Greenlee
Electrical
Tools
By the turn of the century, Greenlee electrical tools had outgrown a
succession of buildings in Chicago, including two foundries for casting their
own parts. After their own Great Fire left the principal manufactory "an
ice-covered ruin" on a sub-zero night in 1897, the brothers began searching for
a piece of land with railroad accessibility large enough for about 20,000 square
feet of new buildings and foundry, and with acreage for future expansion. In
1903, they chose a large piece of land in Rockford, Illinois, (already a
furniture manufacturing center, it was home to many of Greenlee's customers),
where the Illinois Central Railroad could (and did) build rail lines right into
the new plant in 1904.
Shortly before World War 1, Greenlee electrical tools made their first tools
for metal working machinery, and soon followed with the company's first metal
working production machines; both automobile and railcar manufacturers--heavily
reliant on Greenlee machinery--had begun replacing wood vehicle frames with
metal. In 1927, a separate firm, Greenlee Tool Company, was established to carry
on the small tools business while the machine tools remained with Greenlee
Brothers & Company. Within a year, Greenlee Tool introduced a line of metal hole
"knockout" punches, followed in 1930 by the "hydraulic-powered pipe & conduit
bender", among the first products developed especially for electrical
contractors. The long line of benders which developed from this beginning--and a
host of other products developed especially for this trade--continue as an
important part of Greenlee business to this day.
