History |
The following is based on my text in A Field Guide to American Residential Doors, page 208, with some additional information that came to hand after publication:
The J.R. Quigley Company was founded in Gloucester City, New Jersey, in the early twentieth century. John R. Quigley had established a coal business in 1888 and later expanded into millwork, with his millwork company "J.R. Quigley Company" incorporated in 1909. John Quigley retired from the company in 1919 (Camdem Courier-Post, 7/7/1929) and died in 1928 (Camden Courier-Post, 5/14/1928). The year following his death, the company rebuilt its company office at 811 Market Street. At the time the company passed out of the Quigley family, it had 21 employees; it gradually grew in size and had 78 employees by 1929 (Camden Courier-Post, 7/7/1929).
In 1937, Quigley issued its 18th catalog, possibly indicating that the first catalog was published in 1920. Its 49th catalog appeared in 1949. The early Quigley catalogs were slightly larger than a pocket catalog, but in the 1940s the company enlarged its catalogs to letter-sized pages.
Quigley's catalogs of 1936 (left) and 1954 (right).
By that time, Quigley had opened four Pennsylvania warehouses: Philadelphia, Cressona, Lancaster, and Harrisburg. In 1956, some Quigley executives bolted and started a new company entitled "Middle Atlantic Millwork," taking Quigley's best customers (Camden Courier-Post, 10/5/1956). Two years later, the Robbins Door & Sash Co. of Allentown, Pennsylvania purchased the remnants of Quigley (Allentown Morning Call, 7/23/1956). Robbins, which had been established in 1876, went out of business in 1982 (Allentown Morning Call, 7/28/1982).
Millwork catalogs at archive.org:
1937,
1949
|