IT REALLY WAS A BARREL FACTORY!

Built in 1903, the "Quaker City Cooperage" looked like most factories in the neighborhood. The 3-level brick and beam, 45,000 square foot structure was in use for decades as a slack barrel manufacturing site.

• The cooperage manufactured wooden slack barrels for grain, malt, apples etc.

• At its height, a whopping 4,000-6,000 barrels a day were made here!

Workers would load barges with empty barrels using a spiral chute from the second floor - and then send the barges through the canal system to the grain silos to be filled. Wooden barrels were the cardboard boxes, plastic bags, & shipping containers of the day.
Republic Street was originally the Tecumseh Canal - and then later converted to railroad tracks, then finally a road for automobiles.

• The building's red bricks were made onsite during construction, and walls are 4 or 5 bricks thick.

• The original maple floors of the factory are still in use in the Event Center.

• The large windowed cupolas in the event center were put in place to enable a longer manufacturing workday - a "daylight factory".

When the cooperage closed, the building changed hands several times, and was used for various light industrial and packaging companies.
The building was in dangerous disrepair when the current owners purchased it - the rain literally poured through the open roof - yet the brick walls stood solid and straight.
Purchased in 2015, and lovingly renovated with special attention paid to recycling and reuse of all available materials, especially the beautiful wood used to create the Barrel Factory over 100 years ago.