Furniture Manufacturers In Warren County, PA

The excellent hardwoods and softwoods of Warren County drew settlers who harvested and dressed the lumber and shipped it down river. Artisans, too, came here to use these materials to make furniture for local needs. In 1826, Roger Filer advertised his services as a cabinet maker in the Warren Gazette. The earliest furniture makers probably kept simple chairs and case pieces on hand for sale; they also made fancier pieces to order.

As the area grew and prospered, larger operations appeared. C. W. Shaw’s Furniture Manufactory, “…on the turnpike Warren to Jamestown”, advertised in 1841 that it made “Sideboards, Secretaries, Bureaus, French Lockers, Trundle Beds, Cradles, etc.” These factories probably served only the growing towns in their immediate areas.

The first long-lasting furniture manufacturing company that shipped products to a wide market was established only after the railroad came to the area; from Erie in 1859, connecting south and east by 1866. Energy, first water power and wood, later gas, was abundantly available. Jas. P. Johnson, Furniture Manufacturer, claimed establishment in 1869, although Johnson was first listed in the city directories as a cabinet maker, and did not have a company listed under his own name until 1878. He advertised “Wholesale Manufacturers of Oak Chamber Suits, Warren, PA.” The company existed until taken over by August Karlson in 1916 and reorganized into the Mypenn Furniture Company.

The glory days of wooden furniture manufacturing in Warren lasted from the 1890s through the 1920s. Businessmen and tinkerers ran companies, developed markets, innovated technically and attracted skilled labor. Samuel Peterson’s wooden handle factory at Laurel and Fourth incubated the Warren Chair Works and C. S. Homer’s Warren Table Works. The Newmaker and Reed Planning Mill produced an offshoot in the Phenix Furniture Company.

Support industries-The Warren Veneer and Panel Works, the Warren and Youngsville Mirror Works-developed alongside the main industry. By 1926, almost 30% of manufacturing jobs in Warren County were in the furniture industry. The Warren Furniture Company employed up to 300 people. It made dining room and bedroom furniture, desks and occasional pieces, had a Georgian line in mahogany, a Colonial Dutch line in solid cherry, a “Modernistic” line with silver inlay, and made its own exotic wood plywoods.

The Pickett Extension Table was patented in 1891; there also were Smith and Homer extension tables. By 1911 Amel Sagadahl of the Forest Furniture Company in Youngsville had “...secured a half a dozen new patents…that are much appreciated by manufacturers at large.” In 1917, Peter Colt of the Union Furniture and Novelty Company patented the "20th Century Kar-O-Kid", a screen baby pen on wheels. In 1921, Col. Fred E. Windsor patented the One Handed Clock.

The major companies—Conewango, Warren, Phenix, Youngsville, Crescent, and Paramount—produced suites of bedroom and dining room furniture, solid wood or veneered. In the 1930s Phenix Furniture Company made a salesman’s demonstration cabinet, utilizing all its veneers, hardware and decorative techniques. The accompanying letter compared the quality details favorably against the cheaper techniques used by aggressive competitors in the southern states.

In 1940, Holger Elmquist wrote a graduate thesis on the economy of Warren County during the years from 1926 to 1938. The furniture industry chapter begins: “The wooden furniture industry in the community has generally been considered a sick and dying thing of the last 10 to 12 years.” Residential construction went into recession in 1925, drying up demand for new furniture. The Depression devastated struggling companies. Costs were high, while the selling price of furniture actually declined. By 1920, the Nypenn Furniture Company manufactured its bedroom sets mostly of red gum shipped in from the South. Labor was cheaper in the South. Living quarters got smaller, and customers no longer needed large suites of furniture. The Warren Furniture Company was driven into bankruptcy when the Atwater Kent Company returned several rail carloads of wooden radio cabinets. In 1936 Phenix advertised the sale of the Warren Chair Works and Mypenn buildings.

By 1942, only four wooden furniture manufacturers remained; Crescent, Paramount, Phenix, and Youngsville Star. Innovations had been tried. Crescent Furniture went from Quarter matched veneer “period” suites in the 1920s to double matched veneer “waterfall” sets in the 1930s to straight cut veneer modern sets after World War II to single and modular pieces in the 1960s that could be shipped more economically than large suites. In 1981 Waterhouse, Inc., the successor firm to Crescent Furniture, shut down, ending large scale wooden furniture manufacturing in Warren.

The birth, development and decline of the furniture industry in Warren was a natural process. Talented people dedicated their imaginations and efforts to build a thriving industry, and then conditions changed. Furniture manufacturing consolidated elsewhere. City directories document simultaneously the decline of furniture manufacturing and the growth of new industry. A chapter in our history is over and has left us this furniture which is around you.

Evan Lanman