Jan and Clara Vogelzang: Hardware Entrepreneurs

Sometime entrepreneurs need a push.

Jan Vogelzang was one such entrepreneur.

He was born in 1876 in the province of Overijssel, in the Netherlands.

In response to Napoleon’s edict that his subjects should register a surname, Jan’s ancestors chose “Vogelzang,” meaning “bird song.”? ?

But Jan’s father was not an ornithologist, or someone who studies birds; he was a “boer,” or farmer. ?Jan, however, wanted to be a “houtbewerker,” or woodworker.?

Woodworker

It seems Jan was slow by society’s standards to do what he wanted to do. For example, it wasn’t until he was thirty years old that he formally proposed to marry Klaashje (Clara) Niehaus, or “new house.”?

Clara had been born in the province of Drenthe, the daughter of a builder. But Jan did not intend to work for his father-in-law. Jan and Clara’s plan was to emigrate to America for their honeymoon, then stay there.? Wisely, Jan agreed to let Clara manage his money. Because they heard that the quality of goods was better in America, part of their plan included abstaining from buying clothes until after their wedding.

But Clara’s family intervened. First, her parents wanted Jan and Clara to stay in the Netherlands. Then Clara’s brother insisted on providing them with a lavish wedding party, and Clara’s father insisted on buying Jan a new overcoat and silk top hat. As a result of familial pressure, Clara changed her mind about leaving the Netherlands and convinced Jan to stay, telling him that leaving for America would break his mother’s heart.??

Then Clara’s brother found Jan a job doing carpentry work at a shop owned by a Mr. Van Houten. He also found Jan and Clara an apartment. But after a year, during the winter season, the building trades went into a recession, and Jan’s job vanished. It was then Jan and Clara decided it was time to leave for America. Again, they would rely on relatives – this time in Olive Center, a village a few miles north of Holland, Michigan – for their initial lodging.?

Jan and Clara said their tearful goodbyes in February of 1907 and boarded a Holland-American steam ship in Rotterdam. On board were other emigrants from the Netherlands – some of whom were heading to Holland, Michigan – as well as emigrants from Poland and Russia.?

Already in the English Channel they experienced a storm. According to Jan, it was as if “the bottom had fallen out of the sea and the boat was drifting without any balance.” The result was “a mass of people laying in heaps on top of one another” such that “the sailors simply had to toss this mass of humanity from one place to another in order to clean the deck.” ?Thankfully, instead of the voyage between Rotterdam and New York taking one-to-two months as it would have fifty years earlier, it took only 12 days.

As they were about to land in New York, an American doctor came aboard the ship to examine the passengers. Because there were so many passengers and so little time, the examinations were brief. Because the ship arrived in New York Harbor at dusk, the passengers remained onboard until 5 AM the next morning.?Upon disembarking, Jan and Clara saw their first skyscrapers.

The next day Jan and Clara boarded a smaller ship for Ellis Island. ?It was overcrowded. After passing through customs, they boarded a train. Their first stop was Buffalo; the second stop was Detroit. In Detroit, they waited four hours for the next train, which took them to Grand Rapids. They arrived in downtown Grand Rapids early on Sunday morning. Then they boarded the Interurban and arrived in Holland at 9 AM.

But when Jan and disembarked from the Interurban, they were surprised to learn the station manager in Holland did not know Dutch, and neither party could understand each other. Finally, Jan gave the station manager a slip of paper on which was scribbled an address. That the station manager understood. He then tried to contact Jan and Clara’s relatives in Olive Center by phone. ?When someone in Olive Center finally answered, the person on the other end told him Jan’s relatives were not available because they had gone to church. Apparently, instead of leaving a message, the station manager flagged two men who were passing by. Thankfully, they knew both Dutch and English, and directed Jan and Clara to a nearby house. In that house, lived the Oosterbaan family. Members of Central Avenue Christian Reformed Church, they provided Dutch immigrants with needed hospitality, including room and board.

