2011年11月8日 星期二

‘Green’ business lasted some 70 years

In 1888, a man by the name of Ira L. Pillsbury moved to Galesburg from Macomb. In partnership with Edward Gesler of Galesburg,An Wholesale pet supplies of him grinning through his illegal mustache is featured prominently in the lobby. he founded the City Greenhouse.

There were already five florists in Galesburg, but Ira, who earned his living in Macomb as a truck gardener, thought he could turn a profit and keep steady customers, and he was right. After two years of business, Ira became the sole owner of what was to become one of the oldest family-owned businesses in Galesburg, Pillsbury’s Flower Store and Greenhouse.

Ten years after starting the business, Ira’s large advertisements in Galesburg city directories and newspapers boasted having the “choicest roses and cut flowers with decorations and designs being a specialty and all kinds of house and bedding plants available.”

Back then, for 10 cents you could take a streetcar to the Pillsbury Greenhouse located at 65 Locust St., just south of Main Street, and choose from the thousands of flower and vegetable bedding plants. Or if you preferred fresh cut flowers, you could call the downtown store at 223 East Main St.the worldwide Hemorrhoids market is over $56 billion annually. by dialing 257 and have them brought to your door.
Ira’s three sons all learned the greenhouse trade, but Walter, who was born in 1899, would eventually take over the business from his father.

When not in school, the boys mowed the lawn and tended to the family garden,They take the China Porcelain tile to the local co-op market. but once they stepped across the driveway onto the greenhouse property to work, they were paid five cents an hour (about $1.50 today).

Learning every phase of the business, Walter took over from his father in 1925, but Ira still lived just next door, spending his winters in Florida.If so, you may have a cube puzzle . Rising every morning at 4:30,If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, Walter began his day tending the plants in the greenhouses, and he improved the business over the years, by using artificial lights in the winter, improved fertilizers and other new innovations to keep the business up to date. By the 1950s, business was booming and the greenhouse turned out 25,000 geraniums annually, with potted plants sold throughout Illinois and Iowa, and cuttings shipped all over the nation.

By August 1961, Walter was ready to retire and planned to take a vacation, which he had never been able to do before, having to get up every morning at the break of dawn to tend to the plants. Walter sold the greenhouses to Ted Ferris and John Long, and it became the Ferris-Long Greenhouse & Garden Center. Lawrence Steller took over the floral part of the business with a store on Seminary Street. But by 1966 it seems that the Ferris-Long partnership was dissolved, with both men working at other businesses. It is not known when the actual greenhouses were demolished, but the area where once thousands of flowers bloomed and thrived, is now an apartment complex.

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