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Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company, also known as Belknap Hardware Company or simply Belknap Hardware, located in
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
, was at one time a leading American manufacturer of hardware goods and a major wholesale competitor of retail sales companies
Sears, Roebuck, and Company
Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...
and
Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curren ...
. Belknap excelled both in catalog sales and widespread distribution of its own name-brand manufactured products.
Origins of the company
The company's founder
William Burke Belknap the elder (1811–1884) was born in
Brimfield, Massachusetts
Brimfield is a town in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,694 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area.
History
Brimfield was first settled in 1706 and was offi ...
, the son of Morris Burke Belknap the elder (1780–1877) and Phoebe Locke Thompson Belknap (1788–1873) and is not to be confused with
William Burke Belknap
William Burke Belknap the younger (1885–1965) was the son of William Richardson Belknap and Alice Trumbull Silliman. He was an entrepreneur in the family of W. B. Belknap, William Burke Belknap, the elder (1811–1884), son of Morris Burke Be ...
the younger (1885–1965) or William Burke Belknap, Jr. The elder William Burke Belknap started the company on the banks of the Ohio River in 1840. His father Morris Burke Belknap the elder had earlier developed iron foundries and other related businesses in Massachusetts which influenced his son's founding of the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company.
Morris Burke Belknap
Morris Burke Belknap (June 7, 1856 – April 13, 1910), also known as Colonel Morris Burke Belknap, was an American businessman from Louisville, Kentucky, and the Republican Party (United States), Republican nominee for Governor of Kentucky in 190 ...
(1856–1910), also known as Morris B. Belknap or Col. Morris Belknap, was a vice president of Belknap Hardware. and was married to Lily Buckner., the daughter of
Simon Bolivar Buckner
Simon Bolivar Buckner ( ; April 1, 1823 – January 8, 1914) was an American soldier, Confederate combatant, and politician. He fought in the United States Army in the Mexican–American War. He later fought in the Confederate States Army ...
.
Belknap Hardware's fame spread and the company was represented at the 8th Annual Convention of the Panhandle Hardware and Implement Association in Amarillo, Texas. The Belknaps figured prominently in the history of the
Pendennis Club
The Pendennis Club is a private social club located at 218 West Muhammad Ali Blvd. (formerly Walnut Street) in Louisville, Kentucky. It originated as a gentlemen's "city" club on the model of the clubs in London, Britain, of which White's Club fo ...
of Louisville, the first club house of which, in 1848, was a former Belknap family mansion. After 50 years, Belknap Hardware was acclaimed in the
Atlanta Constitution
''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the Atlanta metropolitan area, metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Con ...
as one of the South's great industries. The company was praised in newspaper advertising by
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company as an exemplary business user of the
long distance telephone
In telecommunications, a long-distance call (U.S.) or trunk call (also known as a toll call in the U.K. ) is a telephone call made to a location outside a defined local calling area. Long-distance calls are typically charged a higher billing rate ...
. By its 100th anniversary in 1940, Belknap Hardware had grown to a landmark complex of 37 buildings, covering 37 acres of floor space under one roof. The building had a network of underground passageways and covered bridges. The warehouse space alone at 129-133 N. Second Street (a building which no longer exists) was eight stories tall.
The company at height of its long success
The company became one of the nation's largest wholesale enterprises with nationally known quality brands, among which Blue Grass was the most readily recognizable. John Primble knives, developed by an employee of the company, became a Belknap brand with its own division, made in Louisville between 1947 and 1985 by the John Primble Belknap Hardware Co. The Crusader manufacturing brand of Belknap included contractors' shovels, hammers, hatchets, axes, drawing knives, carpenters' pincers, planes, screw drivers, hand drills, wrecking bars, bit braces, auger bits, chisels, pliers, wrenches, tin snips, and tin ceilings. Other popular Belknap manufactured products included rifles, guns, padlocks, lawn mowers, and bicycles. Belknap inventory in the vast warehouse spaces grew larger and larger, and the Belknap neon sign could be seen from miles away.
The company's demise
The company was founded by Belknaps and managed predominantly by members of the Belknap family and their chosen successors until its demise in 1986 when, after over 140 years, it faced bankruptcy and was sold. Terrence Gallaher, editor-in-chief of ''Hardware Age'' said, "In the late '70's, Belknap's Board of Directors came to include a number of outsiders, men who weren't also company officers . . . . The new board saw an opportunity to appoint someone from outside as president. Up to that time, Belknap promoted top officers from within, and virtually all the men in top management had begun their careers on the road, carrying a catalog."