The next morning Jan and Clara’s relatives arrived in Holland on a horse-drawn wagon, found Jan and Clara, and transported them to Olive Center.

Factory Worker

Once in Olive Center, Jan wasted no time in getting a job. After hearing of a relative of their relatives who was a contractor in Holland, Jan returned to Holland – this time on foot – to find a job and a place for he and Clara to rent.

The first door he knocked on was that of the Osterbaan’s, to find the whereabouts of the contractor. He found him on 17th Street. After the contractor told him to report to work the following Monday, Jan met a grocery delivery wagon driver who told him about a landlord who would rent him an upstairs apartment for seven dollars per month, whom he then visited. After such a productive day, Jan returned to the railway depot hoping to catch a ride back to Olive Center.

On the following Friday, Jan and Clara’s Olive Center relatives moved Jan and Clara, their meager belongings, a supply of food, and some kitchen utensils they purchased at Brower’s Furniture Store on River Avenue to their apartment. The following Monday Jan reported to work.

His job was hanging doors. Jan was happy until he learned that his wage of seventeen and a half cents an hour was less than that of the other carpenters. Losing an argument with his boss, Jan quit. Fortunately, Jan found another job.?

Jan’s new job was working with a boathouse building crew on the shore of Lake Macatawa. Unfortunately, Jan arrived at work in an ornery mood. This was because, to get to work, Jan had to commute via the Interurban, which cost him time and money.

Then, in his ornery mood, Jan asked his boss for someone to help him roof one of the boathouses. In response, the boss told Jan to keep his mouth shut or he would throw Jan into the cold February water.? But instead of accepting his fate, Jan told the boss the equivalent of “I dare you.” ?Fortunately, the boss ignored him. ?Unfortunately, Jan managed to slip and fall off of the roof into the water anyway.?

Later, on a flooring job, Jan learned a co-worker was earning thirty cents an hour to his twenty-two and a half cents. So, Jan asked for a raise. Losing an argument with his boss, Jan quit. That was short-sighted, for by that time Clara was pregnant with their first child.

Fortunately, Jan quickly found yet another job. This one was with a crew constructing Van Raalte School. ?The good news was that not only was Jan earning more money, the job was closer to his apartment, which eliminated his costly commute. The bad news was that eventually the school project finished, leaving Jan without a job once again. Meanwhile, his family was growing.?

Fortunately, Jan found employment again, this time at West Michigan Furniture. At first Jan liked working in the factory because he did not have to climb ladders and could stay out of the rain and snow. But then he became irritated when he discovered he was earning less money than before. That was before management cut his work week from five days to four. Afraid more cuts were coming, Jan and the other workers were afraid. Jan became especially fearful when he perceived his foreman was giving him the silent treatment. When Jan questioned him about it, the foreman told Jan that the company did not hire him to ask questions. Upset, Jan again quit his job.?

Fortunately, Jan found work at another furniture factory, the Ottawa Furniture Company.? There he made footboards for beds. He lasted more than a year in this job.? But in his second year, the company moved Jan to the repair shop. There he fixed library tables at a piece rate of sixty cents per item, which doubled his pay. For a while, Jan was happy and Clara was saving the extra income. Then the company reassigned Jan to a different job: repairing magazine racks at a piece rate of eight cents per item. Unfortunately, the change in jobs and pay rate caused Jan’s pay to plummet. So, once again, Jan quit his job.

But by then, in 1910, Jan had a wife and multiple children to feed, clothe, and house. So that evening Jan went to the home of Walter Lane, president of the Bush and Lane Piano Company, to ask for a job. Mr. Lane talked to him, asked Jan a few questions, then told Jan to report to Bush and Lane the next morning.

The next morning, when Jan arrived at the Bush and Lane Piano Company factory, the superintendent sent Jan to the cabinet-making room. There, to his astonishment, Jan discovered most of the laborers in the factory were not Dutch but Swedish, including his foreman. (It turns out Holland's business elite had recruited Walter Lane, and Mr. Lane and approximately 100 Swedish families migrated to Holland from Chicago, where they had worked in a piano factory.)

