Like most of the Kankakee area’s older industrial structures, the two-story, red-brick building on the northeast corner of Duane Boulevard and Stoddard Place has been home to a number of companies and has manufactured a variety of products through the years.
Known by most older local residents as the “Amberg File” building, it was constructed in 1891 on what was then the far eastern outskirts of the city.
The years 1890-91 saw a local factory “building boom,” with at least seven new firms erecting manufacturing plants. In North Kankakee (later renamed Bradley), there were four new furniture factories, while Kankakee added two plants on the north side (Taylor Fibre Ware Company and the Superior Horse Shoe Nail Co.), and the building on Duane Boulevard, which would house a major furniture factory, the Knapp & Stoddard Company.
In the late 1800s, just as they do today, communities offered financial incentives to attract new factories (and the jobs they would create). In the case of Knapp & Stoddard, that incentive was a 6-acre plant site and a $50,000 bonus.
To generate the funds needed, an “investment syndicate” of local businessmen was formed in January 1891. The syndicate purchased 80 acres of vacant land from owner Emory Cobb for $10,000, then subdivided that property into 288 building lots. Called the Riverview Subdivision, it was bounded on the north by Bourbonnais Street, on the west by Rosewood Avenue, on the south by Duane Boulevard and on the east by Nelson Avenue and what would become Stoddard Place.
Local investors were urged to purchase building lots at $250 each, either to erect their own homes or to build houses that would later be sold to workers moving to Kankakee for jobs at the new factory. Funds raised by the lot sales (potentially $72,000) would pay the costs of creating the subdivision, building a railroad spur to the factory, purchasing the plant site and paying the $50,000 bonus.
By mid-March 1891, work was underway on the new Knapp & Stoddard factory, which would manufacture a line of medium-priced bedroom furniture. Operating under the name Kankakee Furniture Company, it would initially employ 100 workers, with plans to eventually grow to a workforce of 400.
Unfortunately, the company never reached that employment goal. In 1893, a severe financial panic struck the country, and many businesses (including the Kankakee Furniture Factory) went bankrupt.
The building stood idle until November 1896, when it was purchased by Edwin Gould, an East Coast entrepreneur. Gould had formed a new company, called the Continental Match Company, to compete with the country’s largest producer, the Diamond Match Company. In the 1890s, before the widespread use of electricity for lighting, matches were a household necessity for lighting candles, kerosene lamps or gas jets. They also were needed to light wood, coal stoves or fireplaces.
Whether the plant ever produced matches is unclear: Gould announced in December 1897, “either during the winter or in early spring, we shall install there one of the finest match plants in the country, with a capacity of 20,000 gross a day.” A full year later, the Kankakee Gazette reported that “the Kankakee factory is to be opened February 1 [1899].”
If the plant ever did begin making matches, its fate was sealed only months later, when the Diamond Match Company paid Gould $1 million for a controlling interest in his Continental Match Company. The Continental factories in New Jersey and in Kankakee were closed in August 1899.
For the next two decades, the former Knapp & Stoddard plant was sporadically occupied by a firm that made easels and other artists’ supplies, a company that manufactured wooden “iceboxes,” and another firm that built “knock-down” furniture that appealed to apartment dwellers and other renters (it could be disassembled for ease of moving).
In 1920, the building was finally occupied by a company with staying power: Amberg File and Index Company and its successors would be there until 2011. William A. Amberg, the company’s founder, was a Chicago stationery store owner who revolutionized business office filing methods. His 1918 obituary in the Chicago Tribune noted that “He was the inventor of a letter file that resulted in the development of many present-day filing systems and devices.”
The Amberg firm manufactured all aspects of the filing system, from cardboard folders to wooden and steel cabinets. By 1928, the plant employed more than 100 workers, and had expanded its cabinet line to tap the household market. “The three principal products of manufacture by this firm, filing cabinets, phonograph and radio cabinets mount up … in the course of the year’s run to a surprising total,” reported the Kankakee Daily Republican on Feb. 25. The newspaper noted a developing trend in home entertainment: “While there is still a large demand for [the phonograph cabinet], the radio in this day overshadows all. There is a demand for it … that gives no evidence as yet of being in any way near satisfied.”
In 1969, the Amberg File and Index Company became a division of the large office and school supply company, Boorum & Pease. That company, in turn, was absorbed by its major competitor, Esselte Pendaflex, in 1985. The last Kankakee City Directory listing for Esselte Pendaflex was 2011. Currently, the building is used for warehousing by the firm Logistic Solutions.
