Call Number:

01

Repository:

The Center for Art in Wood

Extent:

30.0 linear feet

Language:

English

Date:

1910-1952, 1993-2002

Creator:

John Grass Wood Turning Company

Abstract:

The John Grass Wood Turning Company, in business in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia from 1863 to 2003, specialized in creating tool handles, flag poles, furniture legs, and other wooden objects shaped on a lathe. Its longevity illustrates Philadelphia's importance as a longstanding industrial center in America's history. The John Grass Wood Turning Company records, 1910-1952, 1993-2002, consist primarily of financial records of the John Grass Wood Turning Company from two significant periods in its history: a forty-year duration beginning just before the company's incorporation in 1911, and a decade-long span leading up to the company's closure in 2003.

The John Grass Wood Turning Company, which was in operation for nearly 150 years, specialized in creating tool handles, flag poles, furniture legs, and other wooden objects shaped on a lathe.

The company was started in 1863 by John Grass, a Bavarian immigrant who had arrived in the United States a decade before at the age of 15. After an apprenticeship in New York, he came to Philadelphia to open his own shop.

Grass's son-in-law, Louis Bower, and John Stortz, who owned a tool company nearby for which Grass produced many handles, took over the John Grass Wood Turning Company and had it incorporated in 1911. They moved the company nearby to 146 N. 2nd Street, where it continued until the company folded in 2003.

The neighborhood where Grass started his business, Old City, was already a light manufacturing hub in the mid 18th century and is sometimes called "the crucible of Philadelphia's Workshop of the World." Over nearly a century and a half the company adapted with changing times, converting the steam engine that once powered its equipment to an electric motor, but also retained old methods and tools for woodturning. The company's longevity illustrates Philadelphia's importance as a longstanding industrial center in America's history.

Bibliography:

Woodall, Peter. "Where Time Stood Still." Hidden City Daily blog. April 18, 2013. Accessed May 15, 2014. http://hiddencityphila.org/2013/04/where-time-stood-still/.

This collection consists primarily of financial records of the John Grass Wood Turning Company from two significant periods in its history: a forty-year duration beginning just before the company's incorporation in 1911, and a decade-long span leading up to the company's closure in 2003. It is likely that records from the intervening period (from the 1950s to the 1990s) were destroyed by the John Grass Wood Turning Company at the time.

From 1910 to 1952, the collection includes: daybooks and account books; employee records, principally time books and payroll; tax returns and associated records; check stubs, cancelled checks, deposit and balance books, and account statements with the Corn Exchange National Bank and Trust Company; bills paid (organized alphabetically within years); and various other account ledgers, including purchase records, merchandise inventories, and petty cash books. The distribution of these materials, over time and across document types, is fairly consistent.

From 1993 to 2002, the collection includes: receipts/invoices for John Grass Wood Turning Company products; bills paid by the company; client correspondence, including price quotes and some illustrations of works; catalogs from suppliers and from other companies in the woodworking business; equipment manuals; and other office files, including some general business information such as government compliance rules for employers.

Of special interest is a 1993 study of the company's building, in the Historic American Engineering Record format.