PEORIA MAGAZINE April 2023

PEORIA RETRO

‘THE PEORIA WATCH’

One of the finest, most innovative timepieces in the land was once made in Peoria

BY STEVE GOSSARD ILLUSTRATION FROM PEORIA’S SATURDAY EVENING CALL, 1886

I t wasn’t just any company. by success and failure; the story of embezzlement … and jail sentences; the story of broken agreements and lawsuits; the story of a ‘mysterious and curious’ factory fire,” the historian Eugene T. Fuller wrote. It would make way for a horological school, “followed by a watch tool and eventual bicycle manufacturer, then the corn popper and coffee roaster company that ended up making automobiles — finally to be absorbed in the name and cause of higher education!” Indeed, the Peoria Watch Company became “the story of success and failure followed

AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING

developer Paul Cornell, who had purchased land in Chicago after the Great Fire, had decided to build a factory on property he was developing in the Hyde Park neighborhood. He approached one of the pioneers of American watchmaking, John C. Adams, who had been instrumental in establishing the National Watch Company in Elgin, Illinois and the Springfield Watch Company (later Illinois Watch Company) in Springfield. Adams suggested purchasing the Newark Watch factory. Cornell set aside 30 acres and invested $75,000. The new building was completed in February of 1871, and all

The story begins in 1864 with the establishment of the Newark Watch Company of New Jersey. The company began making watches “of English design” but discovered that “watch making was easier said than done.” After manufacturing about 3,000 watches, Newark “fell behind” the demand, and the company folded and was sold in 1869, wrote Henry G. Abbot in his early chronology, The Watch Factories of America . About the same time, real estate

80 APRIL 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE