Made in Grand Rapids: The Furniture Manufacturers Association's Search for Protection in Legal Recognition

The furniture manufacturers of Grand Rapids enjoyed distinction among the national furniture community for several decades during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. By the Great Depression the firms of Grand Rapids had either begun to go bankrupt or move south out of necessity. The city's traditional narrative focuses upon the 1930s as the period of restructuring in economic decline. This research shows that the furniture manufacturers began recognizing the economic pressure far earlier by 1910 and is expressed in presenting the records of the Furniture Manufacturers Association of Grand Rapids. The presentation will focus upon the group's creation in 1911, and a suit between that Association and a set of Cleveland vendors, decided in 1919. The evidence collected shows that these furniture firms suffered too greatly at the changing industrial and marketing trends of the Progressive Era, and that these companies experienced their economic crisis earlier than had been formerly recognized.