History |
The following information is based on my text in A Field Guide to American Residential Doors, p. 199, plus some additional information that came to hand after publication:
The Chicago Millwork Supply Company was an early twentieth century firm with a complicated history. It was a successor company to Oshkosh firms associated with Carlton Foster. The CMSC name was adopted in 1903 for the mail-order millwork, and the CMSC division outlived the other divisions of the company, finally closing its doors in the mid-twentieth century.
Carlton Foster
Carlton Foster (1826-1901) was a renowned businessman in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He purchased a sawmill in 1859 when he was 33 years old. In 1865, he took in James V. Jones as partner; at the time, Jones was serving as Mayor of Oshkosh. The company expanded into millwork, including doors, molding, blinds, and sash. The partnership built the Eagle Planing Mill in the 1870s. After being in business 16 years, the partnership dissolved (Oshkosh Northwestern, 11/4/1881, p. 4). The company then became the Carlton Foster & Company, which opened a warehouse in Chicago. The company became the largest sash, door, blind and lumber operation in Oshkosh.
Foster was elected mayor of Oshkosh in 1886, and his new duties took so much of his time that he had to leave his millwork company. Assignees assumed control of the company, which in 1888 issued a very interesting catalog that was one of the higher quality catalogs of the decade. However, the health of the company continued to decline, and its remnants were sold to other millwork companies. After the end of his term as mayor, Foster purchased an interest in the Joseph Hafner Manufacturing Company in Oshkosh, which was re-organized in 1892 as Foster-Hafner Company. Foster-Hafner continued to produce millwork in Oshkosh until early 1954, and in 1955 the mill and property were sold to a candle company (Oshkosh Northwestern, 3/3/1955). The firm also operated a mill in St. Louis that was managed by William Lothman. The St. Louis operations were renamed Foster-Lothman soon after Foster's death and later renamed the Lothman Cypress Company.
Foster Munger Company
When Foster left his company to serve as mayor, an employee of his named Harry Munger (1863-1922) moved from Oshkosh to Chicago to manage the company's warehouse there. The warehouse expanded its scope and adopted the name of the Foster Munger Company. This company was briefly one of the largest millwork firms in the nation, marketing millwork to local distributors around the nation and delivering by rail. Foster Munger produced some of the highest quality millwork catalogs in the nation during the years 1895 to 1902. The company retained its name after Foster died in 1901. By this time, the company initiated the practice of stamping the letter "F" on the bottom of its doors as its millwork stamp.
Chicago Millwork Supply Company
In 1903, Foster Munger enlarged a division named "Chicago Millwork and Molding" and recast it as the "Chicago Millwork Supply Company" (CMSC) to distribute Foster Munger's mail order millwork (Chicago Tribune, 4/11/1903). CMSC was an immediate success. It was formed at the same time that kit houses were gaining popularity, and some of the earlier millwork companies responded to their declining business by organizing a scheme to push CMSC out of business. However, the scheme failed, CMSC sued them, and eventually the competitors were indicted and fined (Chicago Tribune, 1/9/1913). The CSMC millwork catalogs originally met the quality of the Foster Munger catalogs, but after World War I the CMSC catalogs became much smaller with a narrower range of offerings. CMSC sold the Foster Munger division to the Roberts Sash & Door Company in 1912, and Harry Munger transferred to Roberts at that time (American Lumberman, 2/10/1912). Foster Munger continued its operations as a distinct division of the Roberts family until Munger's death in 1922.
CMSC became a major player in mail-order millwork through its catalogs, initiated soon after the company's founding. Its catalog #15 was issued in 1908. As is the case with many pieces of ephemera, few issues survive. By 1922, the catalog had the title Building Material Catalog. In 1924, the company changed the title to Millwork and Building Material of Guaranteed Quality. In 1926, the title was changed to Millwork and Building Material that Satisfies, which apparently led to jokes that only the company's building material satisfied customers, so the catalog was re-named Millwork and Building Material that Satisfy by 1929. The title was later shortened to Millwork and Building Material (1931). In addition to the millwork catalogs, the company published a very successful series of kit house catalogs, with extant issues ranging in date from 1913 into the 1950s. CMSC also issued smaller catalogs such as its 1920 catalog of garage doors which identified the company as "America's Greatest Sash and Door House."
Millwork catalogs at archive.org:
1926,
1928
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