From Manufacturing and Wholesale Industries of Chicago (3 volumes)

by Josiah Seymore Currey, pages 193-194
Chicago: Thomas B. Poole Company, 1918
University of Michigan Library scanned by Google Books.

REGAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENT COMPANY

In the manufacturing of a diversified line of stringed musical instruments, with special attention given to mandolins and guitars, this company has attained large success and high reputation, and the products of its extensive manufactory have disseminated the fame of Chicago as a distributing center, as the fine instruments manufactured by the company find sale in all sections of the Union, besides which an appreciable export trade has been developed, especially in England and the Hawaiian Islands.

The business was founded in 1908, by Frank Kordick and Anton Nelson, who purchased the minor stringed instrument department of the great musical instrument manufactory of Lyon & Healy, a well known concern that at that time abandoned this and other departments of its extensive manufacturing enterprise and concentrated in the building of pianos, harps and other fine products for which the celebrated firm name has long been eminent.

In preparation for carrying forward the enterprise on an even more extensive scale than had Lyon & Healy, Messrs. Kordick and Nelson effected the incorporation of the business under the present title of the Regal Musical Instrument Company, Mr. Kordick becoming president of the new corporation and Mr. Nelson is treasurer. For the first two years the manufacturing activities of the new company were continued at the extensive Lyon & Healy plant, where was utilized sixteen thousand four hundred square feet of floor space, comprising three floors of one of the principal buildings of the plant.

In assuming control of the business the new company retained twenty-five of the most skilled and expert instrument makers formerly in the employ of Lyon & Healy, and during the first twelve months the sales aggregated forty thousand dollars. The policy of the company from the beginning has been to sell its products exclusively to wholesale and jobbing dealers in musical instruments, and the general supervision of the business has been effectively placed under the administration of the president, Mr. Kordick, who is himself a recognized expert in the manufacturing of high-grade musical instruments.

In 1911, in order to provide the larger accommodations demanded by the constantly expanding business, the company purchased five city lots with a frontage o£ one hundred and twenty-five feet on West Grand avenue with a depth of one hundred and fifty-five feet. On this site was at once instituted the erection of a modern brick industrial building specially designed for the purpose for which it was to be placed in commission. The foundations were laid for the erection of a four-story structure with a seventy-five foot frontage, and in a preliminary way the building was carried to a height of two stories, the building as thus formed giving for factory and office purposes a total floor space of about twenty thousand square feet. At the time of this writing, in the summer of 1917, plans are being perfected for adding the other two stories for which the original design of the building calls, and this will, as a matter of course, double the area of available floor space and make the plant the largest in the world as devoted to the manufacturing of the smaller types of stringed musical instruments.

Under vigorous and progressive policies and careful management the business of the company has shown a steady and normal growth, the force of employees varies from seventy-five to one hundred, and the annual business for the fiscal year 1916 attained in the noteworthy aggregate of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

In following paragraphs will be found more specific mention of the president of the company, and this representative corporation consistently retains membership relations with the Illinois Manufacturers' Association.

FRANK KORDICK
The president and general manager of the Regal Musical Instrument Company, duly described in the foregoing context, was born in Meuern, a little town near Budweis, Bohemia, on the 3d of February, 1872, and is a son of Matthew Kordick, who came with his family to America and settled in Chicago in the year 1880. With limited financial resources Matthew Kordick here engaged in business as a wagonmaker, and later he achieved success in the operation of flour mills. He continued his residence in Chicago until his death, in 1890, at the age of sixty-five years.

Frank Kordick was a lad of eight years at the time when the family home was established in Chicago and here he continued to attend the public schools until he had attained to the age of fourteen years. The ensuing two years found him serving a thorough apprenticeship in the establishment of the Bowman Musical Instrument Company, and in the meanwhile he continued his education by regular attendance in the night schools.

In 1888 he left the service of the company mentioned and found employment with the celebrated corporation of Lyon & Healy, one of the foremost in the world for the production and sale of musical instruments, and this change was made because he realized that with this concern his advantages and opportunities would be greater. For two years he gave his attention to all manner of odd jobs that were assigned to him in the Lyon & Healy factory, and at the age of eighteen years he was placed in charge of contract work, with a force of fifteen men under his supervision. He remained with Lyon & Healy as a valued and skilled employee for twenty years, and his ambition and effective service did not lack for official appreciation, as shown by the fact that he was simultaneously in charge of four different departments of the concern's great manufactory.

He became specially proficient in all things pertaining to the manufacturing of the smaller types of stringed instruments, and he severed his pleasing alliance with Lyon & Healy only when, in 1908, he became associated in the purchase of the stringed instrument department of the business, as noted in the preceding article.' He has profited by the prestige of his association with Lyon & Healy but has also gained for the Regal Musical Instrument Company a fine standing and precedence that are definitely its own.

He is a Republican in his political proclivities, a loyal and appreciative citizen of the western metropolis and an alert and successful businessman who has achieved advancement through his own ability and well ordered endeavors. June 16, 1897, recorded the marriage of Mr. Kordick to Miss Alma Smith, daughter of Theodore Smith of Chicago, and the one child of this union is Helen, born in 1899.