One of the many Furniture Factories that once existed in Baltimore

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Charles T. Bagby and A.D. Rivers founded the firm of Bagby & Rivers in 1879. Bagby & Rivers were manufacturers and wholesalers who shipped their merchandise to southern and mid-Atlantic states. Around 1896 Charles T. Bagby and his associates bought out A.D. Rivers and in 1897 the concern was incorporated as the Bagby Furniture Company. The company was originally located at 624-632 West Pratt Street. From 1897 until 1902 it was situated at the corner of Biddle and Chester Streets, moving to its present location in 1902.

The showrooms were located at 108 South Eutaw. The Bagby Furniture Company's 1902-1907 plant on Exeter Street, which had 73,000 sq. ft. of floor space, was designed specifically for furniture manufacture. When Charles T. Bagby decided to sell the company in 1931, William Hugh Bagby, a distant cousin, purchased it and consolidated it with his own plant in Baltimore. The company remained in operation until 1990.

The history of furniture manufacturing in Baltimore during the 19^th and early 20^th century provides the historic context for the Bagby Furniture Company and its association with Baltimore's history. Furniture manufacturing was an important component of Baltimore's 19^th and early 20th-century industrial and mercantile economy. Furniture manufacture developed out of Baltimore's strong 18^th and early 19th-century craft tradition in cabinet-making enhanced by the advantages Baltimore's harbor and railroads offered for supply and distribution. While not as well known or well studied as Baltimore's canning or clothing industries, furniture manufacture constituted an important element of Baltimore's diverse industrial base.

The transition from the craft of cabinet-making to the industry of furniture manufacture was fueled by the advent of steam-powered machinery in the 1840s and the concurrent rise of retail furniture stores. Both developments spurred the growth of furniture wholesalers. By the late 19^th century, the quantity of southern lumber coming through the port made Baltimore a major center for furniture manufacturing. While sugar refining, tanning, and shoe manufacturing declined after the Civil War, furniture manufacturing and trans-shipment of lumber prospered. During the 19^th century, Baltimore's Horstmeier Lumber Company spearheaded the distribution of southern pine throughout the United States. This cheap, durable wood transformed the housing industry and made Baltimore, with its numerous sawmills, woodworking plants, and lumber yards, a national center for lumber trade.

The 1882 City of Baltimore: A Descriptive Review of the Manufacturing and Mercantile Industries considered furniture-making one of Baltimore's 19 principal industries. The 1870 census listed 64 furniture operations employing 815 workers producing $1,145,740. By 1880 there were 71 manufacturers employing over 1000 workers producing goods worth $1,791,134. This total rose to 95 concerns manufacturing products worth $2,250,000 in 1884.

During the period from 1840 to 1890, furniture manufacturers became increasingly specialized in the goods they produced and the markets they addressed. As furniture became room-specific and function-specific, firms concentrated on particular types of furniture or furniture for distinct markets, like offices or hotels. The proliferation of cheaper, mass-produced goods led many older firms to separate themselves from their means of production. High-end operations, like the Potthast Company, emphasized handcraft and workmanship to distinguish themselves from their competitors. By 1890, consolidation and specialization within the industry had taken its toll on the number of establishments that survived in Baltimore. While there were 60 furniture manufacturers listed in the 1887-88 city directory, there were only 33 listed in 1900.

The Bagby Furniture Company ensured its survival during this decline by careful attention to the business of furniture manufacture and distribution. While other furniture tradesmen conceived of themselves as an extension of an earlier craft ideal, the Bagby Company carved out a niche based on value, selection, and efficiency. The Bagby Furniture Company manufactured high quality "low and medium priced furniture." "No better goods of this class are made in this territory." The company, which was noted for its "innovative use of steam machinery," sold their goods through catalogs and salesmen concentrating on the eastern seaboard and southern states. Among their other clients, the company sold to general stores in small towns.

