FLASHBack 90 Years Ago This Month
Ninety years ago this month, The California Lumber
Merchant showed a number of lumber companies getting creative in their marketing of wood products. For 14 years, a group of lumber manufacturers had been funding a Building Material Exhibit on the ground floor of a highrise office building in downtown Los Angeles. The displays, which allowed builders to view the latest trends in home construction, were originally housed inside the Metropolitan Building on Fifth and Broadway, but were relocated to inaugurate the opening of the new Architects’ Building on Fifth and Figueroa. In its new setting, the exhibit occupied the ground floor, foyer and mezzanine floor. It featured displays furnished by Hammond Lumber, Red River Lumber, Cadwallader-Gibson Co., Built-In Fixture Co., California Redwood Association, and Hardwood Dealers (E.J. Stanton & Son, Western Hardwood Lumber, W.E. Cooper Lumber, C.W. Bohnhoff, and California Panel & Veneer Co.). In other news of January 1930: • The West Coast Lumbermen’s Association planned to erect a nailed wood oil derrick at the Oil Equipment & Engineering Exposition to be held in Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium. The derrick was to be roughly 130 ft. tall, and built to the standard plans devised by the National Lumber Manufacturers Association after two years of testing
JANUARY 1930 cover highlighted Schumacher Wall Board’s Grip-Lath plaster base.
at UCLA. The derrick would be part of an entire wood exhibit that would also include wooden walking beams, rig members, and a display of grademarked lumber. • A Japanese construction crew excavating for a modern sewer in Tokyo dug up a network of ancient wooden water pipes—still sound after 340 years. An expert noted, “When Tokyo was a mere fishing village known as Yedo, these pipes were laid by the first shogun or feudal lord to establish an independent capital. The pipes brought water from a river about 40 miles away and when installed were considered a superlative example of modern convenience.” • As Pickering Lumber, Springfield, Mo., expanded through Texas and into California, company president W.R. Pickering jumped into aviation, flying whenever possible. On one recent trip from L.A. to Kansas City, he made the 1,400-mile journey in 10 hours, 35 minutes—a then-record for the trip. The flight usually took 13 hours. While air travel took off, Pickering Lumber did not. One year later, plagued by the deepening Depression, the owner began shuttering his 37-year-old company.
HAMMOND Lumber’s exhibit in L.A.’s Architects’ Building was of Mayan architecture, with a sand-blasted redwood frame. In all, shown were 20 hardwoods, 20 different softwood doors, quartered oak parquet flooring, and an assortment of builders’ hardware.
CADWALLADER-Gibson Co. spotlighted its new Bagac veneer doors.
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n The Merchant Magazine n January 2020
CALIFORNIA REDWOOD Association had architect Ernest Irving Freese design an attractive redwood house, including redwood shingled sidewalls, roof, interior paneling and doors.
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