christmas season was over and the
orders dwindled, Showers phased out the coffee tables,
magazine racks and pedestal tables with the last few being
bought up by the employees at a discount price. Showers
estimated that they had produced over 25,000 radio pieces,
which include complete radio sets, speakers and empty
cabinets.
A new cabinet was introduced
in January of 1926 called the LaPhonic. This model was a
lowboy with a drop leaf door, which opened up to reveal the
Consola radio receiver. The speaker compartment, which
occupied most of the cabinet, was fitted with a 22 inch Utah
cone speaker with room to house all of the batteries and / or
AC power supply. As production on the "LaPhonic" geared
up, the Crosley Radio Corporation approached Showers with the
prospects of becoming their supplier of cabinets for the 1926
/ 1927 line of Crosley Radios. A number of sample
cabinets, designed by Isaac Bault, were made up and presented
to Crosley. Soon Showers was awarded the contract and
preparations for the manufacturer of Crosley cabinets.
During this time Showers was working on a new product with
help from some Indiana University personnel, on a the
development of an electrical phonograph pickup unit which was
to be used in a new radio / phonograph combination set was
named the "Electrope". It consisted of a phonograph and
a Consola receiver, housed in an elaborate double door cabinet
and was to be out on the market for the upcoming Christmas
session. Showers hired C. T. McKelvy, who was formerly
the district manager for the Brunswick Phonograph Corporation,
to join the Chicago sales office and help establish a
phonograph dealer base. By July Showers was shipping
sample lots of the newly made up Crosley cabinets to the
various Crosley dealerships across the U.S. and preparations
were made for the production and the build up of warehouse
stock for the 1926 / 1927 Christmas season.
Showers soon realized that with the limited factory resources
and warehouse space they had, they could not manufacture both
Crosley cabinets and the Consola sets at the same time so the
decision to phase out the Consola radio line was
adopted. This proved to be a good decision since they
were in no position to compete with the oncoming of AC powered
radios that would soon dominate the market. The last of
the Electropes were quickly sold since few were ever built and
the last of the Consola radio chassis were fitted into a
special cabinet, the 409, which were specifically designed to
quickly sell and deplete the last of the radio stock.
Many of these sets were sold to the factory employees at close
to wholesale price. Once the last of the Showers radio
stock was sold, full attention was directed to the manufacture
of the Crosley cabinets. Showers benefited greatly in
the production of cabinets for one of the worlds largest
companies and so ended the short life of the Showers
"Consola".
Showers went on to produce
Crosley radio cabinets for at least a couple more years but
it's not known if they made cabinets for Crosley or any other
radio company during the 1930s. The company survived
through the depression by producing their normal array of
furniture but because of low sales, Showers felt they had more
buildings then they needed, so in 1939, they enticed RCA to
purchase their plant on south Rogers Street in
Bloomington. The plant, built in 1919 to manufacture
kitchen cabinets, was where RCA manufactured some of their
television sets from the time of WWII up until when Thompson
Consumer Electronics purchased the facility and moved it's
operation to Mexico in 1998. After WWII, the furniture
manufacturing industry gradually went south where timber was
plentiful and labor was cheap. Showers, however,
opted to stay in Bloomington but gradually began to lose their
dominance in the home furniture market due to their failure to
invest in more modern and efficient machinery. By 1955
the company was in serous trouble so the Showers family sold
the company to the Stork Line Furniture Company of
Chicago. Stork Line was only able to keep the factory
going for another three years until they finally had to shut
the factory down for good. Indiana University purchased
the property from Stork Line in 1959 and used the buildings
for storage and other purposes. For years the buildings
stood boarded up and unkept with half of the buildings being
lost in 1970 in a large fire of which the whole city turned
out to watch. The 1980s brought new life to the factory
complex when Indiana University and the city of Bloomington
worked on a plan to revitalize the buildings and
grounds. Today the Showers complex is now Bloomington's
new technology complex and the old main factory now houses
Bloomington's City Hall along with various IU offices and
several companies, most of whom are state of the art research
and development firms in the computer software fields.
The grounds around the old factory have been beautifully
landscaped with brick walkways, trees and flowers. Today
the Showers complex is a shining jewel in the city of
Bloomington as it once was long time ago. |
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