A.D. Jacobson: A History of P1’s Early Beginnings PART I The history of our company should rightfully begin with a history of its founder. A. (Abram) D. (David) Jacobson (the fifth child of six) was born April 13, 1893 on Carmine Street, just off Bleeker Street in the poverty-ridden tenement area on the Lower East Side of New York City, A.D. was born of young Jewish immigrants from small villages in the Kaunas area of Lithuania. A. D.'s parents had probably never been more than four miles from their own village when they emigrated due to poor economic conditions and religious persecution. They met in New York City in the area of sweat shops, crowded tenements and horribly unsanitary conditions, married and proceeded to rear a family. While the father was literate in Yiddish, the mother was illiterate. The father's surname of Jacobson was given to him by an immigration inspector on his arrival and his real surname is lost forever. Soon after A.D.'s birth, economic conditions worsened and the family moved to Leavenworth, KS to be near his mother's sister and to live in the city that was fully expected to soon be the capital of the West. There A. D. attended elementary school until he was expelled just two weeks prior to graduation for "disciplinary" reasons. In 1905, since the family's economic condition had not improved and Leavenworth had not grown, they moved to Kansas City. To feed all, everyone capable had to work. A.D. obtained a job in a foundry. It was 12 hours a day of hot, dangerous work, with a pittance for pay. For two years he endured this, and then came the magnificent opportunity to apprentice himself to a gas fitter. While this meant rising before 5:00 A.M. to curry and hitch the horses, he heard opportunity knocking and was determined to succeed. He completed his apprenticeship and became a gas fitter. By 1913, with electric lights appearing everywhere, gas lights were doomed. The gas fitters merged with the plumbers. A.D. studied plumbing, and was initiated into Local #8 as a journeyman plumber on 8/12/1912 with Card Number 99442. With World War I starting in 1914, construction of cantonments (encampments) began and A.D. worked as a plumber much of the time at Fort Riley, KS. When the United States entered the war in 1917, A.D. was the only child of his parents who had a steady job and helped support them. Thus, he was exempted from military service and continued working in military construction.
He was issued an honorable union withdrawal on 6/30/1916, received Master Plumber License #223 on 7/5/1916, a reinstated union card on 4/30/1917, and was issued honorable union withdrawal again on 12/31/1918. The record shows that he must have tried having his own shop in 1916, but that it was not successful. In 1919, he opened his plumbing company, which was to grow into A.D. Jacobson Company, Inc., in the basement of the Grand Theater at 7th and Walnut, with the entrance from 7th Street near the alley. Legend has it that on opening his shop he went to the Missouri River and threw his tools into the water! But the truth is he continued working part-time with the tools for many years. In 1966 a list of the 1919 Kansas City members of the National Association of Master Plumbers was discovered. A.D.'s name was on the list at 22 E. 7th Street. He reviewed the list and identified 16 major mechanical contractors as of that date, commenting on their history: • • •
12 died broke Three smaller contractors passed on leaving small estates One small contractor grew, and today is a major contractor.
A.D. was not one of the 16 major contractors, but his business survived and kept growing. PART II The company was in its primary growth stage doing plumbing only during the 1920s. A.D. worked from two to four plumbers, and as business improved he hired a full-time bookkeeper. At first only residential work was done. As business grew, apartments and then commercial and institutional work were added. Growth was very slow, but performance was excellent and strong relations with general contractors and owners were established. In about 1966, bidding records of 1927 for the plumbing of a courthouse were found. A.D. had been the low bidder of 11 by very little, with a bid of about $27,000.00. His son asked him, "Dad, you couldn't have had much fee for that job, did you?" His response was that the fee had been almost $7,000.00, but in those years he only did one job a year of that size and that fee had to pay the rent, the bookkeeper, all overhead, and feed A.D.'s wife and two sons for a year! In the late 1920s A.D. came to realize that in addition to plumbing he needed to do heating work to become a complete contractor. But he really didn't know much about heating.
