In 1868 William A. Berkey was made assignee for Atkins & Soule cabinetmakers. In 1870 the premises were purchased by parties who organized the Phoenix Manufacturing Company. For several years they did business at the corner of Ottawa and Fairbanks streets, as the manufactures of miscellaneous furniture. Berkey retired from the firm of Berkey Bros. & Gay, January 1, 1873, and devoted his energies to building up the new company which had been reorganized as the Phoenix Furniture Company, with a capital stock of $200,000. Phoenix Furniture Company moved into a factory at the corner of West Fulton and Summer streets in 1873. The main buildings were brick, with lumber sheds, freight houses and yards attached. There was also a suite of salesrooms in the Blodgett block, near the corner of Louis and Ottawa. Phoenix Furniture Company produced primarily chamber suits, folding beds, book cases, dining tables and heavy office furniture, but its most successful line was its oak and cane McKinley Chairs, designed by David W. Kendall in 1894. The chairs were named after President McKinley, who owned and used one.

David W. Kendall joined the company in 1879 as a draftsman, but was quickly promoted to a designer. He left Phoenix for Berkey & Gay between 1883 and 1886, and the short-lived company of Kendall, Beardsley, and Dey in Detroit in 1886. Kendall returned as chief designer at Phoenix in 1888, and stayed with the company until his death in 1910.

In 1911, the Phoenix Furniture Company was purchased by Robert W. Irwin and was consolidated, along with the Royal Furniture Company, into the Robert W. Irwin Co., though products produced by Phoenix continued to be labeled with the Phoenix name. The Robert W. Irwin company closed in 1953 and the space was used for storage until it became home to Stow & Davis, Inc. in the late 1950's. Steelcase Inc. purchased Stow & Davis Furniture Co in 1985 and the building that was Phoenix Furniture Company was donated to Grand Valley State University. In 1988, GVSU razed Phoenix Furniture Company and the Public Museum of Grand Rapids salvaged a 2000-square-foot section of the original building which they reconstructed in the Van Andel Museum Center of The Public Museum of Grand Rapids.