Chicago Marks Morgan Services’ 125th Anniversary
City crews recently hung banners near the offices of Morgan Services in downtown Chicago to commemorate the company’s history of service dating back to its founding on Jan. 10, 1887.
“It is virtually unprecedented for the city to hang banners recognizing a for-profit enterprise,” said Morgan Services Chairman/CEO Richard Senior, adding that the only exception he knows of is for insurance broker AON, whose founder chaired a recent effort to bring the Olympic Games to Chicago.
Morgan Services is now in its fifth generation of family management with Senior’s son Alden serving as vice president. While the textile services industry boasts a number of companies with similar longevity and continuous family ownership, Senior says Morgan Services is the industry’s oldest multiplant laundry operation.
What’s more, Morgan Services enjoys a colorful family history, including John Alden, a 17th century ancestor who came to America aboard the Mayflower and rose to a position of prominence as a public official in Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. Other notable Morgan family figures include William Russell, the senior partner in the Pony Express, financier J.P. Morgan, newsletter publisher Knight Kiplinger and others.
As for Morgan Services, another family forebear, John Alden Spoor, launched the company in 1887 with three partners when they bought the American Steam Laundry in St. Louis. Spoor ran a railroad sleeping car business and converted the laundry to wash sleeping car bed linens on a customer-owned goods (COG) basis.
The next year, K.E. Morgan (a cousin-in-law of Spoor) took over the business and shortly after the turn of the century the company relocated to Chicago. K.E. served as president as his company became the key supplier of linens for Pullman sleeping cars, with washing done at a chain of laundries stretching from coast to coast. His son, A.K. Morgan, succeeded him in 1918, and seven years later he added Morgan to the company name.
A.K.’s son John Alden (J.A.) Morgan succeeded his father in the early ’40s. After World War II, J.A. reshaped the company’s business model in response to declining passenger railroad traffic. J.A. shifted his focus to provide rental textiles to restaurants and other businesses. He retired in the early 1970s but remained chairman until his death at 94 in 2004. Richard Senior, the husband of J.A. Morgan’s eldest daughter Diana, joined the company’s Board in 1970. He became CEO in 1974.
Today, Morgan Services operates 22 locations from Boston to Los Angeles with a large presence in states such as Ohio, New York and California. Watch for follow-up coverage of Morgan Services’ anniversary in upcoming issues of TS Weekly and Textile Services magazine.