Birck-Fellinger Corp., Chicago

Designed by J.L. McConnell and built in 1928—when brash industrial cleaning plants and massive laundries sprouted smokestacks and water tanks across Chicago—the former Birck-Fellinger plant lost its tower in the late 1980s, as most of those old laundries and cleaners crumbled. Originally  constructed for cleaning rugs, the cold storage of furs, and dry cleaning, the utilitarian leftovers of the Birck-Fellinger plant are now part of the Quam Nichols manufacturing complex, makers of commercial loudspeakers. A far cry from the industrial Gothic ambition of the 1920s, but hey—it’s an active manufacturing site in Chicago, which is still pretty neat. 

So, what’s changed? Um, well, basically everything—but honestly, no judgement there. Many of these old cleaning plants were demolished, so I was pleasantly surprised to realize that this one was technically still hanging on. 

• The arched shape of the old windows is still there, even if they’ve been bricked in.
• The tower—which I imagine held a water tank at the top—appears to have been removed sometime between 1988 and 1990.
• It's barely perceptible after it was bricked up along with the rest of the windows, but a 1956 renovation punched a hole in the west elevation of the ground floor of the tower to create a drive-through.

A successful South Side rug cleaning, dyeing, laundry, and dry cleaning establishment founded in 1898 by Robert M. Birck and Otto H. Fellinger, by the mid-1920s Birck-Fellinger had outgrown their hemmed-in location at 506 E. 47th Street. There was also probably an element of white flight as well, with that building squarely in Chicago’s Black Belt by the 1910s. For its new main plant and office, Birck-Fellinger bought a large greenfield site three miles south and hired J.L. McConnell to design one of the biggest industrial cleaning plants in the city. 

McConnell appears to have been more of an engineer than an architect, but his firm did design a clutch of industrial buildings around Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s (along with a stint as Chief of Construction & Utilities for the 1933 World’s Fair), so the Birck-Fellinger plant sits right in that portfolio. Marketed as "America’s Model Cleaning Plant", the company spent $3.75m in 2025 dollars building the facility—industrial Gothic clad in terracotta and white tile with terrazzo and hardwood floors. The building housed the company’s offices, pressing and laundry rooms, a dry cleaning operation, a rug and drapery cleaning department, and a cold storage area for furs. 

The tower, decorated with a clock from the Seth Thomas Clock Company, topped out at 52 feet—industrial cleaning plants and laundries, with their smokestacks and water towers and need to reach customers, once played an influential role in Chicago’s neighborhood skylines. 

Birck-Fellinger survived the Great Depression—they were a member of the New Deal-era National Recovery Administration (the good NRA)—and continued growing in the 1940s and 1950s. Most dry cleaning plants in Chicago were racially integrated, and you can see Birck-Fellinger working to reach potential employees in the communities they lived in—the company ran help wanted ads in the Chicago Defender, one of the city’s African-American newspapers, but also in Draugas (Lithuanian) and Abendpost (German), amongst others. A 1947 job posting for a presser advertised wages of $2 an hour, the equivalent of $28 an hour today. 

By the 1950s, Birck-Fellinger’s annual revenue exceeded $500k ($6m in 2025 dollars), and in 1955 C.A. Boushelle & Son, another rug cleaner, bought the company. The new owners quickly launched a renovation of the aging plant, turning the main office area (by the windows along Marquette Road) into a drive-through, cutting an opening into the base of the tower and a curb-cut onto Indiana Ave. They also replaced much of the equipment, reconfiguring the workflows, and…added a big bird cage with exotic birds to “create customer interest”? 1956 was a time of change in both the customer-facing and back-of-house parts of the Birck-Fellinger complex—the company sold a sliver of land at the back of the plant to the city for the Skyway Toll Bridge. 

An open house to celebrate the refreshed cleaning plant featured pioneering WGES DJ Sam Evans, Illinois State Senator James Y. Carter, and 6th Ward Alderman Sydney Jones Jr. In 1958, DuPont commissioned a 12-minute-long color video, “Two Hour Miracle” that was shot here by Fred Niles Productions (I checked if the Hagley Library—which holds much of DuPont’s archives–had it, but it appears they only have the script). The renewed plant was once again a bit of a boast. 

Boushelle merged with General Rug Cleaners in 1965 (the merged company’s jingle, “HUdson 3-2700” appears to have become a minor earworm in 1970s Chicagoland). This plant continued cleaning rugs and drapes and doing dry cleaning, but with some minor changes to names and organizational structure: Birck Fellinger Iralson, then David Webber Birck Fellinger (but always as a division of General Boushelle). 

Do Americans have fewer rugs and drapes than they used to? At the very least, the rug cleaning industry doesn’t have the visibility it once had (see also the disappearance of the Magikist signs around Chicago), and it appears that General Boushelle and their Birck-Fellinger division vacated this building by the late 1970s. 

Quam Nichols, a loudspeaker manufacturing company (and like Birck-Fellinger, one long based in the Black Belt at 33rd & Cottage Grove), opened their new plant next door to Birck-Fellinger in 1953. With industrial cleaning plants closing across Chicago, it looks like Quam Nichols took over their next door neighbor sometime in the 1980s. From what I can tell through shadows on aerial photos, I think the tower was removed between 1988 and 1990—presumably the cost of maintenance combined with advances in water pressure making tanks like this a little redundant, along with a reduced need to advertise to a local clientele in the loudspeaker business.

Just about all the glamor of McConnell’s model cleaning plant is gone, but you know what—after 95 years Quam Nichols is still manufacturing in Chicago out of this location, so that’s something.

Further reading:

• Full article on the 1956 renovation in the National Cleaner and Dryer
• "Negro-White Relations in a Chicago Dry Cleaning Plant", University of Chicago masters dissertation by Jack Fooden

The architect, J.L. McConnell, was pretty obscure (and definitely more of an engineer), but there are a surprising handful of extent McConnell buildings around the city, including the Brinks Building on Monroe (1938, now the Archdiocese Of Chicago Archives & Records Center), Bates Valve Bag Co. (8240 S Chicago Ave), 1009 W Lake (fish smoking and sausage factory, extent), 322 S Green, and the Dominican University Performing Arts Center.

(that athletic club in Bronzeville was unfortunately never built as far as I can tell, although given the location it would've been demolished anyway)

Quam Nichols was founded in 1930, briefly operated out of 1410 W. 59th in Englewood, then spent two decades at 33rd & Cottage Grove before building their facility here in 1952-1953.

These were some of the leaders of Birck-Fellinger and General Boushelle.

A bunch of help wanted ads for various roles—that wool spotter ad from 1969 offering $130 a week (I think) would work out to $59k a year today.

And then some other regular ads.

The aerials that went into making that animation.

A few more random articles and ads:

• After completing this plant, Birck-Fellinger put their old location on 47th up for sale. Then, in 1931, tried to sell their other two branches in Black-majority neighborhoods.
• The office space in the tower was briefly used as the office for the leadership of the Greater South Side Chamber of Commerce.

This is where I took the photo from.