In 1916, Libbey-Owens Sheet Glass of Toledo, Ohio, built its first plant at 57^th Street and MacCorkle Avenue in Kanawha City, which would soon became part of Charleston. The first six furnace units went into production the following year. By 1923, six more units had been added, making it the world’s largest sheet glass producer. It manufactured plate and window glass for all types of architectural building applications, as well as laminated safety glass for the automotive industry. Most of the necessary raw materials, such as white silica sand, salt, coal, and natural gas, were readily available nearby. Situated between the Kanawha River and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, and along U.S. Route 61, the plant had multiple shipping outlets. 

The company’s heritage dates to 1818, with the founding of the New England Glass Company of East Cambridge, Massachusetts. It relocated to Toledo in 1888, becoming the Libbey Glass Company. There, Edward Drummond Libbey (1854-1925) hired Mason County native Michael J. Owens (1859-1923), whose inventive genius would revolutionize the industry. In 1930, Edward Ford Plate Glass merged with Libbey-Owens to form the $50 million Libbey-Owens-Ford (LOF) Company. This new organization quickly contracted to supply all automotive windows and windshields for General Motors, just as the plant had previously furnished auto glass for the Ford Motor Company’s Model A automobiles.

The company’s improved manufacturing techniques and newer, sturdier products included high-quality plate glass, window glass, laminated auto glass, and tempered and insulated glass. The Charleston plant exclusively produced all the original window glass for the Empire State Building’s construction (1930-31).  

Libbey-Owens-Ford played a major role in West Virginia's production of 15% to 21% of all flat glass made in the United States between 1947 and 1963. Global competition, though, led to a reduction in the plant’s production in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Charleston plant closed on May 1, 1980. It was soon demolished, and on April 14, 1982, its 12 135-foot-tall landmark smokestacks were detonated to the ground.

The site was developed into the Kanawha Mall shopping center complex. In April 1996, Libbey-Owens-Ford sold its remaining corporate interests to the Pilkington Group, a multinational glass manufacturer headquartered in the United Kingdom. The company retained the Libbey-Owens-Ford name; however, in 2006, Pilkington Group was acquired by Nippon Sheet Glass, which dropped the brand.

For more than 60 years, the Libbey-Owens-Ford factory was a central part of the Kanawha Valley economy, providing skilled jobs for hundreds of residents and leading to the development of Kanawha City. In fact, the train stop and school in that area were once called Owens.

Ironically, when the highly mechanized plant first opened in 1917, many laborers who had been making glass by hand—especially South Charleston’s talented Belgian glassworkers—were put out of jobs. The exceptions were glass cutters, who completed the final stage of production and the most difficult to fully mechanize.