Owens-Illinois Inc., one of the largest glass bottle manufacturers in the world, originally came out of the famous Glass Capital of the World—Toledo, Ohio—in 1903. With its success came expansion, and the company opened a plant in Waco, Texas, on February 22, 1944. The Waco plant would become a significant contributor to the Waco economy and several beverage companies across the nation.

Owens-Illinois Inc. began as the Owens Bottle Machine Company. Michael J. Owens, after whom the company was named, had entered the glass industry at the ripe age of ten. At the time, all glass bottles were made by skilled glassblowers with the help of young boys shoveling coal, moving the molds, and helping with other tasks. As Owens grew up, he decided there had to be a better way to make glass bottles. In partnership with Edward Libbey of Libbey Glass Company and engineer William E. Bock, Owens set out to design an automated bottle-making machine in 1898. Five years and half a million dollars later, the machine was perfected and the Owens Bottle Machine Company was born. The machine could produce 13,000 bottles per day at 10 to 12 cents per bottle, as opposed to 3,500 bottles per day at $1.80 per bottle when blown by hand. By 1919, the company was known as the Owens Bottle Company, and a decade later it merged with Illinois Glass Company to become the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. The merger took place because Owens’s patents were about to expire and he stood to lose a great deal of money, so he acquired a fully functional glass company to continue his profits and to expand his horizons. Owens had revolutionized the glass bottle industry, and his business would expand to over seventy plants across the country.

Due to Waco’s ready market, transportation facilities on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, availability of raw materials, and natural gas reserves, Owens-Illinois selected the Central Texas city as the location for its twentieth plant. The company purchased the land near the Veterans Administration Hospital in 1940, with the plant opening four years later. It started with only one furnace and four molding machines operating twenty-four hours a day, and with three hundred employees from the Waco community producing about one hundred tons of glassware each day. The plant proved to be instrumental in manufacturing bottles and containers for the Allied war effort during the final year of World War II. After the war, it supplied glass bottles, jars, and jugs for food, proprietary medicine, and beverages to Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Louisiana.

The company steadily expanded the Waco plant, constructing new furnaces and employing 725 people by its tenth anniversary in 1954. In honor of its first decade the plant also opened a corrugated box division as a way to manufacture the boxes needed to transport their glassware. That same year the company changed its name to Owens-Illinois Inc. Two years later, the Waco plant established an Owens-Illinois scholarship at Baylor University. The company provided a grant in the amount of tuition and books for one student each year, and the scholarship ran for seven years. Only men could apply, and the scholarship included a summer job at the Waco location.

The 1960s brought more advancements for the Waco plant. In 1961, the plant began to produce glass cans, or “Handys” as they called them. These were designed to be more convenient for transportation and storage in the fridge, and they did not carry a deposit on the bottle. The new cans were also designed to increase sales, as major bleach companies had switched to plastic containers in 1961 and delivered a hit to the Waco plant’s profits, resulting in the layoff of 21 percent of the employees. Yet the biggest change came in 1964 with the invention of Spectra Glas, the country’s first colored glass. Spectra Glas was a breakthrough for light-sensitive products like beer, as this new green glass protected the product from harmful light. The Waco plant was the first Owens-Illinois plant to manufacture Spectra Glas, and its customers, such as Lone Star Beer, profited immensely from the change.

Owens-Illinois saw many ups and downs in the next few decades. Waco employees had always been part of the Glass Bottle Blowers Association and other unions, and after a nationwide strike in 1968 the Waco plant saw continued struggles for better working conditions. The company also battled with the Texas Air Control Board over its environmental impact in the early 1970s. On top of strikes and legal problems throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Owens-Illinois also saw great fluctuations in employment due to the rise in plastic packaging. The Waco plant laid off about 35 percent of their employees seasonally, struggling to keep the plant running at full capacity for even part of the year. In an effort to combat the problem, the plant launched a recycling and glass awareness program to try and reduce the dominance of plastic and aluminum cans. The plant set up an Old West-themed multi-material recycling center in 1983, with different sections decorated as different buildings like a saloon and a livery stable. People could come enjoy the sites and also get paid for the materials they brought to recycle. Owens-Illinois hoped that by once again paying people for returning glass, that more people would purchase glass to begin with. This in part helped revive the Waco plant, along with new customers they picked up in the 1980s such as Gerber, Miller, Dr Pepper, and Coca-Cola. By 1987, Owens-Illinois was purchased by Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co., a global investment firm, with operations continuing in Waco. The company would not go public again until 1991.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, the Owens-Illinois plant only employed about 450 workers, some 500 less than at its height in the 1970s. This was again due to the steady increase in plastic packaging across the country. The city of Waco worked hard to keep the plant running and to preserve as many jobs as possible, in 2010 even giving the plant a $2,500 sales tax reimbursement for every employee kept on the payroll. In 2012, the company announced an $8 million upgrade to the Waco plant to make it more environmentally friendly and up to date. The plant’s biggest customers were still beverage companies, especially a variety of beer labels.

Though plastic bottles appeared to have won the day for decades, Owens-Illinois remains one of the largest glass manufacturers in the world. Despite the company’s continued success at large, the Waco plant closed its doors in 2023, following declines in demand, layoffs, and reports of machinery damage. The Owens-Illinois plant was a key player in the development of Waco’s economy, and the city remains thankful for the jobs and support it provided for the community for so many years.

