A Short History

Featherbone Place is a Heritage Designated Property, located at 387 Clarence St., London, ON. Designer Samuel Frank Peters of The Peters, Jones and McBride Firm, completed the building in 1886, for the Reid Brothers Stationers. The building is most known for the period of time that it housed three corset factories and the stores operated by Bud Gowan from 1971-2012. First, from 1893 to 1912 the Canada Featherbone Company, then Reid Featherbone Manufacturing Company, from 1910-1915 and finally Warren Featherbone Company, from 1915 to 1923 owned the building and used the space to manufacture corsets out of featherbone. Featherbone is a substance that can be used as substitute for whalebone in corsets. It is made out of the feathers from turkeys and chickens. Since the corset factories, the building has been owned by a variety of different people/businesses. In 1971 Bud Gowan purchased the building to run Bud Gowan Custom Clothes Ltd. After the clothing store moved Gowan opened Bud Gowan’s Antiques in 1973 and it stayed opened till 2012, when the building was sold.

At the moment, Featherbone Place is an empty building owned by John Fyfe-Millar. In the future, the building will be restored to house a restaurant, design company and living quarters. Located inside the building is London’s oldest working elevator. The building is architecturally significant because the main structure has stayed the same; it is a representative of 1890s commercial factories with large stone piers, brick plaster and recessed window cases. Featherbone place will continue to show characteristics of Italianate architecture of the 1880s into the future.

 

To see a more detailed history of the businesses that have been in the building since the 1880s see the Timeline that is located farther down on the page.