The Bagby & Rivers entry in Illustrated Baltimore: The Monumental City, published in 1890, demonstrates how the company presented itself. The descriptions set forth by other furniture manufacturers featured in this volume boasted sumptuous fabrics and hardwoods and incorporated phrases like "rarest design and materials," "tasteful design and artistic workmanship," "rare elegance and tasteful composition," "all hand-made," "made to order," and "elaborately carved." The Bagby & Rivers Company's market-driven self-description provides a vivid contrast:

In 1895, Bagby & Rivers were listed in bold under Furniture Manufacturers in Polk's City Directory. Their listing noted "furniture, chair, and mattress manufacturers." The Bagby Company's 1906 catalog featured oak furniture dominated by bedroom suites. They also sold iron beds, chairs, tables, office furniture, couches, and parlor suites. By 1910, the Bagby Furniture Company listed its specialties as "chamber suits, hall racks, wardrobes, chairs, dining room and kitchen furniture, etc." Their 1923 catalog illustrates how the Bagby Furniture Company pursued a value-driven commercial market:

Both the 1906 and the 1923 catalog emphasize that the Bagby Company shipped all of their goods from Baltimore, "not from some far distant point."

Charles T. Bagby (1860-1943) was born in King and Queen County, Virginia, and came to Baltimore at the age of 16, graduating from the night school at Eaton & Burnett Business College. After he began to suffer from ulcers and other stress-related health problems, he retained ownership of the company but withdrew from active participation to become an attorney. Charles T. Bagby graduated from the University of Virginia law school and by 1902 joined the practice of his younger brother Alfred Bagby, Jr. (1866-1948) in the law firm of Bagby and Bagby. Although Charles T. Bagby's son, Charles T. Bagby, Jr., nominally served as vice president and manager of the Bagby Furniture Company through the early 1930s, the company was run by general manager C. Marion Dodson.

Location played a major role in the success of the company, giving the company an advantage over its competitors. By moving to Fells Point in 1902, the Bagby Furniture Company survived the Baltimore Fire of 1904, which destroyed 70 blocks in the downtown area. The Bagby Furniture Company's new plant in Fells Point was ideally suited for efficiency of supply and distribution. In 1896, prior to the construction of the present building, the 11 blocks bounded by Jones Falls on the east, the harbor on the south, Central Avenue on the west, and Eastern Avenue on the north consisted almost entirely of lumber yards surrounding the Pennsylvania Railroad engine house and freight yard. The Bagby Furniture Company constructed their new building in the midst of this lumber distribution center.

Because of the shallow depth of the Inner Harbor, Fells Point served as Baltimore's deep draft port for larger vessels. Until World War II, lumber schooners brought their wares into the Lancaster Street wharf, two blocks south of the Bagby Furniture Company's plant. The Pennsylvania Railroad freight yard was across Fleet Street from the new Bagby Furniture Company Building and lumber piers were two blocks south. (Henry James & Co., the predecessor of the Horstmeier Lumber Company, was located two blocks south of the building.) Furniture could be shipped out from deep water piers in Fells Point, where Lykes and Southern Pacific operated intracoastal freight shipment from 1930 until World War II.

In 1918 William Hugh Bagby (1896-1988), a distant cousin of Charles T. Bagby, moved to Baltimore from Virginia after graduating from the University of Richmond. Working as a commission salesman for the Bagby Furniture Company from 1918 to 1925, he became so successful that his income soon exceeded that of Marion Dodson, the general manager. Dodson responded by reducing Bagby's territory and commissions. Exasperated by the situation, William Hugh Bagby left the company in 1925 and started another concern, Wm. Hugh Bagby and Company, with his brother R. Harwood Bagby. When Charles T. Bagby decided to sell the Bagby Furniture Company in 1931, William Hugh Bagby purchased it and consolidated it with his own operation. He retained Dodson as a traveling salesman. R. Harwood Bagby became vice president and general sales manager, a position he held until 1965, when he became president and chief executive.