The closing of Belknap has been called a tragedy of errors. As early as 1909, the hardware company management sued a newspaper which incorrectly announced that Belknap Hardware was bankrupt. The company was also known as W. B. Belknap from 1840 to 1860, W. B. Belknap & Co. from 1860 to 1880, W. B. Belknap and Co. Inc. from 1880 to 1907, and Belknap Hardware & Mfg. Co. from 1907 to 1986.
On July 23, 1968, the ''
Louisville Courier-Journal
The ''Courier Journal'',
also known as the
''Louisville Courier Journal''
(and informally ''The C-J'' or ''The Courier''), and called ''The Courier-Journal'' between November 8, 1868, and October 29, 2017,
is the highest circulation newspape ...
'' carried the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
,
Dow Jones Dow Jones is a combination of the names of business partners Charles Dow and Edward Jones.
Dow Jones & Company
Dow, Jones and Charles Bergstresser founded Dow Jones & Company in 1882. That company eventually became a subsidiary of News Corp, and ...
, and other special dispatches' news that Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company was changing its name to simply "Belknap, Inc." The company had not yet gone out of business, but the stockholders the day before approved the change of the name, reasoning that since no abbreviations of firm names were permitted under the new U.S. Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, the full name of the company would be hard to inscribe on small tools. The company's
proxy statement
A proxy statement is a statement required of a firm when soliciting shareholder votes. This statement is filed in advance of the annual meeting. The firm needs to file a proxy statement, otherwise known as a Form DEF 14A (Definitive Proxy Statemen ...
explained that Belknap had not "conducted any manufacturing operation for many years," and that it carried much merchandise that was not hardware. Although not a manufacturer at that time, Belknap was still distributing items made for it "by other manufacturers under at least nine Belknap trade names."
In 1923, the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Building was built at 101-23 East Main Street in Louisville's General Business District on the site of the second
Galt House
The Galt House Hotel is a 25-story, 1,300-room hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, established in 1972. It is named for a nearby historic hotel erected in 1835 and demolished in 1921. The Galt House is the city's only hotel on the Ohio River.
Origi ...
. It was designed by the architectural firm of
Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White
Graham, Anderson, Probst & White (GAP&W) was a Chicago architectural firm that was founded in 1912 as Graham, Burnham & Co. This firm was the successor to D. H. Burnham & Co. through Daniel Burnham's surviving partner, Ernest R. Graham, and Burnh ...
of Chicago and at the time it was "the largest single-unit hardware plant in the world. . . .". For a while the building was the location of the Presbyterian denomination's National Headquarters and is now known as the Waterside Building and is occupied by the
Humana Corporation.
Photographs of the actual demolition by explosion of a defunct Belknap building were used as promotional preview advertising for the 1993 film, ''
Demolition Man''.
The
Heyburn Building
The Heyburn Building is a 17-floor, 250-foot (76-m) building in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, United States. In the early 20th century, it was an integral part of the "magic corner" of Fourth Street and Broadway, which rivaled Main Street as Louis ...
, on the
National Historic Register
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
since 1979, until 1955 was the tallest building in Kentucky. It was completed in 1928 and named for William R. Heyburn, a former president of Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company. This
skyscraper's height was surpassed as the result of an addition to the top of the now defunct
Commonwealth Building, which was imploded in 1994.
A former home of members of the
William Richardson Belknap
William Richardson Belknap (March 28, 1849 – June 2, 1914), for 28 years was president of the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company''The Cincinnati Enquirer'', June 2, 1914, p. 2. based in Louisville, Kentucky, one of the largest hardware Am ...
(1849–1914) family,
Lincliff
Lincliff is a Georgian Revival house in Glenview near Louisville, Kentucky, United States, built in the early 1910s by William Richardson Belknap.
History
Lincliff was built in 1911-12 for William Richardson Belknap, president of Belknap Hardw ...
,
was owned by detective fiction writer
Sue Grafton
Sue Taylor Grafton (April 24, 1940 – December 28, 2017) was an American author of detective novels. She is best known as the author of the "alphabet series" (''"A" Is for Alibi'', etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fic ...
and her husband Stephen F. Humphrey and is on the
National Historic Register
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
.
References
External links
Belknap Hardware and Manf. Co. Bldg. (Louisville, Ky.) - UrbanUpJohn Primble & Belknap Hardware* {{cite book, title=Belknap welcomes another century, date=1940, publisher=Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Co., location=Louisville, Kentucky, pages=32
History of Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville
Defunct companies based in Louisville, Kentucky
American companies established in 1840
Manufacturing companies established in 1840
Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1986
1840 establishments in Kentucky
1986 disestablishments in Kentucky