History |
Caradco was a network of millwork companies that extended throughout the Midwest in the twentieth century. The company had a succession of names through its history.
The company traces back to a woodwork plant named Carr, Austin, and Company founded in Dubuque, Iowa by William W. Carr and H.W. Austin (his name has also been reported as W.H. Austin and W.M. Austin) in 1866. The firm's operations burned in 1871 and again in 1879. John T. Adams was one of the major early investors in the firm, becoming a partner in 1881. The new 1882 facilities included the largest planing mill and sash and door firm in the West. In 1887, the company was incorporated as the Carr, Ryder, and Wheeler Company. The name of the overall company changed on several occasions, to Carr Ryder and Engler (1892), Carr Ryder and Adams (1897), and Carr Adams and Collier (1938).
The company began to open branches in other cities in the 1890s, first in Omaha in 1892, followed by a branch at 301 SW Ninth Street in Des Moines in 1897. Ernest J. Moehl joined the partnership, and the Des Moines branch took the name Carr & Moehl circa 1935.
The company adopted the label "Bilt-Well" to describe its millwork in 1921.
During World War II, the firm produced ammunition boxes, and during the Korean Conflict it produced mortar shell boxes.
In 1959, the company was re-organized under a holding company named Caradco Inc. (CARr-ADams-COllier) with corporate offices in Dubuque, Iowa. At that time, the network included Carr-Adams Manufacturing Co. of St. Louis and Mexico (closed 1961), Missouri and Jonesboro, Arkansas; Carr & Moehl Co. of Des Moines, Fort Dodge (opened 1953), Ottumwa, and Sioux City, Iowa; Adams-Kelly Co. of Omaha and Hastings, Nebraska; Adams-Rogers Co. of Indianapolis; Collier-Glasson Co. of Toledo; Illinois Bilt-Well Division of Peoria; and Carr-Adams & Collier Co. of Dubuque and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
In 1961, the O.W. Seibert Company of New York City purchased the Carr-Adams network (Moline [IL] Dispatch, 6/29/1961, p. 15). Seibert, founded in 1898, had been purchased by Pearl and George Sasine in 1958 and had already purchased the extensive lumberyard interests of the Eclipse Lumber Co. of Clinton, Iowa. Scovill Manufacturing Company purchased Caradco in 1968; Scovill closed the Dubuque plant in 1976. JELD-WEN purchased the Caradco remnant in 1997.
Millwork catalogs at archive.org:
Adams & Kelly 1908,
Carr-Cullen circa 1910,
Carr & Johnson 1937,
Collier-Adams 1937,
Commercial 1946 |