City of Bloomington, Indiana Conversations with Bloomington's Dreamers, Doers, and Entrepreneurs, 27 Sep 2018

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From YouTube: Bloomington Dreamers, Doers and Entrepreneurs: Susan Dyar

Description

Listen in as Susan Dyar, Director of the Monroe County History Center, details how the Showers Brothers Furniture Factory's success and philanthropic efforts strengthened Bloomington's infrastructure, helped to develop new neighborhoods, and lent support to Bloomington’s continued economic growth.

Bloomington would absolutely not be the vibrant, welcoming city it is today had it not been for the Showers family. We are proud to support The Trades District as well as the renovation of The Mill, a coworking space and business incubator which will be utilized to grow and keep talent in Bloomington, representing the passing of the torch from one historic, community-defining job creator to another.

The Mill, located at Morton and 11th Street, was originally built in 1915 as part of the Showers Brothers Furniture Factory. At its peak in the 1920s, it produced 700,000 pieces of furniture a year, enough to fill 16 train-car loads a day. Producing more than half of all the furniture made in the United States, the company declared itself “the world’s largest producer of bedroom and dining room furniture.” In recent years, The Mill was used as a storage facility by @Indiana University and in 2011, the City of Bloomington purchased it, along with several other parcels of land. These 12 acres are currently being transformed into the Trades District, a certified technology park of which The Mill is the center of gravity for making, growing, and working in Bloomington and greater Indiana.

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A

I, don't think anyone can help but feel the intrinsic power of a place. You feel it come back to life. You feel like the ghosts of the brothers and the workers are speaking to you and inspiring you, and hopefully it'll inspire those who are working in there to feel that same kind of thing. You know little sparks come from. You don't know where they're coming from.

A

Hi, my name is Susan Dyer and I'm. The director of the Monroe County History Center, my father was a history. Buff all our lives. He was taking us to different historic sites, and that's it really imbued me with that sense of history. I feel like our story is our community and our community is the stories of the people who made it. Bloomington would not have been what it was without the showers factory. Most everybody worked here and it had such an impact on everything. The showers brothers started us their own showers, brother savings company.

A

They started the Bloomington real estate association, they bought up land and then lent money, so workers could build their own homes, Maple Heights Fairview. All of those neighborhoods resulted because this factory was here they had their own grocery store. They established workers have access to lower priced food, they had their own auditorium where they brought in entertainers. They actually had pension plants and health insurance that they offered, which was unheard of, and they were the first furniture factory in the country to hire women.

A

If you could do the work equivalent to a man, you got paid the same rate, which again was unheard of, so they were very progressive. They had an impact on the community in in other ways. You know the women of the family. They were a big part of the suffrage movement, they started the first Hospital Foundation. They appealed to the Carnegie company to build a Carnegie Library, a building like this, a company like this. It meant something to the workers, it wasn't just work, it was so much more, it was.

A

It was a family within the workplace as well. It's pretty special.