Rollston Company was an American

coachbuilder A coachbuilder or body-maker is someone who manufactures bodies for passenger-carrying vehicles.Construction has always been a skilled trade requiring a relatively lightweight product with sufficient strength. The manufacture of necessarily ...

producing luxury automobile bodies during the 1920s and 1930s readily acknowledged to be of the very highest quality.Rollston at coachbuilt.com
/ref> After bankruptcy in 1938 some of the same owners began a very similar business under the name Rollson.

History

Harry Lonschein was 16 when he became employed by

Brewster & Co Brewster & Company was an American custom carriage-maker and automobile coachbuilder founded by James Brewster in 1810 and active for almost 130 years. Brewster began in New Haven, Connecticut and quickly established a reputation for building ...

. He would found Rollston Company together with his partner Sam Blotkin in 1921. The business began as a repair shop at 244 West 49th Street in Manhattan.''Automobile Quarterly'', 2005 Their first factory was in a building on West 47th Street later expanding to all its four floors, 48,000 square feet. Rollston built bodies for chassis supplied by

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and Stutz. Rollston closed in April 1938.

Rollson Inc

Rollson Inc was formed in September 1938 by four partners; Lonschein, Holm, Sever, and Creteur and continued to make bodies mainly for Packard chassis at 311 West 66th Street and West End Avenue. During

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, Rollson Inc. switched to small components for ships and fuselage sections and nose-cones for aircraft. A contract for

Liberty ship Liberty ships were a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Though British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost construction. Mass ...

cowl ventilators, toilet fixtures, life boat food tanks, storage bins, galley equipment, ship's doors, Pullman beds, berths and furniture. After the war, Rollson did not produce car bodies but fitted out luxury ships, yachts and private aircraft in Plainview, Long Island, New York. In 2022 Rollson Inc. is listed as a marine hardware manufacturer operated by Rudolph Creteur.

References

{{Reflist Coachbuilders of the United States Vintage vehicles 1920s cars 1930s cars Pre-war vehicles

History

Rollson Inc

See also

References