Wrangler Jeans were Made Here Until 1978

Blue Bell Factory Building, Columbia City Indiana

Date added: December 02, 2024

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The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building is located at 307 South Whitley Street in Columbia City, Indiana. For more than 40 years, it was the local manufacturing facility for Blue Bell, Inc., a nationally important clothing manufacturing company from the 1920s until 1986, when the company was acquired by VF Corporation.

The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building was built in 1932 (with a 1935 addition) by a predecessor work-clothing company to Blue Bell, the Globe Superior Corporation, which was acquired by Blue Bell four years later in 1936. The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building was the local (Columbia City) facility for a company that had $53 million in sales in 1953 and 28 factories throughout the United States by 1955, making it the largest manufacturer of work and play clothes in the world at the time. The company's best-known brand was Wrangler jeans, historically one of the top three brands of denim jeans in the United States, which the company began manufacturing in 1947. Blue Bell, Inc. operated the Columbia City factory from 1936 until 1978, when the company closed the factory as a cost-saving measure.

As the county seat of Whitley County and the county's largest town, Columbia City historically served as a center of agricultural commerce. Most local industries themselves served the community's large agricultural market, created agriculture-oriented industrial facilities including flour and lumber mills. Clothing mills and factories were also important components of local industrial architecture. Blue Bell, Inc., along with its predecessor companies, the Superior Garment and Globe Superior companies, operated factories that served Columbia City's local agricultural market, manufacturing work clothing for farm laborers both locally and nationally.

The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building is located in Columbia City, a town of slightly more than 9,000 as of the 2010 United States Census. It is located twenty miles west of Fort Wayne in the northeast part of Indiana. Columbia City is the county seat of Whitley County, comprised of land originally occupied by the Miami and Potawatomi tribes who ceded their land to the United States government in 1826 and 1828. After a government survey, land was sold to settlers and investors for $1.25 an acre. One of these buyers was Elihu Chauncy of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who in 1839 surveyed a portion of his 443 acres for the new settlement of Columbia. On some of his remaining land, Chauncy established a saw mill, an early local commercial business.

The new town (renamed Columbia City in 1854 to avoid confusion with another Indiana town named Columbia) initially grew as the economic and governmental center for the surrounding farm economy. However, in 1856, the community became a stop on a new railroad intended to reach from Fort Wayne to Chicago. This line (the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railroad, later the Pennsylvania Railroad) was joined a decade later by another rail line (the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railroad, later the Wabash Railroad). Subsequently Columbia City grew as a shipping point for local grain and lumber, as well as wood products created by local businesses.

In the early years of the twentieth century, industrial concerns grew along on the southern edge of Columbia City, near the Blue River and adjacent to these two rail lines. Two were associated with cloth and clothing manufacture. The Columbia Woolen Mills, a cloth mill, was located at the foot of South Washington Street where it dead-ended against the Blue River. The Superior Garment Company (a predecessor company to Blue Bell, Inc.) manufactured work clothing and was located nearby at the southwest corner of East Ellsworth and South Washington streets in a building originally built for the Columbia City Heel Company. Superior Garment was making clothes in Columbia City by 1907.

In 1926, Superior Garment was acquired by the Globe Manufacturing Company, headquartered in Abingdon, Illinois, and a similar manufacturer of work clothing. The resulting Globe Superior Corporation had factories in Commerce, Georgia, and Canton, Illinois, along with its factories in Abingdon and Columbia City.

In 1932, Globe Superior expanded with the construction of a new Columbia City building that would be later known as the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building. In October 1931, the new building's planned construction was announced in a local newspaper with a rendering by the building's architect, LeRoy Bradley of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The newspaper noted that the brick building was expected to have 48,000 square feet of space and that its contractor was Merl P. Hodges. American Machinist noted the building's planned size (2 stories and a footprint of 80 x 200 feet), its cost of $45,000, and its design by Mr. Bradley.

