Muscatine History and Industry Center

A great place to visit... make us an event for your summer!!

The Muscatine History and Industry Center collects, preserves, and interprets materials that illustrate how local industry and its innovations of the past and present benefit the Muscatine area.

About Us

We proudly tell the town's story in becoming the Pearl Button Capital of the World, and continuing today in the 21st Century as a thriving manufacturing and entrepreneurial center.

Pearl Button Capital of the World

By 1905 Muscatine produced 1.5 billion pearl buttons annually. With nearly 37% of the worlds buttons coming from Muscatine, the town became the undisputed Pearl Button Capital of the World.

The rise and fall of the pearl button occurred over a period of seventy-five years. At its height the cutting-edge automated industry employed half the local workforce. Decades later the American-made pearl button buckled under the pressure of foreign competition, changing fashion, limited availability of shell, and the development and refinement of plastic buttons.

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