Union Asbestos & Rubber Co. plant at Cicero, Illinois

In April 1926, Asbestos, the industry's trade journal, reported that "The United Asbestos & Rubber Company" of Chicago was "planning to erect a new one-story factory on 54th Avenue, 22nd to 23rd Street," in Cicero, Illinois, at a cost of about $100,000 with equipment.⁷ By July the journal was reporting "the completion of the new Unarco plant at Cicero, Illinois," built by the Union Asbestos and Rubber Company; the trade journal's two items name the company differently.^1,7 The July article said the plant covered "a ground area of 175,000 square feet with a factory floor space of over 100,000 square feet," not counting 20,000 square feet of warehouse.¹

What the plant made

The 1926 article listed the plant's first products: "the popular Insutape and Super-Insutape, asbestos yarns, cloth and a full line of high pressure steam packings for both railroad and industrial use."¹ Insutape was, in the words of Unarco Industries' later answers in a lawsuit, "a wrap-on or spiral applied insulation medium, composed of a woven asbestos tubular jacket filled with asbestos rovings"; that describes the product in general, not Cicero's output in particular.⁸ A 1971 profile in Asbestos recalled that Chester L. Hill supervised the building of the Cicero plant "for the production of asbestos textiles, insulations, packings, gaskets and rubber products."⁹

In 1939 the company, giving its address as Cicero, filed trademarks for Unibestos and Super Unibestos.¹⁰ The Navy's list of qualified products, in December 1951, names Cicero as a plant for Unibestos.⁶ Unarco Industries' answers describe Unibestos, in general, as pipe insulation and block "composed of amosite asbestos fiber bound with a silicious material (diatamaceous earth)."¹¹ The same answers say Unibestos was "discontinued in 1963," when the whole line passed to Pittsburgh Corning Corporation.^8,11

The war years and after

In March 1943 the company announced that its Cicero plant had won the Army-Navy "E" for excellence in war production, and that "this plant manufactures Insulation for Naval vessels and for Army Aircraft."² In February 1946 Asbestos reported that Robert Cryor had resumed his duties as general manager of the Cicero plant.⁴

The 1971 profile said that in 1947 "the asbestos textile operations at Cicero were then transferred to the Southern plants."⁹ Cicero went on making other asbestos products: in March 1949 the journal counted it among the plants where the company's asbestos products were "already being manufactured," and in December 1950 it named Cicero among Unarco's plants again.^3,5

Location

Pictures of products made here

Labels, packages, photographs and catalog pages from our library of products documents say were made at this plant. Each picture has its own page and library number.

• Product photograph: UNIBESTOS PIPE INSULATION (UNARCO)Unibestos (Union Asbestos & Rubber Co.)Product photograph · ACL Doc 15189

Asbestos products made here

The products documents say were made at this plant, with the years a document gives for the product here. Each product's page has what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Insutape (Unarco) · from 1926¹
• Unibestos (Union Asbestos & Rubber Co.)⁶

What each document says

Every statement about this plant in the documents, in each document's own words.

Other names

Documents call this plant “Cicero 50, Ill.”, “new Unarco plant at Cicero, Illinois”, “Cicero, Illinois”, “Cicero”.

See also

• Union Asbestos & Rubber Co.: the company's history, documents, people, products and plants
• Asbestos exposure sites in Illinois

References

1. Asbestos Magazine, 1926, July 1926 (July 1, 1926), p. 23.
2. Asbestos Magazine, 1943, March 1943 (March 1, 1943), p. 15.
3. Asbestos Magazine, 1949, March 1949 (March 1, 1949), p. 48.
4. Asbestos Magazine, 1946, February 1946 (February 1, 1946), p. 40.
5. Asbestos Magazine, 1950, December 1950 (December 1, 1950), p. 44.
6. Military Qualified Products List (1951–1995) (December 3, 1951), p. 2.
7. Asbestos Magazine, 1926, April 1926 (April 1, 1926), p. 43.
8. The Potter v. Fibreboard Case File (1969-1972), Answers to plaintiff's interrogatories (December 1, 1969), pp. 1–2.
9. Asbestos Magazine, 1971, September 1971 (September 1, 1971), pp. 6, 8.
10. Asbestos Magazine, 1939, June 1939 (June 1, 1939), p. 40.
11. The Borel v. Fibreboard Case File (1969-1972), Answers to interrogatories (April 1, 1970), p. 1.