Collection Guide
This document describes a Manuscript Collection held by the
Special Collections DepartmentUniversity of Iowa Libraries
e-mail: lib-spec@uiowa.edu
Administrative Information
Access and
Restrictions:
Agency Note
The Kimball Elevator Company was started in Anamosa, Iowa, in 1892. A grocer who wanted an easy way to get potatoes from his basement to his shop floor could find no one to make him an elevator, so he went to the local machine shop, owned by the father of William H. and Charles E. Kimball. They agreed to build this freight elevator, and the Kimball Brothers' Elevator Company was born.
In 1892, they moved their main operation to Council Bluffs, though a branch still operated in Anamosa. They had considered other locations, such as Cleveland, Ohio, but were lured to Council Bluffs by a petition, signed by seventy-nine Council Bluffs businessmen, pledging the brothers about $1500 if they would open their plant in Council Bluffs. The excellent rail service in Council Bluffs may also have contributed to their decision to locate their new factory there. The company was incorporated under Iowa law in 1901.
Kimball Brothers had their own foundry, and the elevators were made entirely at the Council Bluffs factory. By 1928, they were turning out one elevator every day, and by 1953, they had manufactured 14,000 elevators. In 1947, they had branch offices in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Gary, Indiana, Kansas City, Missouri, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. By 1955 they had offices in California, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Louisiana, and Ohio. Kimball Brothers were innovators in the elevator business. In 1928, they manufactured a high-speed push-button elevator capable of traveling 300 feet per minute. Their taper drum safety catch became a standard in the industry.
Every elevator was custom built. Kimball elevators went from 200 feet underground to 300 feet in the air. Elevators built by Kimball ranged from a 40,000 pound freight elevator at the J. I Case plant in Racine, Wisconsin, to the only elevator that operated at a 25 degree angle at the Pathfinder Dam near Casper, Wyoming, to chair lifts for the handicapped, to a gold plated elevator in a Hollywood home, to an elevator for taking patient records from a storage vault to the hospital office. Actress Norma Shearer used a Kimball elevator to raise a large theater screen from a concealed floor-level position in the ballroom of her home. An elevator for inspecting mines was installed at Fort Randall Dam in Pickston, South Dakota. This elevator, measuring seventeen feet long, eight feet wide, and nine feet high, was completely portable and could be moved from one mine shaft to another by a gantry crane which picked up the penthouse car and slipped it on and off tracks in each shaft.
In 1953, the O'Keefe Elevator Company of Omaha, Nebraska purchased an interest in the Kimball Brothers' Elevator Company. Dennis O'Keefe had been an elevator installer for Kimball Brothers in 1912 before going into business for himself. The company still exists today as the O'Keefe Elevator Company of Omaha.
Scope and
Contents
The Kimball Elevator Company collection dates from 1871 to 1934 and is comprised of business letters and forms. These are incoming orders and forms -- very little outgoing mail from the company is represented in the collection. These are arranged chronologically.
The collection contains some materials whose relationship to the Kimball business is not readily apparent, though for reasons of provenance they have been left with the collection. Some of these materials do have a common thread, and they have been removed from the main body of the collection. Besides a small file of miscellaneous items, there are receipts for J. C. Young of Taylorville, California; C. E. Young, also of Taylorville, California; H. W. Stephens of Windy, West Virginia; and I.C.C. Whitmore of Eureka, Nevada. These three appear to have been dry goods merchants and these records are apparently orders to their suppliers. Also represented are records of two banks, both in Carson City, Nevada -- the Bullion and Exchange Bank and the State Bank and Trust.
The local Iowa connection as well as the company's involvement with interests across the country make this collection interesting to business historians. Many small companies in Iowa ordered freight elevators from Kimball, and a microcosm of the sorts of businesses operating in Iowa around the turn of the nineteenth century can be gained from looking at incoming orders. In addition, the country's westward development can be deduced by the orders placed from western states, which represent the preponderance of orders after Iowa. Washington and Oregon are heavily represented in this collection. As well, there are a few orders from Canada and Mexico.
This collection is also of interest from a graphic design standpoint, showing turn-of-the-century letterhead and stationery designs of the businesses ordering elevators from Kimball, as well as blueprints from that era.
JRoethler
11/01
Acquisition and Processing Information
These papers
were purchased by the
University of Iowa Libraries in
2001.
Guide posted
to Internet:
Box 1
1889. Correspondents: B. F. Martin, Rochester, New York
1890. Correspondents
1891. Correspondents
1892. Includes a photograph of iron stairs and railings. Correspondents
1893. Correspondents
1894. Correspondents
1895. Correspondents
1896. Correspondents
1897 Correspondents
1898 (Includes a page of their catalog showing elevator #2). Correspondents
1899. Correspondents
1900 (Includes a page of their catalog showing improved platform for elevator #2). Correspondents
1901. Correspondents
1902. Correspondents
1903. Correspondents
1904. Correspondents
1905. Correspondents
1906. Correspondents
1907. Correspondents
1908. Correspondents
1909. Correspondents
1910 (2 folders. First folder contains a questionnaire about specifications for elevators. Second folder includes a page of their catalog showing Carriage Elevator #7 and Basement or Sidewalk Elevator #13.) Correspondents
1911 (2 folders). Correspondents
1912 (2 folders) Correspondents
Box 2
1912 (Second folder c ontains form #2 "Separate Report and Duplicate for each Elevator.") Correspondents
1913 (2 folders) Correspondents
1914 (2 folders) Correspondents
1915 (2 folders. Second folder contains a page from their catalog, showing elevator #2, with one drawing and one photograph, and one side view of #2. Also contains a drawing of steel wheel and chains.) Correspondents
1916. Correspondents
Box 3
1917. Correspondents
1918. Correspondents
1931. Correspondents
Undated. Folder #1 and 2. (Contains a catalog page showing Carriage Elevator No.6 and Doubled Back Elevator No.7 and instructions for building the Columbia 4 Ton Scale). Correspondents
Newspaper clippings about Kimball/O'keefe Elevator Company. Photocopies
Bullion and Exchange Bank, Carson City, Nevada
Miscellaneous
State Bank and Trust, Carson City, Nevada
Stephens, H.W.
Whitmore, I.C.C.
Young, C.E.
Young, J. E.