Opened in January 1932, the new factory subsequently employed about 450 Globe Superior Corporation workers by 1935. It was a sufficient success that Globe Superior commissioned in 1935 a three-story, 100 by 100 foot brick addition from a design by the original building's architect, LeRoy Bradley. Noah A. Yoder was the contractor.

The following year, in November 1936, the Globe Superior Corporation and its newly-expanded Columbia City factory building were acquired by the Blue Bell Overall Company. The subsequent company, Blue Bell-Globe, then was renamed Blue Bell, Inc. in 1943, the name that it retained until its acquisition by VF Corporation in 1986.

The History of Blue Bell, Inc.

At the time of their merger, Blue Bell and Globe Superior were two of the largest manufacturers of work clothing in the United States, and the subsequent Blue Bell, Inc. became one of the country's leading manufacturers of work and play clothing, with an emphasis on denim. In the early twentieth century, the United States saw a variety of work-clothing manufacturers, including those that focused on denim, scattered across the country and typically with brand names of limited regional reach. At the time of its acquisition of the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building in Columbia City, Blue Bell, Inc. was one of the more successful of these companies.

Blue Bell was founded in 1904 by C.C. Hudson, who started the company in Greensboro, North Carolina, with sewing machines purchased from a just-closed clothing factory in the town. Over time, the success of the company brought about its expansion and the creation of new factories in other southern cities and towns. In 1926, Blue Bell and a rival work-clothing manufacturer, the Big Ben Manufacturing Co. in Middlesboro, Kentucky, merged. The new Blue Bell Overall Co. then acquired Globe Superior in 1936.

In the years following its acquisition of Globe Superior, Blue Bell consolidated its status as one of the largest clothing companies in America. It acquired two additional companies, the H.D. Bob Company in 1940 and the Casey Jones Company in 1943. During World War II, Blue Bell, Inc. shifted its production from civilian clothing to a variety of military apparel. Over 22 million pieces of clothing were manufactured by the company for the United States military, including jungle suits, one-piece suits, denim pants, coats, fatigue pants, jackets, shirts, trousers, and flying suits.

After the end of World War II, and in anticipation of prosperity, Blue Bell, Inc. executives, led by long-time president Edwin A. Morris, decided to reposition the company away from work clothes such as work shirts and bib overalls in favor of clothes intended for casual living. The centerpiece of this new strategy included the revamping of an already-existing but little-known clothing line, "Wrangler," acquired during the company's 1943 merger with the Casey Jones Company, resulting in Blue Bell's new Wrangler jeans line, created with the help of Philadelphia Western clothing designer "Rodeo Ben," a celebrity tailor to rodeo stars.

Blue Bell, Inc., through its Wrangler jeans line, became an important part of the 20th-century evolution of denim jeans from utilitarian work clothes to casual and trendy apparel. A resilient clothing material worn for centuries, denim jeans and other work clothing articles grew in popularity in the 1850s and 1860s. The denim clothing market was soon populated with a variety of small American manufacturers, including Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco, later known as Levi's Jeans, and H.D. Lee, the Kansas-based maker of Lee Jeans. By the 1950s, Levi's, Lee, and Wrangler jeans were the three most popular brands of denim jeans in the country.

Though Wrangler jeans were initially conceived to fit the rugged lifestyle of rodeo riders and cowboys, the Wrangler image soon tapped into Americans' growing attraction to Western movies and culture and to casual living, creating a mid-twentieth century craze for denim jeans and other clothing made from the distinctively blue material. As early as the 1930s, movie stars such as Ginger Rogers had attracted attention wearing denim jeans while at play. Dude ranches in California, Nevada and Arizona had become popular vacation options for urban Americans. After the war, this love of all things Western continued. Blue Bell solicited the endorsements of rodeo champions such as 16-time world champion Jim Shoulders for use in company marketing. During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, denim jeans became iconic emblems representing American youth and outsider cultures, and Wrangler jeans was one of the companies most successful at tapping into these cultural trends." Through its manufacture of Blue Bell clothing, including Wrangler jeans, the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building in Columbia City was a significant outpost of this important 20th-century history.

