Arnold, Schwinn & Company was established in Chicago in the last quarter of the year 1895. Over the years the company rented, purchased, and built several facilities in Chicago. This is the seventh in a series of posts about head office and factory locations in Chicago.

The Arnold, Schwinn & Company building at the corner of Kostner Avenue and Cortland Street was built in the year 1910. The building still exists as of the year 2025. I have found two sources for dating the year of building.

The first is The Bicycling World & Motorcycle Review October 22, 1910.

This news item does not give a location for the “factory addition”. Note that there is a “new smokestack”. The first Schwinn factory at 43rd avenue also has a smokestack and none of the sketches of this factory ever show two smokestacks.

The second source for the year of the Kostner avenue building is recent real estate listing for this property. In 2025, or earlier, this property was for sale. The realtors list the year built as 1910. I think that the real estate business in Chicago is careful about the date for when a building is built and has the resources to find the date in City of Chicago records.

History of Kostner Avenue and Cortland Street

The first reference to this block that I found was in this news article of the Chicago Examiner, eight acres of land at the south-west corner of Cortland Street and North 44th Avenue was purchased in October 1909 by the Weller Manufacturing Company. This land was on the north side of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Rail Road line.

The Arnold, Schwinn & Co. Pant No. 1 is on 43rd street, south of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Rail Road and one block east of the Weller manufacturing land purchase.

Weller Manufacturing Company

The first reference to the address 1856 North Kostner Avenue is by the Weller Manufacturing Company of Chicago, not from Arnold, Schwinn & Company.

It appears that Weller Manufacturing built a factory on Kostner Avenue between the Arnold, Schwinn & Co. factory to the north and the Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul Rail Road line to the south. In 1916 Weller Manufacturing advertisements lists their address as 1820 – 1856 N. Kostner Avenue. Note that 1856 N. Kostner Avenue is the address given for the Arnold, Schwinn and Co Building in the 1960s.

In 1937, the firm was acquired by the Webster Manufacturing Company. The Weller Manufacturing factory on Kostner Avenue was closed and operations were consolidated with Webster’s Tiffin, Ohio plant.

To summarize what happened at the Kostner Ave and Cortland street location:

• 1909 October the land is purchased by Weller Manufacturing
• Weller Manufacturing uses the 1856 N. Kostner Avenue address
• 1937 Weller Manufacturing operations move to Ohio.

Arnold Schwinn & Company at Kostner Avenue

The question that I have is when did Arnold, Schwinn & Company begin to use the factory on Kostner avenue? After Weller Manufacturing moved out of the Kostner Avenue location what happened?

The first reference that I have found to Arnold, Schwinn & Co. using the Kostner Avenue location is from Jay Townley.

Jay Townley was a vice president of manufacturing at Schwinn in the 1970s. “We watched the Taiwanese, when what we should have done was adopted their practices,” Townley said. “We did not invest. In Schwinn Plant Number 2 we had the same presses the government put in in World War II to make machine gun barrels and ammunition and we were still using them.”

The Global Bicycle Market: A Comprehensive Plan to Re-Shore the U.S. Bike & E-Bike Industry, NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Jay Townley’s comments indicate that Plant No. 2 was used by Arnold, Schwinn & Co. for war time production.

The next reference to Arnold, Schwinn & Co using the Kostner Avenue location is the December 1964 issue of the Schwinn Report. The address is 1856 Kostner Avenue, not Kildare Avenue. From this date on into the 1970s the address is Kostner Avenue.

Arnold, Schwinn & Co advertising in 1965 also shows a change of address from Kildare Avenue to Kostner Avenue.

The Kostner Avenue location was used for the Head Office, Schwinn Service Training school, Schwinn Sales School, and parts manufacturing.

Kostner Avenue Mystery?

The Kostner Avenue plant was built in 1910. Weller Manufacturing Company uses the Kostner Avenue address upto 1937. It appears that Arnold, Schwinn & Co. may not have used the plant until 1942 for war time manufacturing.

For what purpose was it built? In my next post I will give my theory about the Kostner avenue