Jan was also amazed by piano-cabinet-making process: he saw a man cart pieces of cut wood from the machine room to the cabinet room. There a team of workers glued the pieces together. Then another man moved the newly formed cabinets to the finishing room. There workers applied at least seven coats of varnish; then, after the varnish dried, another crew polished the surface, and still another crew glued on more parts. Finally, still another team attached the sound board to the cabinet and another man tuned it. And at every stage Walter Lane personally inspected the product. In that era, before the parlor radio became popular, the piano business was booming such that to keep up with demand, the factory was open ten hours a day and nine hours on Saturday.?

When Mr. Lane discovered Jan’s skills, he reassigned Jan to the repair room.? Mr. Lane also assigned Jan to special jobs, such as making a screen-sided porch for General Manager William Beach’s residence, and doors for Mr. Lane’s house. Unfortunately, Jan irritated Mr. Lane when he showed that Mr. Lane had made an error on one of his designs.

It didn’t help the relationship between Mr. Lane and Jan Vogelzang contracted tuberculosis, forcing Jan to spend four months in quarantine on his porch at 236 W Nineteenth Street. Fortunately, Central Avenue Christian Reformed Church provide Jan and Clara and family with the food they needed. However, when Jan returned to work, Mr. Lane cut Jan’s pay to his original wages. Frustrated and furious, Jan walked out.

Jan survived by landing a job with the Charles Limbert Furniture Company, where he was soon promoted to foreman, a job Jan thought he would enjoy. Jan was also assigned to special projects, such as building a screened-in porch on the plant manager’s house. So impressed with the quality and efficiency of Jan’s work – and maybe tired of his feedback -- the plant manager suggested Jan go into business for himself. ?He also told Jan that his best working years would be behind him soon, so he better start his own business now. Clara agreed.??

So, Jan “moonlighted” as a carpenter while working at the Limbert Company. This arrangement lasted until 1917, when the market proved Limbert’s new management and new line of furniture to be unsuccessful. ?But instead of going into business full-time for himself, Jan took a job at Western Machine Tool Works in the pattern-making department.??

Yet, again, Jan disagreed with his boss about the best way of doing things. Fortunately, for Jan’s sake, Mr. Bosch, the owner, took Jan’s side and replaced Jan’s supervisor. But three years later, Mr. Bosch laid off many employees, including Jan.?

Next, Jan found work as a pattern maker for a small manufacturer of gasoline engines; but that company also laid him off. Then August Landwehr hired him at the Holland Furnace Company to design pipe-less furnaces; but Holland Furnace, in a rare cost-cutting move, also laid him off.???

Finally, Jan went into full-time business for himself. His first job was repairing a wardrobe. Then Dr. Winter hired him to build steps from a bluff on Lake Michigan to the beach below, then a barn and stable on his farm on Fortieth Street. Seeking help, Jan formed a partnership with his brother-in-law. When the partnership unraveled, Jan, now in his mid-forties, questioned whether he had the physical stamina to be a contractor.? Fortunately, Clara, had saved enough money to strategically purchase land on the southeast corner of 18th Street and First (now Washington) Avenue, and encouraged him to open a hardware business.

Hardware Entrepreneur

Thus, at 46 years of age, opened a hardware store.

To finance building a two-story structure, Jan and Clara decided to sell their house at 236 W. Nineteenth Street. They discovered that selling the house was easy; it was more difficult to get approval from the city and additional financing for their combination storefront and residence. For city approval, Jan needed the signatures of partners Gerrit Dyke, a barber, and Frank Hornstra, a laster at the Holland Shoe Company, who owned the property across the street and wanted to build a grocery, dry goods, and possibly hardware store there. He got their signatures. They opened a grocery and dry goods store, leaving the hardware to Jan.