The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building in Columbia City was one of several factories scattered around the United States owned and operated by Blue Bell, Inc. Throughout its history, factory workers turned out a variety of Blue Bell clothing, with Wrangler jeans being among the main products. The factory took denim cloth made elsewhere and constructed clothing using an assembly line process. The building's second floor, consisting of a larger open room under steel roof trusses, was the main assembly room, where jeans and other clothing items were put together. The first floor had company offices and the shipping department, with loading docks on the north and east sides of the building. At the factory's peak of production in the 1940s, the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building employed 800 local workers.

In addition to its importance to Blue Bell's manufacturing operation, the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building also played an important role in mid-twentieth-century Columbia City community life. Local Columbia City writer Susie Duncan Sexton, the daughter of Roy E. Sexton, the longtime manager of Blue Bell's Columbia City factory, has noted that during Blue Bell's occupancy, almost every family in town had one or more members working in the factory building. Columbia City women were especially sought after for employment in the factory, taking advantage of already-held sewing skills.

Given the close nature of small-town life, Blue Bell, itself headquartered in a small southern city, Greensboro, North Carolina, encouraged a feeling of "family" among its workers and administrators. An onsite company cafeteria provided meals at below cost. An employee newsletter, "Stitch 'n Time," published factory information along with the personal news of workers. For example, "Stitch 'n Time" often highlighted many employees with photos of them working at their machines or workstations. Representative of this were newsletter issues from 1947 and 1958 which included photos showing workers in the cutting department (Herbert Wolfe, Kenneth Roberts, Albert Pence, etc.), the felling department (Gladys Albert and Janet Kreiger), and the finishing department (Helen Schneider, Robert Hiss, and Eloise Zent). Monthly birthday lunches, Christmas parties and other celebrations encouraged feelings of belonging. These economic and social factors combined to make Blue Bell's factory an important Columbia City business and community institution over five decades.

Blue Bell, Inc. continued to grow during the 1950s and 1960s. By 1953, the company reported net sales of $53 million. In 1961, Blue Bell expanded overseas with the opening of a new factory in Belgium. By the early 1980s, Blue Bell had factories and warehouses in 17 states and 18 countries.

As changing manufacturing business models altered the economic landscape of clothing manufacturing in the late twentieth century, many United States-based factories, including Blue Bell's Columbia City facility were determined obsolete. The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building was closed by the company in 1978. After undergoing financial turmoil in the early 1980s, Blue Bell, Inc. was acquired by VF Corporation in 1986. Today, this successor company to Blue Bell, Inc., manufactures a wide variety of clothing brands, including both Wrangler and Lee jeans, Nautica and Jansport casual wear, Timberland clothing, and The North Face coats.

After Blue Bell, Inc. left the building in 1978, the former factory housed commercial and storage tenants until it was purchased by the Commonwealth Development Corporation in 2016 and rehabilitated as affordable senior housing.

Architect LeRoy Bradley (1894-1959)

LeRoy Bradley, architect of the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building, was born and spent the majority of his professional life in Fort Wayne, Indiana. After early education in Fort Wayne, he received a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1917 from the University of Illinois, followed by certificate work at the University of Lyons, France. From 1919 to 1927, Bradley was associated with the Fort Wayne architectural firm of Griffith & Goodrich, first as a draftsman, then as a firm member. In 1927, Bradley became a partner in the firm of Bradley & Babcock. In 1930, he established a solo practice that lasted for decades. In documents filed with the American Institute of Architects at the time of his death, Bradley's practice was noted for its focus on educational architecture. He designed nearly 450 buildings, 140 of which were schools or related buildings located in northeast Indiana.

Building Description

The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building is located southeast of the center of downtown Columbia City, Indiana, at 307 South Whitley Street. It is sited on the east side of S. Whitley, south of E. Ellsworth St. and north of the Blue River, which winds through the southern part of the town. The land upon which the red-brick building is located slopes gently to the south towards the river, and the resulting building is two stories high on its north side and three stories on the south (river) side.

