History
On a warm day in 1854, young Eli Lilly came to Lafayette, Indiana, to live with his aunt and uncle and learn a trade. Soon after his arrival, he entered the Good Samaritan Drug Store, where he would spend nearly five years as an apprentice. And just seventeen years later, he founded his own company in Indianapolis.
A veteran of the Civil War, Lilly was frustrated by the poorly prepared medicines of his time, many of which were available from sideshow hucksters. He decided that his company would manufacture pharmaceutical products of the highest possible quality, and they would be dispensed only at the suggestion of physicians.
Eli Lilly and Company grew to become one of the world's leading pharmaceutical manufacturers, with several production facilities, including an expansive site in Lafayette, where young Lilly first entered the trade. That site is now known as Lilly Tippecanoe Laboratories.
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Integrated and Expandable
Tippecanoe Laboratories was originally designed to meet an expected increase in demand for penicillin during the Korean conflict. The company purchased a 400-acre parcel on the south bank of the Wabash River near Lafayette and construction began. But before the plant was completed, Lilly's other plants incorporated advanced processes to boost their production of penicillin, and demand decreased with the end of the Korean conflict.
Nevertheless, the plant was built and ready for production when Lilly researchers discovered a new antibiotic known as erythromycin. So, on May 10, 1954, Tippecanoe Laboratories began operations with 15 buildings and 95 employees. Technologically integrated and expandable, Tippe is now part of a Lilly network of manufacturing sites. |
