Places

Haeger Potteries Dundee, Illinois

The Haeger Potteries, Inc. was a pottery and ceramic manufacturing company located in Dundee, Illinois, producing decorative home furnishings including lamps and ornamental ceramics. By the mid-twentieth century, the company had established a sufficiently broad commercial reach that its products were advertised in Spanish-language newspapers serving readerships well beyond the Midwest, reflecting the national and regional prominence of the Dundee-based firm during that era.

Scanned newspaper page from Image 15 of The Oakwood press (Oakwood (Dayton), Ohio), May 5, 1949, 1949-05-05 (Library of Congress, Chronicling America) | Source: Library of Congress, Chronicling America

Scanned newspaper page from Image 5 of Diario las Américas (Miami, Fla.;Miami Springs, Fla.), October 11, 1956, 1956-10-11 (Library of Congress, Chronicling America) | Source: Library of Congress, Chronicling America

Scanned newspaper page from Image 5 of Diario las Américas (Miami, Fla.;Miami Springs, Fla.), September 21, 1956, 1956-09-21 (Library of Congress, Chronicling America) | Source: Library of Congress, Chronicling America

Haeger Pottery Plant, East Dundee, Illinois — smokestack, water tower, and factory building, mid-20th-century postcard — "Haeger Pottery Plant, East Dundee, Ill." postcard (#3A251), showing the plant's smokestack and water tower. Collected by a resident, sourced from FRVPL and Ancestry.com.

Founding

Per the Encyclopedia of Chicago, a brickyard began operating on this general site in 1852, using riverbank clay. D. H. Haeger became part owner in 1871 — the same year East Dundee incorporated — and was sole owner within a year, expanding the business into tile. After the 1871 Chicago Fire, the yard shipped bricks into the city to help rebuild. By the 1920s production had expanded to teaware, luncheonware, and Royal Hickman crystal and glassware. Haeger Potteries exhibited a full working plant at the 1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, making souvenir pottery on the spot for visitors. By 1985 the company, by then passed to Haeger's great-grandchildren, employed 200 workers, most of them women. (Source: Encyclopedia of Chicago, "East Dundee, IL," Marilyn Elizabeth Perry, 2004/2005 — see East Dundee, Illinois for the full entry)

History

The Haeger Potteries, Inc. operated out of Dundee, Illinois, a community in the Fox River Valley that developed a notable industrial character alongside its residential growth through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The pottery works became one of the more recognized manufacturers associated with the area, producing ceramics and decorative goods that circulated widely in American retail markets.

Evidence of the company's geographic distribution reach extends at least as far back as May 1949, when Royal Haeger Pottery was advertised for sale at Oakwood Flowers, a flower shop located at 2319 Far Hills Ave in the Maharg Building in Oakwood, Ohio. The Oakwood Flowers shop offered cut flowers, corsages, potted plants, planters, lamps, and Royal Haeger Pottery among its merchandise, indicating that Haeger's retail distribution network had penetrated Ohio markets well before the mid-1950s. (Source: oakwood_press_1949-05-05_image15)

By the autumn of 1956, the company was advertising its wares in Diario las Américas, a Spanish-language newspaper published in the Miami, Florida area. Advertisements have been documented from at least two separate issues — September 21, 1956 and October 11, 1956 — suggesting a sustained advertising presence in that publication during this period. The appearance of Haeger advertisements in this publication suggests the company was actively marketing to a diverse, geographically dispersed consumer base during the mid-1950s.