Finding aid for the Cleveland Crane & Engineering Company Records and Photographs

History of the Cleveland Crane & Engineering Company

The Cleveland Crane & Engineering Company was a manufacturer of overhead material handling cranes located in Cleveland, Ohio. The company was organized in 1899 by Edward I. Leighton (1850-1916), George A. Armington (1861-?), Albert L. Assmus (approx. 1876-1937), and Charles E. Thomas (1861-1918) as the Cleveland Crane & Car Company. Leighton became the company's first president and Armington was the general manager. The company's vice president was H. Fuller, who served as vice president of Cleveland Punch & Shear Works Co., while Armington had been in that company's crane department. In 1910, the company officially changed its name to Cleveland Crane & Engineering Co. Its primary factory and headquarters was located at 1271 E. 289 Street, in Wickliffe, Ohio.

In its early years, the company produced cranes and hoists for steel companies, such as Pittsburgh Steel Foundry, Bethlehem Steel, and Jones & Laughlin Steel Company. During, and immediately following World War I, the company was contracted to manufacture cranes to handle armor plating and large naval cannon at the United States Naval Ordnance works in Charleston, West Virginia. In 1919, the company won a contract to produce an aircraft handling crane for the Navy's first aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Langley. Between the world wars, the company supplied cranes and related equipment to companies in various industries, including concrete, coal and steel production, automobile manufacturing and servicing, and electric utilities.

In 1948, the company was acquired by McNeil Machine & Engineering Company of Akron, Ohio. And then in 1984, McNeil sold the Tramrail division to Vulcan Incorporated of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. The heavy crane product line was sold to Crane Manufacturing & Service Corporation, Cudahy, Wisconsin. The two divisions eventually became part of Konecranes, which is the world's largest manufacturer of process cranes, and was headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, as of 2017.

Scope and Content

The Cleveland Crane & Engineering Company Records and Photographs, 1906-1956 and undated, consist of blueprints, drawings, and plans, company newsletters, correspondence, marketing literature and sales notes, photographs (approximately 125), project proposals, and specifications.

This collection will be useful to researchers of business and industry in Cleveland, Ohio, during the first half of the twentieth century. It will be of particular note to those interested in the Cleveland Crane & Engineering Company, and other companies involved in the manufacture of heavy industry equipment and material handling cranes, and their applications. Catalogs, brochures, and advertising will be interesting to those researching marketing techniques and presentations. Sales notes, and cost and engineering calculations will be be of interest, not only to students of sales methods, but particularly to students of equipment manufacturing sales. Reports detailing sales and commissions for the company's representatives will be valuable to finance, economic, and marketing students looking at the operations of large manufacturing companies. Engineering students will find a large collection of blueprints devoted to the design of various types of overhead cranes, motors, trolleys, and related equipment representative of the types produced and applied to a range of industrial applications, including steel production and coal handling. In addition to company records, the large photograph collection of over 125 images illustrate many of the types of cranes produced by Cleveland Crane & Engineering Company during the 1910s through the mid-1920s. These images will be of interest to both engineering and industrial design students looking into facility layouts and material handing, as well as researchers of early twentieth century photography.

Statement of Arrangement

Restrictions on Access

None.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

Subjects:

Organizations/Corporations:

Preferred Citation

[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 5395 Cleveland Crane & Engineering Company Records and Photographs, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio

Acquisition Information

Gift of Candy Lee Korn in 2001.

Processing Information

Processed by Robert Suriano in 2017.

Detailed Description of The Collection