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Columbus Buggy Company
1893 Columbian Exposition Souvenir Advertising Coin from the Columbus Buggy Co. This aluminum coin portrays an image of Christopher Columbus and the words "World's Fair Souvenir 1492-1892." The reverse has an illustration of a buggy and reads "Compliments of Columbus Buggy Co. - Columbus, Ohio U.S.A.
By the 1880s, about 200 industrial factories were in Columbus. These industries included factories manufacturing shoes, cigars, farm tools and machinery, furniture, carriages, and brooms; iron manufacturers and foundries. One of the major employers was the Columbus Buggy Company. Originally known as the Iron Buggy Company, by the late 1800s, this business could produce one buggy every 8 minutes. It claimed to be the largest producer of buggies in the world.
By 1900, the Columbus Buggy Company employed over 1000 people. Clinton Dewitt Firestone was the company's president. Both Harvey S. Firestone and Eddy Rickenbacker got their early business experience while working at the Columbus Buggy Company, before moving on to other ventures.
With the advent of the automobile, buggy and carriage manufacturers faced serious competition. Like some other companies, the Columbus Buggy Company's management decided to begin producing automobiles in the early 20th Century. The company built several different lines, using both electric and gas power. Unfortunately, these changes were not enough for the company to survive. The Columbus Buggy Company went bankrupt in 1913.
Original Columbus Buggy factory located at the corner of High Street and Hickory alley (just north of Spring Street). The Columbus Buggy Company was a thriving business by the late 1800s. The company expanded to a new factory at 400 Dublin Avenue after the turn of the century (Dublin Avenue is now Nationwide Boulevard, and the plant would have been located just west of the Nationwide Arena district, across the rail road tracks).
The end of an era
Ohio had many buggy manufacturing companies at the beginning of the 20th Century, but the Columbus Buggy Company, was the largest, with plants not only in Ohio, but in different locations throughout the country. With the invention of the automobile, these buggy manufacturers saw the future of horse-drawn transportation was at an end. Many of the companies started manufacturing powered buggies, with the Columbus Buggy Company leading the way with both electric and gasoline powered models. However, when Henry Ford developed the innovative assembly line manufacturing plant, the large buggy companies could not compete with them, nor did they have the financial strength to convert their already existing large plants into assembly line production facilities.
The other major factor in the demise of he Columbus Buggy Company, like many other manufacturers in the state, was that the new horseless carriages were being made out of steel. Columbus had iron mills, but steel was a new industry that required lots of raw materials not easily transported long distances by rail. Thus the auto manufacters gathered in the port cities like Detroit and Cleveland where these raw materials could be brought in by ship. Thus ended the age of buggy and automobile manufacturing in Columbus.
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