A Visual Tour of American Architecture
(Photo above: Guardian Building, Detroit, Michigan) Originally published Aug 23, 2022 America’s great skyscrapers, museums, hotels, train stations, churches, and other structures reflect the ambitions and dreams of our society. Funded by the wealth generated by...
Music for the Millions: The Wurlitzer Story
Originally published Dec 5, 2020. You can listen to the 18 minute audio version of this post here. Rudolph Wurlitzer and his sons Howard and Farny Wurlitzer The Wurlitzer Company is one of the most interesting companies we have studied. At their peak, their...
Whatever Became of International Harvester?
You can listen to the 9 minute audio version of this post here. Originally published October 2019. With this newsletter, we begin a periodic series, “Whatever Became of?” As students of business history, we learn much from both success and failure. About 80% of the...
The Unsung Story of the Greatest Industrial Designer
Originally published November 2019. Outside of the field of product and transportation design, too few people know who Raymond Loewy was. The best-known industrial designer, founder of the industrial design profession, and member of the pantheon of our greatest...
From Hero to Hated: America’s Most Tragic Entrepreneur
Originally published January 2021. Few business leaders or entrepreneurs in American history have done more to enable progress and prosperity than Samuel Insull, a name little known today. Yet eighty years ago, he was one of the most famous people in America and...
American Visionary: Daniel Hudson Burnham
Here is our Holiday gift to you … a new full-length biography of a great American! Originally published on December 22, 2025 by the Archbridge Institute. “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized....
Forgotten Industrial Giant: The Allis-Chalmers Story
Originally published May 22, 2020. Our business history articles often focus on the consumer products and services industries with which we all interact – from auto companies to department stores. Yet it’s important not to forget the industrial companies that...
Henry J. Kaiser: California Dreamer, Workers’ Friend
This article first appeared on June 24, 2019 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. Despite being often forgotten today, Henry J. Kaiser was one of the most unusual and diverse entrepreneurs in American history. Quitting school at the age of...
Office Machines, Forerunners of the Computer
Originally published January 7, 2021 Welcome to 2021! In 2020, our first full calendar year of operation, these American Business History newsletters have been read over 90,000 times. The number of pages viewed on our website rose from 1,500 per month at...
Mountain-Moving Monster Machines from Milwaukee: the Bucyrus-Erie Story
For millennia, humans have invented and produced tools and machines to make life easier. It has been a long journey from the wheel and lever to iPhones and SpaceX. Along the way, pioneering engineers have designed some of the largest machines ever built...
New Beginnings in the Roaring Twenties
Originally published January 9, 2020 Here we go again – another decade of the “twenties” – hopefully these twenties roar in the good sense. This is a perfect time to look back at what was going on in business history one hundred years ago. 1920 was an...
The Wonders of Chain Stores and Franchises
This article was originally published by the Archbridge Institute. I often hear people say that they dislike chain stores or chain restaurants, “big box” stores, or franchises. America has long had a love-hate relationship with the big chains. Understanding the...A Visual Tour of American Architecture
From Dog Dung to Plexiglas: the Rohm and Haas Story
Few industries are more important to modern life than the chemical industry. Almost everything we touch, the clothes we wear, and much of what we eat contains chemicals or was processed by chemicals. Yet the companies are usually out of sight of...
The Sordid Saga of Mr. Singer and his Sewing Machine
Isaac Merritt Singer (1811-1875) had a dream: to become a great actor on the stage, performing Shakespeare to accolades. For almost the first forty years of his life, he failed to achieve any success in this pursuit. Continually tinkering with machines, he...
A Family of Brands in a Family Business: The Story of National Safety Apparel
This week we proudly present another one of the top essays submitted by high school students. You can see that we had many great essays and picking the top ones was difficult. This essay won our second highest prize. Gary Hoover Executive Director...
Gas Station Wars: Rockefeller to Dinosaurs to Tigers in Tanks
In the twentieth century, no industry created more giant American companies than the petroleum industry. In 1917, big oil represented six of the fifty largest American companies. By 1955, eleven oil companies made the top fifty industrial firms in Fortune...
Kimberly-Clark: From Commodities to Powerhouse Brands
Early in the twentieth century, the Kimberly-Clark paper company pioneered “sanitary napkins” with their Kotex brand. Magazine publishers resisted running ads for the innovative but very private product and retailers hesitated to display Kotex. The company...
A Real Goldmine: The Homestake Story
For over 125 years, South Dakota’s Homestake Mine churned out ore loaded with gold and silver. Thousands of men worked the strike down to over a mile and a half below the earth’s surface, the deepest mine in the Western hemisphere as well as the American mine...
Two Billion Passengers a Day: The Otis Story
On this 4th of July, it is appropriate to honor the long history of one of America’s great companies. Elisha Otis perfected the first commercially successful elevators, both for freight and passengers, before the Civil War. The organization he founded, the...
From Milk Duds to Samsonite: The Beatrice Foods Saga
In setting the stage for this story, I interject myself, because “I was there.” Setting the Stage The year is 1975. I am two years out of college, a junior securities analyst for institutional investor Citibank in New York. My veteran analyst boss Pete...
Forgotten Business Giant: Charles M. Schwab
We are all familiar with the visionary entrepreneur Charles R. Schwab who pioneered the discount stock brokerage industry in the 1970s. But almost no one remembers the unrelated Charles M. Schwab, one of the most important business leaders in American history....
Two Entrepreneurs Who Helped Create Florida
Every state has a fascinating history, including the role of business and entrepreneurship. The swamp that was much of Florida did not develop until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Two men, both named Henry, were perhaps the most important in that...
Billiards, Bowling, and Boating: 175 Years of Brunswick
A current buzzword is “pivoting,” which means changing your company’s strategy and direction, often into entirely new businesses. Pivots are frequent in young companies trying to find the best markets and a footing for future opportunities. Here we look at...Where Americans are Moving
Metro Areas with Largest Population Increase 2010-2018
American Business History Center Teaser
Arthur G. Gaston: Entrepreneur Against All Odds
Originally published on ArchbridgeInstitute.org on October 29, 2018 This article first appeared on October 29, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. The grandson of slaves, Arthur George Gaston was born in 1892 in Demopolis, Alabama, to Rosie...
Kirk Kerkorian: The Risk Taker Who Rose from Poverty to Change Las Vegas and Armenia
This article first appeared on December 14, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. One of the myths about great entrepreneurs is that they love risk and are big gamblers. In fact, they usually do everything they can to reduce risk and are...1969 largest hotel chains
Here is a list of the largest US-based hotel chains in 1969, including the number of hotels and motels (“units”). Source: Institutions Magazine 400 1969 list. 1969 largest hotel chains (XLSX)
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