1800 W. Foster Avenue / 538 Foster Ave / Ravenswood & N. 59th Street

In the early 1880s, Robert Greer was involved in the construction of a cotton factory here on what was then named 59th Street, taking advantage of both a growing immigrant workforce and cheap rail access to cotton and coal. At its peak, the factory employed 150 workers in the operation of over 120 looms. The factory burned in January of 1886 and was rebuilt on a somewhat smaller scale in that same year. Shortly thereafter, Calumet Cotton moved to Mammoth Springs, Arkansas and the building here became a factory for the Chicago Fireproof Covering Co, where asbestos goods and pipe coverings were manufactured.

 

By the early 1900s, the Audebert Wallpaper Co. took over the lot. Great Lakes Wall Paper Mills was its successor in the 1920s. In the mid 1920s, Drying Systems, Inc. manufactured kilns here. In the 1950s, this facility was used to produce x-ray film under a number of owners, and eventually became a warehouse and office for educational films. In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of businesses were located here, including a plastics company and a manufacturer of “fashion clocks”. Eventually, the facility was converted to use as a self-storage business.

1885	Calumet Cotton Factory
1897-1904	Chicago Fireproof Covering Co. (manufacturing of asbestos goods and pipe coverings)
1904	Audebert Wall Paper (manufacturing and distributing wallpaper)
1919	Great Lakes Wall Paper Mills Inc
1925 – 1946 1958?	Drying Systems, Inc. (manufacturer of industrial ovens and process air conditioning installations) [ purchased by Thor Power Tool company in 1957 ]
1959?	Stanard X-Ray Co.??
1963	Central Scientific Company / CENCO X-Ray
1968	CENCO Educational Films
1981	London Time, Ltd. (clock manufacture)
1988-	J.D. Acrylics (plastics manufacturing)
	Foster – Ravenswood Self Storage

see also:

• Oral Interview with Robert C. Greer (Edgewater Historical Society)