Begun by three business partners, the company set up its manufacturing facilities in what is today the Arena District producing inexpensive buggies and dashboards, and quickly saw success.

Crippled by the Great Flood of 1913 and unable to compete with cheaper alternatives like the Model T, the company eventually went bankrupt in 1913, reorganized, and closed its doors a few years later.

It influenced the early automobile industry production methods and several notable employees, including Eddie Rickenbacker and Harvey S. Firestone.

The Columbus Buggy Company was established by entrepreneur Clinton D. Firestone and brothers George and Oscar Peters.

[2] The three partners saw Columbus, Ohio as a ripe location for a business thanks to cheap labor as well as the recent network of railroads created during the American Civil War reducing the costs of goods.

The completion of the Hocking Valley Railway also granted them ample access to coal, wood and iron from southeast Ohio.

Before 1870 they produced 100 and sold them successfully at auction, though their business partners refused further work, leaving them in debt.

[6][7] The business saw immediate success thanks to a design created by the Peters brothers and a system of labor that made production efficient, and it sold 237 buggies in its first year.

[4] Its first facility was locating at Wall and Locust streets near the modern day One Nationwide Plaza building in the Arena District, immediately north of downtown Columbus, and near the Ohio Penitentiary and Union Station.

[17] At its height in 1892,[15] the company employed 1,200 people and built 100 vehicles and 1,500 carriage dashboards a day, with its products exported to other countries around the world.

[10] With the advent of the automobile, Columbus Buggy Co. found itself at a competitive disadvantage to companies in Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago, which had a greater access to steel.

[22] In 1909, the company hired Lee Frayer to design a full-sized car, with Eddie Rickenbacker as his assistant.

Improvements were made to the vehicles continually as they were produced, as opposed to creating successive model years.

[24] Introduced at the 1909 Chicago Auto Show, it became popular and sold 2,000 units a year, all made at the 400 Dublin Road plant.

[26] In 1914, a new entity, named the New Columbus Buggy Co., was incorporated with $500,000 in capital under a new ownership group, including C. A. Finnegan and E. D. Hoefeller of Buffalo, New York.

[22] It was during this assignment that Rickenbacker, while serving as a test driver for the vehicles, developed an affinity for driving fast cars.

[32] Some of the original sales catalog promotional material of the company are still preserved in the Henry Ford Museum.