Then & Now: Westclox Company – LaSalle-Peru

The towns of Chicago and Ottawa were platted by the canal commissioners in 1830 to serve as both the gateway to the Illinois and Michigan Canal via the Chicago River and the western terminus on the Illinois River.

By 1836, canal commissioners made the decision to locate the western terminus farther west, and the town of LaSalle was platted in 1838.

With fertile farmland and access to large-scale grain terminals in Chicago, towns and communities lay out along the I&M Canal, especially those in LaSalle County, where grain facilities were numerous.

Once the I&M Canal opened, the population of the county increased, and the town of LaSalle, with its steamboat basin, became a place of tremendous activity. In time, LaSalle became the location where northern and southern culture came together.

In 1885, clock inventor Charles Stahlberg established the United Clock Co. in LaSalle-Peru. The firm struggled for several years to make a profit, and poor financial management forced the company into bankruptcy by 1887.

F.W. Matthiessen bought the company and changed the name to the Western Clock Co. By the early 1890s, the company was financially stable and produced about 400 units a day. In 1910, the company began selling and uniquely marketing its most famous product, the Big Ben alarm clock.

In 1923, the management team adopted the name of Westclox as the company namesake, and in 1930, the company merged with Seth Thomas Clock Co. Between 1910 and 1956, Westclox built 44 structures on the complex.

Although the company employed thousands of LaSalle-Peru residents by the early 1950s, a series of mergers caused the LaSalle plant to close by 1980.

A group of investors bought the building and sold it to developers in 2006. In 2007, the National Park Service deemed the building eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, because of its significant contributions to the social and economic development of Peru and the nation.

In the early morning of Jan. 1, 2012, a fire broke out at the Westclox compound and destroyed nearly half of the landmark building. The iconic parts of the building, the entrance with the clock and the main building remained undamaged. It was determined that the fire was set deliberately.

For the town of Peru, which had tied much of its identity to the company and the old factory building, the damage was devastating. In the years since the fire, there has been an effort by the town to save some of the important local history that was tied to the old factory complex.

A Westclox museum has since opened in a surviving portion of the original building.