Posted 3 years ago
KellyK
(1 item)
Picked this up in St. Louis and can’t really find anything online about it. It’s missing legs but everything else seems ok. A little chip on the bottom removable door. All I could find was Enterprise Foundry is from Canada. But why would it have Belleville Illinois and St Clair county on it. And SL under the hot plate (assuming St Louis) but could be wrong. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Hi, KellyK. :-)
Dunno, but I found this on page 178 of "A HISTORY OF BELLEVILLE" by
BY ALVIN LOUIS NEBELSICK, B.S.; A.M. (it looks like the vintage of the publication is 1930s):
*snip*
The Enterprise Foundry located on "B" street and the L. and N. tracks was established in 1896 and it was one of the most important concerns of the city.
*snip*
http://livinghistoryofillinois.com/pdf_files/History%20of%20Belleville,%20Illinois.pdf
This looks like the general area:
https://goo.gl/maps/2weKXKh3Xw25gDDz9
You might want to contact the Belleville Labor & Industry Museum:
http://www.laborandindustrymuseum.org/
I live in the tropics, but have always liked old iron stove/heaters. Should I seek help?
Hi again, KellyK. :-)
I was helping somebody else with a vintage stove today (an entirely different make and model from yours), and tripped on another handy publication:
https://books.google.com/books?id=sNVY-bYB1hUC
It's a bit confusing, because the cover image Google Books shows is for something called "Ebony Rising: Short Fiction of the Greater Harlem Renaissance Era by Craig Gable," but if you click on that image, the book you'll be looking at is:
Images of America
Belleville
1814-1914
By
Robert C. Fietsam Jr., Judy Bellville, and Jack Le Chien
Photo Editor Robert L. Arndt
Copyright 02004 by Robert C. Fietsam Jr., Judy Belleville, and Jack Le Chien ISBN 0-7385-3333-5
Published by Arcadia Publishing Charleston SC, Chicago IL, Portsmouth NH, San Francisco CA
Printed in Great Britain
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004110909
Anyway, I searched it for Enterprise (and Excelsior, which took over Enterprise), and got a number of hits, some of which I converted from images to text:
*snip*
Page 66
Enterprise Foundry, founded in 1894 to manufacture wood and coal burning stoves, was floundering in 1940. J. Edward Yoch, president of International Coal & Mining Co. and inheritor of the Yoch Mines, rescued Enterprise. In 1961, the one-acre foundry at 1123 East "B" Street was the largest in Belleville. Yoch moved the foundry into core making and thin-shelled gray iron castings—components of gas ranges. In 1961, typical pay for an experienced moulder was $40 per day and they worked with 800 lbs of molten iron at a time. Excelsior bought out Enterprise in 1967.
*snip*
Page 62
All smokestack industries in Belleville had a railroad siding. Moving manufactured goods and raw materials was paramount. In 1885, Belleville Stove manufactured 20,000 gasoline stoves for the St. Louis market and 27,500 cast iron parlor and cook stoves annually. The hand-made stoves were crated and shipped across the country by rail and have been found in all parts of America—former President Nixon's boyhood home at Yorba Linda, California; a bed and breakfast at Carmel by the Sea; in Alaska; Colorado; Wyoming; Washington; New York; Florida; etc. Belleville Stove Works did not recover from a devastating fire in 1927 and later the Great Depression. The famous St. Clair Stove Line was picked up by Enterprise Foundry of Belleville. Pictured is Belleville Stove at 700 South Third Street, now the offices of and warehouse of Belleville Supply Co.
*snip*
Page 60
Robert Rogers, a foundry man from Ohio with an Irish ancestry, emigrated to Belleville. Two of his sons, Eddy P. and George B., apprenticed at J&R Rogers Iron & Brass Foundry and Rogers Foundry in Belleville. In 1891, the brothers leased City Foundry & Machine Works at South Third and Harrison. By 1896, they had moved their foundry to the new industrial area developing north of the city, near East "B" Street and Iowa, and renamed their foundry Excelsior. Initially, they manufactured sugar kettles, hollow ware, and corn and feed mills, then boiler fronts and structural works. A small mill "that any up-to-date farmer would need" weighed 6S0 lk. Excelsior Foundry remained in the Rogers family, supplying gray iron castings for industry until it closed in 2003. Pictured is Eddy Rogers.
*snip*
FYI, I contacted Google Books about that incorrect pairing of the book cover title ("Ebony Rising: Short Fiction of the Greater Harlem Renaissance Era) and the actual contents (Images of America: Belleville 1814-1914), and got a reply. They'll fix it, but it could take a month.