Highlights Archives
Images of a Milwaukee Manufacturing Giant
Once known almost exclusively as a manufacturing and brewing powerhouse, Milwaukee owes at least part of its reputation to the Falk Corporation. Falk had its hand in both industries, first in brewing and then in manufacturing. But a devastating fire, not to mention the difficulty of finding a niche in a city filled with small breweries, led to Falk's transformation into a manufacturer of industrial gears. Milwaukee's role as a world leader in industrial manufacturing is reflected in these images of the Falk Corporation, this month's featured gallery from Wisconsin Historical Images, the Society's online image database.
Franz Falk and Frederick Goes started the Bavaria Brewery on a narrow strip of land in the Menomonee Valley (the site of the present-day Falk plant) in 1856. A fire in 1892 destroyed much of the brewery and Falk's youngest son, Herman, took the opportunity to branch out into manufacturing. He sold the beer business to Frederick Pabst.
Herman began with wagon couplings and then moved on to electric street railway supplies. The work also included a variety of foundry work and, beginning in 1910, gears. Gear-driven machines changed the face of manufacturing in the early 20th century and became the foundation of Falk's business. Their pioneering reversing-gear was used to turn propellers on hundreds of ships during World War II, one of the many ways Milwaukee industry assisted in the war effort.
The Falk Corporation has continued to be an innovative leader in the manufacture of gears and gear trains for a wide variety of industries for more than 100 years. Falk found this success despite numerous other setbacks, including more devastating fires, floods and, in 2006, an explosion that killed three employees and injured 46 others. The company is today owned by Rexnord of Milwaukee.
There are only a handful of early images of operations prior to World War I, including pictures of sand casting, foundry work, streetcars, and group portraits of workers. The bulk of the images, ranging from the 1950s through the 1980s, were taken by Photo Concepts of Milwaukee.
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:: Posted February 20, 2008
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