Late 19th to Early 20th Century Columbus Covered Square Corner Piano Buggy

 This covered buggy was made by the Columbus Buggy Company of Columbus, Ohio. Initially called the Iron Buggy Company, the Columbus Buggy Company was established in 1875 by Charles Dewitt Firestone and buggy makers, Oscar and George Peters.
 Firestone, seeing the advantages of Columbus' location at the crossing of many railroads and its location close to wood, coal, and iron supplies, decided to enter the buggy business with the help of the Peters brothers, two men greatly experienced in the leather and carriage trades. Within two decades, these men had created one of the largest buggy makers in the world. By 1900, the company employed perhaps as many as 1,200 workers.
 Despite its great success, Charles Firestone and his associates could sense that the end of the horse-drawn vehicle age was approaching. At the same time as other buggy companies were trying to make the transition to automobile manufacturing, the Columbus Buggy Company began work on what would become the Firestone-Columbus automobile.
 Despite a valiant effort at developing its own cars, the Columbus Buggy Company could not compete with Ford, General Motors, and other automobile manufacturers. Columbus did not have access to steel like the car companies in Detroit and Chicago did. And the Columbus Buggy Company, like other buggy makers, had a tough time converting its factories from buggy manufacturing to car manufacturing. By 1913, the Columbus Buggy Company was in receivership; the company made its last car in 1915.

Photograph of the Columbus Buggy Company's exhibit,
in World's Columbian Exposition Illustrated,
vol. III, no. 8 (October 1893).

 Although the Columbus Buggy Company did not become a successful automobile maker, two of its former employees went on to great success in their own fields. One of those employees, a sales agent for Columbus in the early 1890s, was Harvey S. Firestone. Seeing the benefits of rubber over steel in the production of tires, Firestone founded the Firestone Rubber Tire Company in Chicago later in the 1890s, and then the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, in 1900. Another employee, working for the company around the time that Columbus was developing an automobile, was Eddie Rickenbacker. Rickenbacker, who was a race car driver and mechanic, also became a pilot. During World War I, Rickenbacker became captain of the 94th Aero Squadron before engaging in aerial combat in 1917. Shooting down twenty-one airplanes and five balloons, Rickenbacker became an American war hero and has often been referred to as the "Ace of Aces."

An 1882 advertisement in The Hub.

Notes

Some information on the company can be found in Ed Lentz, Columbus: The Story of a City (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003).
You can see an image of a Firestone-Columbus automobile, provided by the New York Public Library, by clicking or touching here.