The Longest Continuous Business in Plano

The third in our series of profiles of local businesses features Cooper Home Furnishings.

On Main Street in Plano, next to the old hotel, is Cooper Home Furnishings. Its story begins in the late 1800s with William Wallace Owen, often referred to as W.W. Owen. As a teenager in the 1860s, he moved from New York to Sycamore Illinois, where he married in 1870. In 1885, Owen and his wife relocated to Plano and he opened W.W. Owen & Company Furniture & Undertaking on Main Street. The business flourished and W.W. Owen became a prominent and respected citizen of Plano.

In July 1907, Charles E. Clouse took over W.W. Owen’s business, but Owen retained ownership of the building. Two weeks later, the Kendall County News announced the sale of the Plano Hotel to Valentine Cooper of Chicago. At that time, W.W. Owen’s furniture and undertaking business was located on the same block as the hotel, but they were not adjacent. Valentine Cooper moved with his family to Plano, where he and his son, Ambrose, 20, would run the hotel.

Only one year after their arrival in Plano, the Cooper family experienced the tragic death of Valentine’s wife, Fredreka. After she crossed the street from the hotel to the Plano train depot to drop off a package to be shipped, Fredreka stepped onto the tracks and was fatally hit by a train.

Valentine soon sold the hotel to Herbert Gage, the postmaster of Pingree Grove, Illinois and owner of a general store there. Valentine and Ambrose then moved to Pingree Grove, where they ran a general store and Valentine took over as postmaster (it appears Valentine Cooper and Herbert Gage traded businesses and positions).

After Valentine Cooper died in 1918, Ambrose took over as postmaster and continued to run the store until the mid-1920s when he returned to Plano. Having graduated from embalming school in 1925, Ambrose Cooper worked at Charles Clouse’s furniture and undertaking business for two years before they formed a partnership in 1927. The store was renamed Clouse & Cooper.

W.W. Owen, from whom Clouse had purchased the business, had died in 1911. A record of Mr. Clouse buying the building has not been located, so the building may have still belonged to the Owen family when Ambrose Cooper married W.W. Owen’s daughter, Zada later in 1927.

At the beginning of 1928, Charles Clouse retired, dissolving the business partnership. The business’s name changed to A. Cooper Furniture and Undertaking.

The following year, Ambrose and Zada Cooper’s only child, Owen Valentine Cooper, was born. Owen Cooper would go on to take over the family business.

By 1953, the undertaking division of the business was located in the block east of their furniture store. That summer, excavation began for the foundation for Stupka’s market (later Town & Country Market) next door to Cooper Funeral Home. The excavation caused the funeral home building to collapse, killing a man working on the foundation.

When Ambrose Cooper died in 1957, Cooper’s undertaking business was sold to Gerald E. Dunn who continued to operate the business which, by then, had relocated to the northeast corner of North and West Streets.

Cooper’s Furniture Store expanded in 1969 when Harold (Pete) Kivitts sold the building that housed his family’s Royal Blue Grocery Store, located next to the Plano Hotel, to Owen Cooper. The floor above the grocery store continued to house the Plano Youth Center (often referred to as the teen hangout) for some time.

In 1987, a Plano Record article detailed Cooper Home Furnishing’s history. By then, Owen Cooper’s sons, Jeff and Bill, were operating the furniture store, with Jeff specializing in furniture and Bill in carpeting.

Owen Cooper died in 2018. His sons and other family members still sell furniture and carpeting at Cooper Home Furnishings. If you visit Coopers, located at 112 W. Main Street, be sure to check out the historical details on the upper level. The basketball hoop from its days as the teen hangout, as well as other interesting historical details are still there, in what is believed to be the longest continuously operating business in Plano.