By this time, he had moved his shop to more spacious quarters around the 300 block of Southwest Boulevard. The solution was to invite W. T. (Bill) Conroy, a heating contractor, to share the space with him. Their businesses were separate, but now they could both bid the same jobs and had a better chance of securing work. A.D. watched carefully to learn about heating and Bill, in turn, learned about plumbing. They parted amicably several years later to open their own plumbing and heating shops. After a few years at the original Southwest Boulevard location, A.D. moved his shop to 331 Southwest Boulevard where he was to stay until he built the present building in 1944-45. In August of 1929, the stock market crashed and the great depression began. During the three worst years (probably 1930, 31 and 32) A.D. earned a total of $500 from his business that would be an average of only $167 per year - to feed his family. The plumber's union voluntarily took a cut in pay of $2 per day from $14 to $12. Every morning three "regular" plumbers came to the shop to go to work. The lucky one or two did actually get to work. The man who averaged two or three days per week was considered by all to be a millionaire! There was little, if any, meat on the Jacobson table. By 1934, conditions had improved and A.D. was low bidder on a county institution in rural Jackson County. He needed a bond, but had no capital. A good friend, who believed in him, came forward and signed the bond, pledging his credit if A.D. could not pay the bills. A.D. had started to become a major mechanical contractor. Soon thereafter more contracts were secured and a temporary office helper: Mary Frances Klassen, was hired. She remained a "temporary" employee until her retirement some 40 years later. Several prison jobs at Jefferson City and much remodernization work at Fort Leavenworth were the major projects performed. Then a very large contract for the Southside Terrace Apartments in Omaha, NE was secured. While very little profit was earned, the ability to organize and manage a large out-of-town project was learned. This would serve the company well during the war years. PART III With the beginning of the war in Europe in 1939, the United States began preparing for its subsequent entry into the conflict with the building of military training camps. This marked the greatest period of expansion for the company. 1942 was the peak year with over 500
employees and almost $5,000,000 in sales. The company completed installations at Camp Carson, CO; Fort Riley, KS; Camp Crowder at Neosho, MO; Camp Chaffee at Fort Smith, AR; the Naval Air Station at Hutchinson, KS; the air bases at Lincoln and Grand Island, NE; Salt Lake City Air Base; La Junta, Colorado Air Base; and the reception center at Fort Leavenworth, KS. This war work had extensive problems obtaining men and materials. All the young men had gone into the service by early 1942 and the bulk of the field employees were older small contractors who had had to close their own shops due to lack of materials. To try to get more work done, almost every possible type of overtime schedule was tried with the final result being that the most a man could work productively was six 12-hour days a week. He had to have one day a week of rest. Camp Carson, Colorado was the largest project at $1,750,000 (much material was furnished by the government). A.D.'s bid was over $500,000 low and his bonding company refused to write the bond. The situation looked grim. With the aid of his bonding agent they at last secured a bond and the contract. It took from February to October 1942 to construct the project and a job profit of $417,000, an incredible sum, was realized. Taxes took 90% of this and then government renegotiation took the rest (they tried for even more). The war years ended with A.D. having barely enough capital to incorporate the business as of January 1, 1946. The company's office had expanded to fill the second floors of several buildings along Southwest Boulevard. This was very unsatisfactory. During 1944 and 1945, A.D. managed to buy the land and build the original building at 2030 Central. Priorities for the material in the building were obtained by renting out the South half of the building to the Blind Association. Through the years, three small additions and numerous remodels were made. PART IV Immediate post-war business was plumbing and heating for commercial and institutional buildings and residential work was no longer performed. In June of 1947, Elliot L. Jacobson, three years late because of Air Force service during World War II, graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas and joined the company. His first company project was the original Johnson County Sewage Treatment Plant, the first wastewater treatment plant in the Kansas City area. Soon after a contract was obtained for the New Brotherhood Building in Kansas City, Kansas which was a 10story fully air conditioned office building and the first of its kind erected in the Kansas City area.
