MacBeth & Evans Glass Company (Elwood, Indiana)

 interesting place, glass industry, historic ruins

Founded in August 1891
The Elwood factory of the MacBeth & Evans Glass Co. was founded after a trainload of 365 trained glaziers were brought in from the factories of Pittsburgh to start a new factory over the abundant gas wells in of the area. The operation consisted of several hug vats called pots for melting the glass and a huge sheet metal blowing room where skilled glassblowers shaped the hot glass. Also included in the factory were small sheds off the main room for cooling the glass, a shipping room and an office. A network of rails tied the operation together. MacBeth's workers were making glass within a few days of arrival.

The company's main product were glass lamp chimneys of all types for home and industrial use. But, the factory was also used for George A. MacBeth's new optical glass factory, housed in a building named the French House (named for the nationality of the factory's master glassworker, Edmond Feil). This was the first optical glass factory in all of the United States, and notable customers include the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Gill Observatory in South Africa. This success was short lived, however, with testimonies from customers backing the claim that MacBeth's glass was inferior, and soon the French House closed its doors.

The factory continued to produce glass, however, and the works soon acquired modern glassblowing machines (which triggered two strikes, one in 1902 and another in 1905, in which a union member was shot and killed in a dispute with an imported worker from Indianapolis). The works were renovated in 1910 and was making glass for automobile headlights by that point, and had a sizable workforce of 200-300 workers at any given point up until the factory's closure in the late 1930's. In the decade before the factory closed, the Elwood plant produced tumblers and stemware.

The property is now owned by private residents.
sources: Madison County Historical Society