The wagon century: the largest vehicle house in the world

1868 – 1900

Fire and rebuilding: Sales reached $1 million by 1874, the year a great fire destroyed the production plant — two-thirds of the entire works, in Erskine's history. The brothers rebuilt in solid brick on a ground covering 20 acres, and it is to this rebuilt works that the period's defining claim attaches: by the mid-1870s the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company was being described, in its own histories and in the trade, as "the largest vehicle house in the world." The claim is printed here as the attributed standing it was: by the turn of the century the company was, on the agreement of its museum and its historians, the world's largest manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles.

The product and the reach: The lines ran from farm wagons — painted in the house reds and greens — through buggies, carriages, sulkies, broughams, clarences, phaetons, runabouts, and victorias to a four-in-hand coach for up to a dozen passengers at $20,000, with red wheels, gold-plated lamps, and yellow trim. Jacob took charge of the carriage factory in 1875. Peter's distribution system pushed west: one of the first outlets stood at St. Joseph, Missouri, a jumping-off point for the wagon trains, and the National Park Service's account of the western trails holds Studebaker wagons to have been so widely recognizable that Studebaker metal parts were used in nearly every wagon making the journey west. In 1884 Jacob opened the company's carriage sales and service repository in a new Studebaker Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, its entrance flanked by granite columns said to be the largest polished monolithic shafts in the country. In 1889 President Benjamin Harrison ordered a full set of Studebaker carriages and harness for the White House. The carriage the museum's account names most precisely is Abraham Lincoln's: on 14 April 1865 Lincoln rode to Ford's Theatre in a Studebaker carriage, as the Studebaker National Museum states it.

The works at the century's turn: The South Bend plant grew with the trade. Approaching 1900 it covered nearly 100 acres, with 20 large boilers, 16 dynamos, 16 stationary engines, 600 wood- and iron-working machines, 7 miles of belting, and 500 arc and incandescent lamps; by 1900 about 3,000 workers were producing over 100,000 horse-drawn vehicles of all types a year. The depression of 1893 had closed the plant for five weeks; the workforce's declared faith in the employer, in Erskine's account, closed the incident. The beer wagons the Budweiser Clydesdales still haul are Studebaker wagons of about 1900, modified to carry beer.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune (2026) — the $1 million of sales by 1874, the fire and rebuilding, and Lincoln's carriage of 14 April 1865, all as stated by the Studebaker National Museum and its archivist Andrew Beckman; the National Park Service's account of Studebaker parts on the western trails, as quoted there.
2. Albert Russel Erskine, History of the Studebaker Corporation (1918), via the standard encyclopedia history — the 1874 fire's destruction of two-thirds of the works, the brick rebuilding over 20 acres and the "largest vehicle house in the world" description, the product lines and the $20,000 four-in-hand, the Chicago repository of 1884 and its columns, the White House order of 1889, the plant's near-100 acres and machinery census approaching 1900, the 1893 shutdown, and the 100,000 vehicles a year with 3,000 workers by 1900.