Under William Hugh Bagby, the Bagby Furniture Company survived the Depression by cutting back on its local manufacturing and gradually making the transition from furniture manufacture to wholesale furniture distribution. William Hugh Bagby insured the survival of the company by capitalizing on the advantages of Baltimore's transportation network rather than competing against cheaper labor costs in the growing North Carolina manufacturing centers. By 1930 there were only 26 furniture manufacturers listed in the Baltimore City Directory, continuing the gradual decline Gregory Weidman traced in the late 19^th century. The Bagby Company stopped making bedroom furniture and set up manufacturers in the south, where labor costs were cheaper. They continued to make dining room furniture and boudoir or "cricket" chairs by assembling parts manufactured elsewhere. In effect, the Bagby Company became a noted early proponent of the technology of pre-fabrication." The Bagby Company shipped furniture by rail throughout the East Coast. It served as a distributor for other companies like Thomasville (code no. 21C in Bagby catalogs) and for retail furniture stores. By the 1940s they discontinued manufacturing to concentrate on wholesale distribution, including high-end lines for interior designers. At that time they were one of the largest furniture distributors in the country and the largest customer of Simmons Bedding. The company moved into retailing in the mid-1980s. Like many other furniture retailers, they were unable to compete with furniture sold directly from the same manufacturers that they carried, particularly since customers could avoid state sales tax on out-of-state purchases. Faced with this difficult environment, the Bagby Furniture Company closed the business in 1990.

Both William Hugh Bagby and R. Harwood Bagby were active in community and industry affairs. William Hugh Bagby was chairman of the Baltimore Bedding and Furniture Association in the early 1930s._ He was chairman of the Industry Advisory Committee for furniture wholesaling for the federal Office of Price Administration. In 1945, he became president of the National Wholesale Furniture Association, a group he had previously served as vice president. The organization named him "Man of the Decade" in 1947. He served on the Baltimore Board of School Commissioners and was director of a local savings and loan and founder of the Maryland Home Furnishings Association. A trustee of the University of Richmond, he also supported the Seamen's YMCA close to the factory. R. Harwood Bagby served as president of the National Wholesale Furniture Association in 1960 and in 1961 and was also named its "Man of the Year."

Building Description

The Bagby Furniture Company Building is a 4 story, U-shaped, brick factory building comprised of three sections constructed between 1902 and 1907. Its site occupies the northeast corner of the intersection of Fleet and Exeter Streets in the Little Italy neighborhood of Baltimore. The Bagby Building has a shallow gable roof. Brick architectural detailing includes piers, segmental and jack arches above openings, a corbelled watertable, and a corbelled cornice. The building was modernized with new windows and first-floor office space in 1950. A concrete block addition was added to the northeastern portion of the building in 1962. Two small structures that housed the dry kiln and lumber storage are located along the eastern edge of the property.

The Bagby Furniture Company Building, constructed from 1902 to 1907, occupies a site encompassing almost one-third of a city block. The brick building, situated at the corner of Exeter and Fleet Streets in the Little Italy neighborhood of Baltimore, has a rectangular footprint with a 190 ft. frontage facing west onto Exeter and a 112 ft. frontage facing south onto Fleet. The north facade faces a taller 6-story brick building and its parking lot across a narrow alley. Low-scale late 20th-century structures housing the Koldkiss Corporation are built up to the eastern property line of the Bagby Company site and abut the concrete block addition and secondary buildings on the eastern portion of the site. In 1962, a 2 story concrete block addition was constructed against the northeast portion of the Bagby Furniture Company Building. A 1 story hollow clay tile structure that housed the dry kiln adjoins the south wall of the concrete block addition. A 1 story dilapidated structure sheathed in corrugated metal, formerly used for lumber storage, is connected to the south wall of the dry kiln structure. A narrow loading area opens off Fleet Street and extends to the south wall of the 1962 concrete block addition between the Bagby Furniture Company Building and its outbuildings.