For more (including 20 images & 4 audio files) view the original article

The Old Corner Drugstore is the birthplace of Dr Pepper. In 1885, Morrison’s Old Corner Drugstore introduced Dr Pepper to customers who eagerly drank the sweet concoction of twenty-three different flavors. Located at 329 Austin Avenue on the bottom floor of the McClelland Hotel, there could be no better first home for the future “King of Beverages” than the heart of Waco’s financial district.

Throughout the early 1880s, Waco drugstores such as Tucker’s Lion Drug Store, Risher’s Drug Store, and Castle and Company vied to win the affection of customers. During this period of intense competition, Wade Morrison moved to Waco to become a partner in Castle and Company. In what turned out to be a fateful business move, Morrison hired Charles Alderton, another recent arrival in Waco, to be the pharmacist at his drugstore now exclusively known as Morrison’s Old Corner Drugstore.

While the pharmaceutical offerings of the Old Corner Drugstore were its mainstay, its soda fountain became a popular hangout for children and adults alike. At a time when people widely believed in the medicinal properties of carbonated drinks, it is not surprising that Alderton devoted as much time to devising interesting drinks for customers to try as he did dispensing medicine. One day by chance he hit upon the perfect combination of twenty-three flavors, creating the popular drink that customers at the Old Corner Drugstore originally referred to as “a Waco.” Morrison named the drink Dr Pepper and applied for a patent stating the original date of creation as December 1, 1885. Eventually outside demand for the Dr Pepper syrup outstripped the ability of the Old Corner Drugstore to meet it, so Morrison relocated the syrup’s production to a building on the corner of Fifth and Mary, the site of the current Dr Pepper Museum.

Sensing that the business landscape of the community was changing, Morrison decided to move the Old Corner Drugstore away from the McClelland Hotel. In 1912, he opened the doors to the new Old Corner Drugstore location next door to the towering Amicable Life Insurance building (now known as the ALICO building). Relocating the Old Corner Drugstore next to Waco’s only skyscraper proved to be an astute business move for Wade Morrison, as the then tallest building west of the Mississippi River and south of the Mason-Dixie line drew in significant foot traffic to the storefront. 

Morrison’s death in 1924 did not lead to the immediate closure of the Old Corner Drugstore. The store continued to operate over the next twenty years under various owners.

Although the memory of the Old Corner Drugstore lives on today, both of its physical locations are no more. In 1953, both sites suffered severe damage as a result of the F5 tornado that struck downtown Waco on May 11. The former location of each now serves the Waco community as part of its parking infrastructure. 

For more information about the Old Corner Drugstore, visit the Dr Pepper Museum. To learn more about the museum, visit www.drpeppermuseum.com. 

For more (including 7 images) view the original article

Few major products are as closely identified with the people and environment where they began as Dr Pepper in Waco. Developing from a soft drink invented at a local drugstore to one of the largest and most popular industries in the world, Dr Pepper has remained attached to the city of Waco. This close identification with Waco is perhaps best exemplified in the former bottling plant building which now houses a museum on the corner of Fifth Street and Mary Avenue in downtown Waco.

In 1885, one year before the invention of Coca-Cola, a young pharmacist named Charles Alderton began experimenting by mixing different fruit flavors together at The Old Corner Drug Store on Fourth Street and Austin Avenue. The resulting concoction would become the formula for Dr Pepper. The drink became a favorite of fountain patrons, and soon people all across town ordered the drink originally known as a Waco. From around 1885 to 1891, the drink, could only be served at fountains or the drugstore, where the syrup was mixed with the carbonated water and served individually. The popularity of the beverage influenced the drugstore owner and manager, Wade Morrison and Robert S. Lazenby to form the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Co. in 1891 to bottle the drink.

In 1906, a three-story building was built at the corner of Fifth and Mary for the purpose of bottling and shipping the new drink. In 1922, the base of operations moved to Dallas after the formation of the formal Dr Pepper Company. Local bottling production continued until around 1965, when operations were moved to a more modern facility. The building was given to Baylor University and subsequently used as a storage warehouse for the next thirteen years.

On May 11, 1953, an F5 tornado struck downtown Waco, devastating the city. Although it did not sustain a direct hit, the bottling building was among the casualties of the tornado. The tornado damaged the Mary Street side of the building leaving a scar which is still visible today. The relatively sound construction of the bottling building, including 18-inch thick brick walls, massive timber underpinnings, and tile roof, is the reason for the fairly minor damage to the plant. The building was repaired with a lighter colored brick but not restored, and business was back to as usual until the move in 1965.

At Waco’s centennial celebration of the invention of Dr Pepper in 1985, ideas of creating a museum to tell the story of Dr Pepper production in Waco sprang up. On May 11, 1991, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the tornado, the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute opened. Since then, the museum has entertained and educated thousands of visitors, with a mission of being the best museum to tell the story of the soft drink industry and to use this very industry as a testament to the free enterprise system. Complete with exhibit areas, a gift shop, soda fountain, and restored building features, the Dr Pepper Museum helps tell the story of the growth of Dr Pepper and its special place in Waco.

For more information about the museum, visit www.drpeppermuseum.com.  

For more (including 7 images & 3 audio files) view the original article