In June of 1950 Herbert R. Jacobson graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois and joined the company. His first company project was a large industrial piping project at the Lake City Arsenal. Thus, three new growth fields of endeavor began, and A. D. Jacobson Company went from a plumbing and heating company to a complete mechanical contractor. The 1950s and 1960s were productive for the company. Multi-story apartment projects such as Twin Oaks, Oak Hall, Wornall Plaza, Regency House and Sulgrave were built. The Claycomo Ford Plant, Parkville Fuel Storage Facility, Jefferson State Office Building at Jefferson City, Nike-Hercules Facilities, Kansas City, Missouri Waterworks, Midwest Research Institute, Gustin-Bacon Manufacturing, and Clipper Manufacturing were all major projects. From 1963 to 1965 the 31-story Commerce Towers Building, the first skyscraper erected in Kansas City since the great depression, was built. Also in the 1960s, the Big Blue Sewage Treatment Plant, the first waste water treatment plant for Kansas City, MO, was built. When the great Kansas river flood of 1951 occurred, seventy percent of the firm's projects were located in the inundated areas. The biggest job at the time was the Gustin-Bacon Plant #7, and the loss of equipment and supplies was tremendous. But the company, temporarily crippled by the flood, worked long and hard to recover not only their own losses, but to help old customers get back into business as soon as possible. In 1958 A.D. Jacobson became very ill and turned over control of the company to Elliot and Herb. They evenly divided the responsibilities, and A.D. counseled them as much as his health would allow until his death in 1968. PART V By 1968, company sales had multiplied many times and project manager help was desperately needed. In October, William J. Lynn, an engineering graduate of the University of Michigan, was hired away from Gustin-Bacon Manufacturing Company to become a project manager. He knew little about mechanical contracting but he was quick to learn and applied himself diligently. He soon accepted more and more responsibility. The 1970s and 1980s emphasized the trend started in the 1950s of specializing in work that included very complicated piping systems. The company continued growing at a rapid rate. Hospitals and Medical Centers developed out of nine major area hospitals. The company had ongoing construction in the area's largest private hospital for the last 23 consecutive years (as of 1989).
The Claycomo Assembly Plant of the Ford Motor Company, which the company built originally, became - and continues as - a major customer for year after year. Industrial piping in buildings such as the Bayvet Division of Cutter Laboratories became routine. Incredibly complicated ultraclean piping systems involving exotic materials and joining processes were installed for four years at the A.T.&T. Lee's Summit Plant. In 1978 Charles Brandon, a recent graduate in Construction Engineering Technology from Missouri Western State College, joined the company as an apprentice pipefitter. After only 1.5 years in the field, he was promoted to project manager. A year later in 1979 James Gathen, an engineering graduate of Union College of Schenectady, New York, joined the company as a project manager. Jim came with substantial experience in the mechanical contracting industry and brought many constructive ideas. PART VI Growth between the 1960s and the 1980s was such that the average yearly sales volume multiplied by six without sacrificing any of A.D.'s original philosophy of quality, economy and personal service. Historical sales volumes may be interesting. While A.D. had almost $5,000,000 in sales in 1942, by 1944 sales had fallen to only $300,000. They passed $1,000,000 in 1947, $5,000,000 24 years later in 1971, $10,000,000 in 1978, and $20,000,000 in 1984. According to records (only available since 1940) many years had very little profits, but only one year out of all of those, 1968, had an actual loss. Besides Elliot, Herbert and Mary Frances, many men and women have spent most of their entire working careers with the company. In no particular order and subject to the author's failing memory some of them are: Ed Hawkins, Bruce Jones, Bob Hunt, Barney Snook, Francis Lodde, Max Deweese, Paul Dunlap, Frank Cassity, Ed Brink, Ed Hodge, Gus Oxler, John Hill, Ace Rice, Riley Dieterich, Harry Cole, Barry Greenhaw, Jack Davis, Clyde Nickell, Dorothy Harris, Dave Edie, Frank Zwiegel, Sr., Frank Zwiegel, Jr., Leo Dulohery, Paul Perme, Joe Camren, Charles Nauman, Sherman Iverson, Everett McGill, Bill Donaldson, Ken Beebe, Phil Roberts, Bill Lynn, Val Wilson, Ernie Keating, Charley Campbell, Kate Finney, Bob Hemenway, Joe Rustin and Clyde McCullough. These are the people who helped make the company the vibrant organization it is.
In early 1986 Elliot and Herb came to the realization that the time for them to move on had come. Each of them had three children, successful in other professions. It was obvious that there were no better successors than those who had helped build the company, and that they should own the company. An arrangement was made and at the end of 1986 Bill Lynn became President, Jim Gathen became Executive Vice President and Charles Brandon became Vice President. Elliot and Herb served "of counsel" for three years, completely retiring at the end of 1989. Their judgement in selecting their successors was proved as the company continued to progress and prosper during those years. As the company begins its 72nd year, it continues A.D.'s original philosophy of quality, economy and personal service to which it adds hands on management, reliability, uncompromising skill and creativity. ELJ 12/18/89