The Bagby Furniture Company Building, which was constructed in three stages from 1902 to 1907, has the appearance of a single, large building. The four-story brick structure has 9 bays along Exeter Street (west) and 7 bays along Fleet Street (south). The construction stages of the Bagby Building can be distinguished on the exterior by firewalls that divide the building into its three component sections. The three components form a U-shaped mass with the center of the U on the center of the east side of the building. The interior of the U is occupied by a 1-1/2 story boiler house, creating the Bagby Furniture Company Building's rectangular footprint. The Bagby Company denoted the three components of the building as "Building A," "Building B," and "Building C." On the south, Building A (1902) at the corner of Fleet and Exeter is 4 bays (west) by 7 bays (south) wide. On the north, Building C (1907) extends 3 bays south from the alley. Building B (1902) is at the center of the structure. Shallower than Building A and Building C, Building B provides the center notch resulting in the U-shaped, 4-story mass that accommodates the 1-1/2 story boiler house.

The Bagby Furniture Company Building features a brick watertable at the basement level and has a shallow gable roof with gables situated on the north and south facades. The watertable on Building A is corbelled. Piers demarcating bays extend up from the watertable to the corbelled brick cornice. Windows within graduated openings under segmental arches are placed within the recessed wall plane between the piers. Basement windows in Building A are surmounted by jack arches. Bays vary in width, housing one to three openings. A large ca. 1970s painted ribbon sign incorporates "Bagby Furniture" within a rainbow band extending around the south and west facades of the building between the 3^rd and 4th-floor levels. A smaller, older black and white sign is visible on the east wall of Building C between the 3^rd and 4^th floors. A recent, back-lit plastic sign projects over the pedestrian entry at the center of the west facade.

A 1-1/2 story brick boiler house and a narrow corridor leading to Building B occupy the center of the U on the east side of the Bagby Building. The floor level of the boiler house is approximately 5 ft. below grade. The boiler house is topped with a hipped roof of corrugated tin supported by metal trusses. The corridor leading into Building B was formed by roofing over the space between the boiler house and Building A and constructing a ramp between the two sections. A large stack set against the south wall of Building C rises from the boiler house.

Loading entrances to the building predominate over pedestrian entry. A single door at the north end of Building A on Exeter Street (west) provides the only pedestrian entrance from the street. This entrance has a frame, pseudo-Gibbs surround that dates to the latter half of the 20^th century. A second pedestrian entrance described in the paragraph above is located on the east facade of Building B, south of the boiler house. (A similar entrance to the east facade of Building C can be found within the 1962 concrete block addition.) There is a garage entrance at the north end of the west facade in Building C, a loading bay on the north facade of Building C, a loading bay at the center of the south facade of Building A, and a loading bay in the east facade of Building A. The loading bay on the south facade of Building A opens into a freight elevator. An additional loading bay on the east facade of Building B and a narrow pedestrian entry on its west facade have been infilled with brick. There is an opening with a recent overhead garage door at grade level on the east wall of the boiler house.

Most of the windows on the west and south street facades have been removed and window openings infilled with recent aluminum windows. Openings on the upper floors have been lowered by plastic inserts above stock one-over-one aluminum windows. Glass block has been used to infill 1^st-floor windows. Many 12-over-12 wood windows remain on the north and east secondary facades; smaller windows on the 4^th floor have 8-over-8 sash. Most of the window openings on the secondary facades are sealed with metal fire shutters.