The site includes the Blue Bell Factory, two parking garages built in 2017, and a concrete block storage building.

The building was built in two stages, with the original 1931 building (and the building's primary facade) facing S. Whitley on the west side of the property and a 1935 east addition behind and facing S. Wayne St. Although built in two stages, the building has a unified appearance based on a coherent overall rectangular form and footprint, consistent use of red brick, a concrete and steel structure, a steel-truss roof that creates an overall flattened-gable roof, and a regular fenestration pattern comprised largely of multi-pane industrial steel sash in large rectangular openings. The building's historic main pedestrian entrance is located along the west facade facing S. Whitley, while secondary pedestrian entrances are on the north and south elevations at former loading areas. Two former loading docks are found on the north elevation along what was historically an access and loading drive.

Both the original 1931 building and the 1935 addition that make up the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building were designed by architect LeRoy Bradley of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The building was built by the Globe Superior Corporation, a predecessor company to Blue Bell, Inc., a leading national manufacturer of work and casual clothes, including most notably Wrangler jeans. Blue Bell acquired the building in 1936, and it was the local factory for Blue Bell, Inc. until the company closed it in 1978.

After Blue Bell, Inc. left the building, the former factory housed commercial and storage tenants until it was purchased by the Commonwealth Development Corporation in 2016. The building underwent rehabilitation completed in early 2017 for a new use as affordable senior housing.

The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building is located southeast of the historic center of downtown Columbia City, Indiana. The building is located next to the Blue River, which is the historic focus of industry and milling in the town. The building's parcel is sufficiently large to allow the building to be set back slightly from S. Whitley St. on the west side and S. Wayne St. on the east side. The building is bordered to the south by open green space, a wooded area, and the Blue River. Paved walkways providing access to the north and south pedestrian entrances and landscaping have been added to the property as part of the 2017 rehabilitation. A parking lot has been repaved and two rectilinear single-story gabled garage buildings have also been added north of the building as part of the same rehabilitation. Across S. Whitley to the west is an empty parcel historically occupied by a brewery and other businesses. To the north is the empty right-of-way for the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railroad, later the Wabash Railroad, which runs northeast-southwest past the northern edge of the Blue Bell parcel. A residential neighborhood largely comprised of small single-family homes begins north of S. Ellsworth St. Green Hill Cemetery lies to the east of the building.

The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building is primarily rectangular in overall shape and footprint. The building's short elevations face South Whitley and South Wayne streets to the west and east, respectively. Due to the changing slope of the lot, the building is two stories in height with a raised basement on its west (Whitley Street) and north sides, and three stories on its east (Wayne Street) and south sides. The building is clad with red brick in a common bond. A painted concrete water table extends around the building's base.

The building's main facade faces South Whitley Street and contains the building's main pedestrian entrance. The facade is two stories in height with a raised basement, approximately eight bays wide and clad in red brick laid in a common bond. The entrance is set slightly off-center to the north, balanced by small stair windows to the right that step up to the second floor. The entrance is reached by concrete stairs and a small stoop, with metal railings. Double doors and a transom similar to the building's missing original front doors were installed in the 2017 rehabilitation. Two contemporary light fixtures designed in a carriage-lantern style flank the entrance.

In addition to the entrance and stair windows, the west facade has large rectangular window openings on both the first and second floors. This fenestration pattern is somewhat regular with the exception of small windows flanking large first- and second-floor windows to the right of the stair windows. All of the building's deteriorated original windows, including the window located to the left of the building's entrance that had been bricked in, have been replaced with new industrial metal and glass windows with a pattern that replicates the historic multi-pane steel sash originally across the exterior.

A brick chimney rises from the northwest corner of the building. The flattened-gable parapet of the building is capped with reddish tile. The parapet wall has remnants of light-colored paint. A sign set in the gable reading "Blue Bell, Inc." with the Blue Bell company emblem was reinstalled during the 2017 rehabilitation.

