Libbey Owens Ford

LIBBEY OWENS FORD

As you can find thousands of pages of information about Libbey Owens Ford glass plant on the Internet, I will give you only the highlights here: In June 1916, the Libbey-Owens Sheet Glass Company was organized, and in 1917 the first Libbey-Owens plant opened in Kanawha City, Charleston, West Virginia. This was the largest sheet glass factory in the world. Libbey Owens would open an addition plant across MacCorkle Ave to produce jars and, following the repeal of Prohibition, beer bottles. This plant grew to be the largest jar and bottle manufacturer in the world in the 1930s. The two plants appeared to be one, as many residents could not distinguish one from the other. IMPORTANT TO US WEST VIRGINIANS: Micheal Owens, a native of Mason County, West Virginia, began a career in the glass industry in Wheeling. He was the inventor of the blow mold bottle making machine, and the bottle making world changed forever.

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The Libbey Owens Company opened its glass manufacturing operations in Kanawha City in 1917, building six units in 1917, six more units in 1918 and 1923, making it the largest plate glass plant in the world. In 1928, the Edward Ford Plate Glass Company bought into the company and the name changed to Libbey-Owens-Ford. By 1929, the Charleston plant was one of the largest plants manufacturing plate, window, windshield, and non-shattering glass.

View from MacCorkle Ave.

Inside part of the plant

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Libbey-Owens, before being joined by Ford, was the world’s largest producer of window glass. In 1930, they supplied glass used in the construction of the Empire State Building. The Waldorf Astoria also used their glass.

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Another view from across the Kanawha River

View looking North

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MacCorkle Ave

Another view looking North

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Ariel View looking North

Libbey Owens Ford

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Ariel view looking East

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MacCorkle Ave

Photos By Steve Simpson

1980 - End of an era

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In April 1986, LOF sold its glass business and name to the Pilkington Group, a
multinational glass manufacturer headquartered in the United Kingdom.

The property where Libbey-Owens-Ford plant was located, at MacCorkle Ave & 57th Street, was deemed a superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA identified such sites because they pose or had once posed a potential risk to human health and/or the environment due to contamination by one or more hazardous wastes. The site was determined to have arsenic in the soil, along with other waste byproducts of glass manufacture. The levels were determined to be so low they posed virtually no threat. The Libbey-Owens-Ford plant, although registered as an active superfund site, it was not on the National Priorities List, which meant the EPA did not consider it one of the nation’s most hazardous waste sites. It has since been dropped from the list.

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The property today is a shopping mall.

The surrounding neighborhoods burgeoned as employees moved to live near their jobs. Kanawha City still boasts tiny houses that were built for glass plant workers. Nearly too small to even be considered bungalows, these homes were anywhere from 450 to 750 square foot structures. Although tiny, they provided adequate housing for scores of Libbey-Owens-Ford families. Situated on lots a mere twenty feet wide, the tiny house footprint was only about 15 by 30 feet. SEE MORE HERE: http://www.mywvhome.com/more/tiny.htm

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Many people in the valley still have chunks of glass from the plant that they place as decorations.

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