The interior of the Bagby Furniture Company Building consists of open plan space adapted to house furniture retailing and office space. Brick firewalls separate the three component sections of the building. Openings with self-closing metal fire doors connect these three sections. The visible structural system includes wood piers supporting wood floor beams and roof joists. Exterior door frames for the two pedestrian entrances at the rear (east) sides of Buildings A and C exhibit the only decorative trim in the building. Each has an entablature with bead mold in the door frame between the door and the transom. Two stairs and two freight elevators provide vertical circulation. The freight elevators are located against the center of the south walls of Building A and Building C. One stair, which is recent in structure and finish, is located against the north wall of Building A. A second utilitarian wood service stair is located against the west wall of Building C. Fire egress is provided by a fire-escape located on the east facade of Building A.

Reinforcing bars are visible on the interior of the ceiling. The upper center portion of the side (east-west) walls of the compartments have been patched with brick. No visible evidence of the character-defining mechanical system of this building, including provisions for ventilation, remains. (The three existing stacks, which appear to be recent, would have been insufficient to vent operable kilns. The Air Seasoning and Kiln Drying of Wood shows ranks of chimney stacks venting compartment kilns similar to this building.) The exterior of the former dry kiln is no longer visible.

Other than the exposed structural system, which dates to the building's construction in the early 20^th century, most of the finishes and partitions date to the second half of the 20^th century. Recent finishes are concentrated in Building A and Building B. A vestibule area and office space were installed in the southwest portion of the first floor of Building A in 1950. The 2^nd and 3^rd floors of Building A and Building B have recent finishes and dropped ceilings in areas that were furniture showrooms. Many columns in showroom floors have been encased within other materials. The interior of the boiler house is bisected by a brick wall running north-south. The boiler and incinerator were situated in the eastern half of the structure, which consists of an open 1-1/2 story space. The western half of the boiler house is divided into two stories with the floor level of the lower story below grade and the floor level of the upper story at the level of Building B.

The 1962 concrete block addition is an ell-shaped, 2-story structure attached to the east wall of Building C. The exterior of the east wall of Building C functions as the west interior wall of this addition. Because the east wall of the Bagby Furniture Company Building survives and because the 1962 addition is lower than the main building and situated on the interior of the city block, the effect of the addition on the main building is minimized. Two one-story structures that housed the former dry kiln and lumber shed extend south from the 1962 addition along the eastern edge of the property. While kiln and lumber storage structures have been present at this location since the early 20^th century, it is not known whether these particular structures, which incorporate a significant amount of mid-20th-century fabric, are replacements for earlier structures. A loading dock against the west wall of the former dry kiln has been enclosed with corrugated metal to provide a passage connecting the concrete block addition with the kiln and the lumber shed. This enclosed passage was constructed after the date of the 1951 Sanborn Map.

Both the former dry kiln and lumber shed have been heavily altered over time. heir setting, feeling, and association vanished when the adjacent lumber yards were abandoned and the railroad tracks removed. The former lumber shed structure, which rests on deteriorated concrete piers, has corrugated metal walls that have been damaged by trucks and are peeling away from the facade. It is likely that these walls date to the 1950s and were installed when the loading dock against the former dry kiln was enclosed with similar corrugated metal walls.

The former three-compartment dry kiln has been encased within recent construction and its west wall has been effectively removed. The taller Koldkiss building abutting the kiln to the east obscures the east exterior wall; the south wall is hidden within the former lumber shed and the north wall is now within the 1962 addition. The dry kiln has three compartments that now open to the enclosed passage that connects the 1962 addition with the former lumber shed. These compartments are separated by masonry walls. Sliding doors on all three compartments, which formed the west wall of the former dry kiln, are gone. The remaining walls of the former dry kiln are hollow clay tile, brick, and concrete. The flat roof is concrete. The concrete is deteriorating and spalled.

West and south facades (1998)

East and north facades (1998)

South and east facades (1998)

North wall and top of east wall (1998)

East wall of Bagby building and south wall of addition (1998)

East wall of Bagby building and west wall of Dry Kiln and Lumber Shed (1998)

Detail of cornice on west facade (1998)

First floor of building A (1998)

Third floor building B (1998)

Passage between building A and Boiler House (1998)