Crane Ordway

Completed in 1904, Crane Ordway building is part of St. Paul, Minnesota’s Lowertown Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Crane and Ordway

Crane and Ordway manufactured valves, fittings, and supplies for steam engines.[1]

Rogers and Ordway was the successor company to Wilson & Rogers, the oldest firm in the line of plumbing and steam fittings in the Northwest. At one time, The Crane Company was the largest manufacturer of valves, fittings, and steam supplies in the world, employing over 3,000 men at the factory in Chicago factory. In 1892 Crane bought out the Rugg-Fuller Company in Minneapolis.

On January 1, 1893 Richard Teller Crane of Chicago, Illinois and Lucius Pond Ordway of St. Paul, Minnesota incorporated the Crane & Ordway Company. It consolidated the firms of Rogers and Ordway of St. Paul and Duluth with a branch of the Crane Co. in Minneapolis,[2] uniting all the large interests in this line of business in the Northwest. Lucius Ordway, became vice president and general manager of Crane & Ordway. Ordway came to St. Paul from Providence, E. I., in 1883 and worked for Wilson & Kogers until 1886, when he became a member of the firm of Rogers & Ordway,

The company dealt in a general line of pipe, fittings, boilers, pumps, pumping machinery, and plumbers' and steam-fitters' supplies.[3] It did an extensive business in well-drilling machinery, windmills, and large irrigating plant outfits of all descriptions, furnishing estimates and designs and complete plans for water works. Crane later became part of American Standard. Mr. Ordway went on the build the 3M company.

Crane Ordway Building

The building was designed by Reed and Stem, the architectural firm that designed Grand Central Terminal in New York and the St. Paul Hotel in downtown St. Paul. It had been vacant for 30 years prior to Aeon, a non-profit developer of affordable housing, restoring it in 2006. The historic warehouse now offers 70 units of affordable rental apartments.

References

  1. ↑ “Crane Building,” City of Saint Paul and the Saint Paul Heritage Preservation Commission, Saint Paul Historical, 1988
  2. ↑ The Valve World, (Justin W. McEachren), Crane Company, 1922
  3. ↑ Western Magazine, January, 1921

Coordinates: 44°57′0″N 93°5′9″W / 44.95000°N 93.08583°W / 44.95000; -93.08583

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