In October 1921 Jan hired a contractor to dig a hole. The contractor did so using horses and a scoop. Meanwhile, Jan secured lumber from a dismantled building at Fort Custer near Kalamazoo and arranged for a railcar to deliver it to a side track at the Holland Sugar Company (located a present-day Kollen Park Drive and 15th Street).?

In May 1922 the Vogelzang family moved into the second floor of their unfinished structure. To complete the building, Jan and Clara decided to take out a mortgage. But the Holland State Bank turned them down, saying the building could not serve as collateral because it was neither a residential home or a successful business.

Discouraged, Jan went to Abraham Peters, a fellow church member and owner of a successful five and dime store on Eighth Street (later Woolworth’s). Mr. Peters, in turn, suggested Jan talk to Gerrit Diekema, the president of the bank. But before doing so, Jan found an elder in his church who would lend them the money.??

Jan also needed a hardware supplier. Foster Stevens, a wholesaler in Grand Rapids, turned him down. But another wholesaler, Michigan Hardware of Grandville, accepted Jan if he would be Jan’s sole supplier.

The first two items Vogelzang Hardware sold were shovels.?

In 1923 Jan and Clara added a two-story brick structure on the north side of his frame building, fronting Eighteenth Street; in 1930 John added a two-story brick structure on the south side of his frame building. Later he added gas pumps facing Washington Avenue. To save money, Jan tried hiring a fellow church member, my grandfather, Ralph VanderVeen, to do his electrical work, but my grandfather did not yet have his license.

One by one, the Vogelzang children – Len, Abe, John, Bill, and Geraldine – worked at the hardware store. Geraldine, like her mother, was the business’ bookkeeper.

Over time, Jan purchased Verburg Hardware at 76 E Eighth Street and Richard Van Tatenhove’s Corner Hardware Store at 210 River Avenue (formerly VanderVeen’s Hardware – no relation to the author), which he closed.??

But in 1943, disaster struck when Henry Borst, 39, a new gas truck driver, erroneously pumped gas into an abandoned pipe which led into the basement of one of the Washington Avenue Vogelzang Hardware buildings. He stopped when he heard the screams of Frank Volkema, 16, a part-time Vogelzang clerk, who was cutting screens where the pipe emptied out. As Borst entered the building to investigate, there was a huge explosion, propelling both men upward and out of the building.

The flames destroyed two of Jan’s three buildings, caused paint to flow “like burning lava into the street,” and shattered windows in the businesses in Washington Square.? Far worse, the injuries from the explosion were fatal to both Borst and Valkema.

In 1945 Jan and Clara sold the business to their children. In 1946 the children consolidated the business at 62 E. Eighth Street; in 1947 they built an addition at 64-66 E. Eighth Street.?

In 1960, Jan’s sons Abe and Leonard opened a furniture and appliance store at 51-53 E. Eighth Street, while his sons John and Bill operated a hardware store at 64-66 E Eighth and a distributing business at 23 W Eighth.?

In 1975 Bill launched Vogelzang International after managing a line of imported cast iron stoves and fireplaces for Target.?The business grew rapidly. In 1976 his son Steve took over.

In 1985, Jan Vogelzang’s grandchildren sold the 64-66 E. Eighth Street building to?New Holland Brewing. The US Stove Company acquired Vogelzang International in 2012.

Information for this story comes from Robert Swierenga’s Holland Michigan, The Holland City News, an interview with Bill Vogelzang in 2007, and Two Worlds of Mercy, Jan Vogelzang’s unedited autobiography available at the Joint Archives.

Sidenote: As a teenager, in the 1970s, I worked for my dad and uncles at the Washington Square Minit Mart (formerly Dyke and Hornstra Grocery and Dry Goods).? The cracks in the glass in the grocery store windows caused by the Vogelzang Hardware fire were still in evidence. In those days, I also attempted to play basketball with Joel, Doug, and Tim Vogelzang, sons of Leonard Vogelzang and grandsons of Jan and Clara Vogelzang.

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