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General Fibre Company

Companies disestablished in 1985Defunct manufacturing companies based in MissouriDefunct privately held companies of the United StatesInternational Hat CompanyManufacturing companies based in St. Louis
Manufacturing companies established in 1941Privately held companies based in Missouri
Pressed Fiber Drake Duck Decoy General Fibre Company
Pressed Fiber Drake Duck Decoy General Fibre Company

General Fibre Company, also known as the General Moulding Company, was an American manufacturer of a wide variety of fiber and plastic molded products. The company was known for its popular Ariduk brand of duck and goose decoys. During World War II, in partnership with the International Hat Company, General Fibre was converted into a war factory for the production of military sun helmets. Conjointly, the companies were among the largest manufacturers and suppliers of American military pressed fiber sun helmets during World War II. In the post-war period, the company made an early entry into the emerging plastic injection molding industry, making the transition in material production from fiber to plastic goods. During the 1960s, the company designed and patented advances in methods of producing pulp articles in the plastics industry. Concurrently, General Fibre became a supplier to Ford Motor Company, in the manufacture of plastic interiors. The General Fibre Company closed in 1985.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article General Fibre Company (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

General Fibre Company
Saint Charles Street, St. Louis

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

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N 38.6325 ° E -90.2046 °
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Saint Charles Street
63101 St. Louis
Missouri, United States
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Pressed Fiber Drake Duck Decoy General Fibre Company
Pressed Fiber Drake Duck Decoy General Fibre Company
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Washington Avenue Historic District (St. Louis, Missouri)
Washington Avenue Historic District (St. Louis, Missouri)

The Washington Avenue Historic District is located in Downtown West, St. Louis, Missouri along Washington Avenue, and bounded by Delmar Boulevard to the north, Locust Street to the south, 8th Street on the east, and 18th Street on the west. The buildings date from the late 19th century to the early 1920s. They exhibit a variety of popular architectural styles of those years, but most are revival styles or in the commercial style that would later come to be known as the Chicago School of architecture. Most are large multi-story buildings of brick and stone construction, built as warehouses for the St. Louis garment district. Many have terra cotta accents on their facades. After World War II, the decline in domestic garment production and the preference for single-story industrial space led to many of the buildings being vacant or underused due to functional obsolescence. The district includes: Ely and Walker Dry Goods Company Building (1906–07), designed by Eames & Young, now a residential loft building. Lesser-Goldman/Ferguson-McKinney Building (1901) at the northwest corner of Washington and W. 12th, also designed by Eames & Young. It is "A half-block in size and enriched with classical, round arches with voussoirs and keystones, quoins, and a copiously enriched cornice, the building was in keeping with the standards of architectural design of "the great commercial warehouses which are making Washington Avenue a monumental street." The building has piers defining 13 bays on its Washington Avenue facade and nine bays on its Tucker Boulevard facade. It has distinctive quoins. It has several large, round-arched openings with voussoirs. The main entrance, at center of the Washington Ave. facade, is surrounded with terra cotta work and set with a large scrolled keystone. Above, windows are in sets of twos or threes separated by brick mullions or pilaster-like piers. At the seventh story, "the piers curve to form round arches with keystones. Spandrels between the stories are ornamented with scrolled corbels."

Ely Walker Lofts
Ely Walker Lofts

Ely Walker Lofts (originally known as the Ely and Walker Dry Goods Company Building) is a building located at 1520 Washington Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1857, David Davis Walker, a member of the Bush family, arrived in St. Louis from Illinois. (Walker would become the great-grandfather of future president George H. W. Bush and first cousin of Supreme Court Justice and Independent U.S. Senator from Illinois David Davis, a pivotal figure in the disputed presidential election of 1876.) In 1880, he founded and Frank Ely founded Ely, Walker & Company, which became a leading dry goods wholesaler west of the Mississippi River and was acquired by Burlington Industries after World War II. Presently, the company needed a warehouse for warehouse for shoes, Catholic school uniforms, and gun holsters. It commissioned Eames & Young, a St. Louis architecture firm active between 1885 and 1927 that designed several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. William Eames, one of its founders and the uncle of architect Charles Eames, was president of the American Institute of Architects in from 1904 until 1905.Built in 1906 and 1907, the building was designed to be fireproof, with steel-frame and hollow tile floors, and with brick and terra cotta sheathing. Its main facades are north on Washington Avenue, with 15 bays, and south on St. Charles Street. Its east and west facades are also exposed and are similar to the Washington Avenue facade. It has a two-story base level "with vermiculated terra cotta 'quoins' which alternate with terra cotta quoins of smooth finish. At the upper stories, the piers are clad in brick with terra cotta accents. The terra cotta ornament includes a variety of Classical Revival motifs--broken pediments above the 4th-floor windows, garlands at the 7th story and foliated ornament at the cornice. Dark gray terracotta ornaments the spandrels at several stories. Especially noteworthy is the monumental entrance featuring ornamental terra cotta in a foliated cable design surmounted by an elaborate cartouche. There is a small, three-bay, one story section at the east end of the building clad in similar materials." About the space provided by this building, Ely and Walker was described, a few years later, as having the "'largest merchandise floors in America'".It is a contributing building in the Washington Avenue Historic District, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The district comprises 55 commercial buildings constructed between 1899 and 1931 with over 75 percent of these buildings designed by prominent architects. The seven-story Ely Walker building is the second-largest of these 55 buildings and is known for its terracotta ornamentation. The building is now used for residential apartments. Many other Washington Avenue landmarks have also been converted to residential housing.Other Ely Walker buildings include the Ely and Walker Shirt Factory No. 5 in Kennett, Missouri, which added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, and buildings which were located in the Missouri cities of Illmo, Salem, Vandalia, and Warrenton; and in Paragould, Arkansas.