Industrially, the town of Berlin buttoned-up in the late 1800s

Kitchener’s history is rich with button making businesses

Thirty-two-year-old Emil Vogelsang’s life-changing decision in 1866 also changed life in a small village an ocean away.

Tiring of the restrictive life and constant wars (vs. Denmark 1864; Austria 1866) under King William I of Prussia (post-1871, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany), Emil departed. Settling in Berlin, Canada West, he mentioned to merchant Henry Huber his button-making skills. A handshake later, the pair formed a small company. In rented space, they produced the first ivory buttons in Canada: vegetable ivory (tagua) nuts from South America were turned on a locally-produced lathe.

Not only had Emil started a new life for himself, he also began an industry that was among the community’s most important for many decades. His Pioneer Button Works expanded so rapidly that a factory was built at King West and College in partnership with Jacob Y. Shantz. That association lasted from 1871 until mid-decade, when Emil left. In 1879, he erected his own factory on Queen Street South at Courtland (today’s Bread & Roses Co-Op). For a half-dozen years, he operated the Canadian Ivory Button Works, but in the mid-1880s moved to Port Elgin.

Shantz kept the Pioneer Button Works’ King Street factory running as the Shantz Button Company until he retired in 1890. Needing larger facilities, Jacob’s son, Dilman, moved the firm in the mid-1890s to a vacated four-storey building at 57 Water St. N. On the top floor, the sawing of raw materials and punching of shells took place; the third floor saw detailed work such as drilling of button blanks, lathe work and cutting; floor two had company offices, plus a packing and shipping area, dye rooms and fine-finishing operations; the main floor held large supplies of raw materials such as ivory nuts, mussel shells (for “pearl buttons”) and textiles.

Other industrialists noticed the growing button industry and several firms were operating from the 1880s into the early 20th century, among them: Hoffman Buttons, later named Ritchie Buttons; Roschmann Brothers in Waterloo; George Schlee’s Berlin Button Works, later Kitchener Buttons; Ontario Button Company, later Ontario Pearl Works; and George Schnarr Buttons, later Schnarr’s Dressmaking. With over a thousand Berliners working in button factories, it’s not surprising that the town was briefly dubbed Buttonville.

Shantz Buttons adopted a secondary commercial name, Dominion Buttons, in the late 1890s and things were going well. Its products were shipped around the world until fire struck and destroyed the building on June 9, 1909.

Two months later, rebuilding began. By year’s end, construction was done and button-making ready to resume. Dilman Shantz had overseen the new factory but soon accepted an offer from a group of employees led by David Gross. Under the slightly modified name of Dominion Button Manufacturers Limited, Gross and several other employees took over and created a worker-owner environment in which, initially at least, everyone felt extra pride in “their” company.

With son Mervin as vice-president, David oversaw Dominion’s transitions in the 1920s and 1930s to new forms of production and button materials. He died in 1944 and the company wound up in 1964. In 2024, on the site of Dominion Buttons, sits the large apartment building, the Alexandrian. A small park at Queen and Duke Streets honours Emil Vogelsang.

Periodically, in core Kitchener, someone digging in a backyard will come across buried shells with perfectly round holes punched in them. Consider these to be industrial artifacts from Buttonville! During pearl button manufacturing, companies were left with huge piles of punched-out mussel or clam shells. People wanting to fill a hole or level their property could call Dominion and request wagonloads of shell fill. Covered in earth, the fill has remained hidden for many decades until landscape renovation unearths a bit of K-W’s industrial past.

The Shantz button years are well covered in Samuel Steiner’s 1988 book “Vicarious Pioneer.” Unfortunately, some other local accounts of Shantz/Vogelsang are error filled.

100 YEARS OF PROGRESS IN WATERLOO COUNTY PHOTO In a 1906 Chronicle Telegraph special publication, a sketch of Dilman Shantz’s Water Street factory is impressive, but is one storey short. Each day, 100,000 buttons were turned out.

RYCH MILLS PHOTO The tagua nut (aka vegetable ivory) was hard and ivory-like. Sliced, polished and punched, it produced sturdy, good-looking buttons. Chess pieces and dice were also made from tagua nuts.

RYCH MILLS PHOTO To sell buttons, one must display buttons, so button cards were prepared by the thousands to leave at shops across the country. This card, from the 1920s, had a word spelled in pearls but four pearls are missing: what was the word?

RYCH MILLS PHOTO Mussel and clam shells were shipped by the millions to Berlin to feed the button factories. Many are still buried around town. The pearl-like button face was the interior shell surface.

WATERLOO HISTORICAL SOCIETY PHOTO Within a half-year of the 1909 fire, the Dominion Buttons factory was rebuilt. Employee Albert Snyder, great-grandson of pioneers, labelled it.