HUNTINGTON
-- Mention the words glass plant to most folks in Huntington and the name that
quickly
comes to mind is Owens-Illinois, the big glass container maker that
closed its Huntington plant in 1993.
But in the heyday of the West Virginia
glass industry, Huntington was home to at least
three dozen glass plants, both
large and small, producing a wide variety of items.
One of the
biggest and best-known known was the Alexander H. Kerr Glass Co. plant that
was built
in 1932 on the Chesapeake & Ohio main line in Altizer Addition. The
California company said it decided
to open a plant in Huntington due to the
ready availability of natural gas, a favorable labor market
and good access to
rail service. The plant was one of seven Kerr Glass plants nationwide.
Operating
24 hours a day, seven days a week, the plant ultimately produced up to 2
million glass
containers each year. Originally, Kerr made only home canning
jars and jelly glasses. In the 1940s,
it added commercial glass jars and then
commercial bottles to its line.
Something
the plant did't make was liquor bottles. The members of the Kerr family of
California who owned
the company were deeply religious and refused any offers
to manufacture liquor bottles. In the company's
earliest years, every case of
canning jars that left its plants included a leaflet on the importance of
church tithing.
In 1935, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled the practice
illegal and so the company had to
discontinue inserting the leaflets.
The Kerr
Glass plant burned 100,000 cubic feet of natural gas a day and in full
production used up to
10 carloads of glass sand, two carloads of lime, two
carloads of feldspar and huge quantities of
chemicals and other ingredients
monthly. It employed between 280 and 325 workers,
depending on what containers
were in production.
Citing
excess capacity and soft markets, Kerr Glass closed its Huntington plant on
Dec. 23, 1982 - just two days before Christmas.