The building's north elevation is also two stories in height, 30 bays in length, and clad in common-bond red brick. Brick piers project every two bays and rise to a simple roof parapet coping. Two loading docks were historically located on this elevation, the first nine bays east from the west facade, the second an additional five bays east. These deteriorated loading docks were removed during the 2017 rehabilitation. The former loading dock closest to the west facade was converted into a pedestrian entrance, including a concrete ramp for wheelchair access. The second former loading dock is now the site of a recessed areaway.

At the rear (east) end of the north elevation, at the building's northeast corner, a two-story projecting tower, rising to a point slightly lower than the building's main parapet and clad in red brick similar to that used for the building, extends out from the building. The two-story brick tower is visible in a 1944 Sanborn fire insurance map.

A parking lot was constructed north of the building in the 2017 rehabilitation, with added access to the north elevation pedestrian entrance. Additionally, two single-story rectilinear parking garages were constructed in 2017 along the northern end of the lot.

Due to the changing slope of the ground, the building's south elevation is three stories in height, with a high basement floor with windows. Overall, the south elevation is in general similar to the north elevation in its use of common-bond red brick, projecting brick piers, and large rectangular window openings. These openings were also replaced with multi-paned, five-by-five sash windows as part of the 2017 rehabilitation. Instead of loading docks, a three-story brick-clad tower containing an interior staircase projects out from the building approximately ten bays back from the west facade. Simply detailed, the tower has an entrance marked by a concrete pad and a metal shed roof supported by slender metal poles. On this side of the building, the rear 1936 addition is wider than the front 1931 original building and the addition bumps out several bays behind the three-story tower. The 1936 addition is also the location of the south worker's entrance. A painted concrete block shed at the southwest corner of the building marks the site of the now missing Blue Bell water tower.

The east elevation faces South Wayne Street and is ten bays wide. It is three stories in height, is clad with red brick and has brick piers similar in spacing and details to those on the north and south elevations. Here they only rise to a point just above the third-floor window lintels. The elevation is somewhat asymmetrical as the northernmost eight bays have a flattened gable roofline similar to the west facade, but the southernmost two bays have a flat parapet. Two former entrances are located on the east elevation. Both have been enclosed with glazing at the top and metal panels along the bottom of each opening. The brickwork around the former southern entrance has been rebuilt and repointed. The openings on the second and third stories were replaced with multi-paned, five-by-five sash windows, and the first story with three-by-three, as part of the 2017 rehabilitation.

Typical of early twentieth-century industrial buildings, the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory Building historically had largely open interior with no ornamentation. The ground floor historically housed work spaces and storage rooms; the second-floor executive offices (removed by previous owners) and work spaces, and an open third-floor workroom. Before the 2017 rehabilitation, all original Blue Bell executive offices had been removed and the only primary spaces that remained included the third-floor workroom (now partially subdivided for apartments) and the south workers' stair which has been maintained in its historic form.

The Blue Bell, Inc. Factory interior was converted to affordable senior housing in 2017, with new apartments constructed along the north and south sides of the building, connected by wide double-loaded corridors. Structural systems and outer masonry walls are largely exposed. Floors are primarily of wood and the building's lower structure consists of steel beams resting on concrete piers. The apartment units feature drywall partitions, open kitchens, and enclosed bedrooms and bathrooms. Original hardwood floors and exposed masonry walls were retained throughout the interior.

As of September 2017, the Blue Bell, Inc. Factory retains two significant primary spaces: its three-story south workers' stair core and its third-floor west mezzanine office. The large south staircase connects the workers' south center entrance down to the ground floor and up to the second and third floors. This south stair core retains its original wide stairs which would have been the Blue Bell worker's primary vertical circulation space. A second staircase off the west entrance provides additional access from the first to the third stories.

At the west end of the third floor, a large open community space remains and expresses the size and finish of the original top-floor workroom. A small mezzanine office accessed by narrow steep stairs remains along the west wall of this community space. Also at the third floor, the historic steel truss roof augmented by steel columns are incorporated into the apartment units, common spaces, and corridors.