Our History of Streator page explains how Streator became the “Glass Container Capital of the World.” This page focuses on the factories themselves: who started them, what they made, and how one 1881 bottle works lasted more than 140 years.
Why Glass Came to Streator
Glassmaking needs three things: very pure sand, cheap fuel and skilled workers. Streator had all three. The town lies within the outcrop area of the St. Peter Sandstone, a formation that is more than 99 percent quartz, and local sand has been mined for glassmaking since the late 1800s. The coal mines supplied fuel for the furnaces, and skilled blowers came to town once there was work for them.
False Starts and a Real Beginning
According to a detailed history by bottle researcher Bill Lockhart and colleagues for the Society for Historical Archaeology, Illinois authorized subscription books for a “Streator Glass Works company” as early as 1874, and other paper companies followed. None of them appears to have built anything. The company that succeeded, the Streator Bottle & Glass Co., was incorporated on June 4, 1881, by William W. Haskell, Hiram N. Ryon and William J. Williams, with $40,000 in capital. Thomas W. Wood was the first superintendent, and Daniel Mac blew the first bottle on October 1, 1881. (Some secondary sources give 1887 as the starting date, but the incorporation records point to 1881.)
Beer Bottles and Twister Hill
Beer bottles were the company’s specialty. An 1886 trade journal reported that the works operated under the patronage of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company of St. Louis. William F. Modes, who had come from the De Steiger Glass Co. in La Salle around 1882 or 1883 to serve as foreman, became one of the plant’s key figures. After another fire at De Steiger in 1885, about 60 more of its workers moved to Streator. Many of them were German “twister” blowers, who turned bottles in the mold to erase the seams, and the neighborhood where they settled became known as Twister Hill. An 1892 letterhead advertised “turned mold bottles & lettered ware in amber & light green colors.”
Adolphus Busch and the Flint Glass Works
In 1890 a group of investors, Adolphus Busch among them, launched the Streator Flint Glass Works. It closed during the depression of 1893. Busch later sold the plant to Streator Bottle & Glass, which ran it as its “upper works,” while the older plant became the “lower works.” Workers nicknamed the furnaces the “old house,” the “green house,” the “stockyards,” and the “rooster house,” the last named for its rooster weather vane. By 1904 the company ran six continuous tanks making green and amber beer and liquor bottles.
Mergers: American Bottle and Owens
In 1905 Streator Bottle & Glass became part of the merger that formed the American Bottle Co. Other glass firms came to town as well, including Thatcher Glass, which later became Anchor Glass Containers. In 1916 the Owens Bottle Co., the company built around Michael J. Owens’s automatic bottle machine, took control of American Bottle. The Streator works kept its own identity until the 1929 merger that created Owens-Illinois, when it became O-I Plant No. 9.
The Owens-Illinois Years
Owens-Illinois began building a new factory at Streator in 1936, and it went into production the following year with 33 machines. The plant mainly made soda and beer bottles. Production peaked in the 1960s, with about 3,500 employees on a 68-acre site. In 2006 Miller Brewing honored the plant for producing 650 million bottles for the brewer.
The End of an Era
The plant, last run as Owens-Brockway at 901 N. Shabbona Street, remained one of Streator’s major employers into the 2020s. In October 2024 the company announced it would close the factory, affecting about 152 workers. That ended glassmaking on a site that traced its history back to October 1881. The Glass Container Capital mural, painted during the 2018 Walldogs festival, honors that history.
Related Streator History
- Streator History Overview
- Streator's Coal Mining Era: The Vermilion Coal Company and Its Miners
- Reuben G. Soderstrom: Streator's Champion of Illinois Labor
- Streator Railroads: The Santa Fe Depot, Interurbans and Coal Lines
Sources
- Bill Lockhart et al., "Streator Bottle & Glass Co." (Society for Historical Archaeology bottle research). https://secure-sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/StreatorBottleGlassCo.pdf
- Bill Lockhart et al., "Owens-Illinois Glass Co. Part 1 – History" (SHA). https://secure-sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/OwensIllinois2018Part1.pdf
- Streator, Illinois – Wikipedia (Geology; Glass manufacturing). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streator,_Illinois
- Shaw Local: Owens-Brockway to close Streator factory (Oct. 22, 2024). https://www.shawlocal.com/illinois-valley/2024/10/22/owens-brockway-to-close-streator-factory-laying-off-more-than-150-employees/
- Michael Joseph Owens – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Joseph_Owens
- Streator Public Art. https://www.streatorpublicart.com/art
