Looking for info on the Wait Furniture Company in portsmith OH?

Answer 1

The Wait Furniture Company was founded by John Heaton Wait in 1836 in the city of Portsmouth, Ohio. For the first fifteen years, he completed the work by hand. In 1842, it had become an industry. After the Civil War, his son, Gilbert D. Wait, Sr. joined the company. It then became known as J.H. Wait & Son. When John Heaton Wait retired from the firm it became known as the Wait Cabinet Works. It ran along for ten years under this name and then the firm was changed to the Wait Furniture Company in 1895, when the Wait Cabinet Works was sold to John and Ben Dillon. In 1907, Gilbert Wait and Andrew J. Fuller organized the Wait-Fuller Cabinet Company. This company remained in existence until 1911 when it was dissolved and its buildings taken over by Breece Veneer Company. They manufactured almost exclusively a veneer table top. In 1927, according to a newspaper article, "The Wait Furniture Company is a specialist, being engaged in making bedroom suites of high grade. It produces approximately 2,000 of these suites each year and they find a ready market in the eastern and central states. Up to date stores in the larger cities are the best customers. Large quantities of walnut, red gum and other high grade woods are used in the manufacture of furniture by this factory. Branches and sales offices are maintained in Grand Rapids, Michigan and New York City. The Portsmouth transportation facilities make possible prompt and direct shipments to markets throughout the eastern and central states. Catering to the class of trade that it does the Wait Company has expert designers constantly employed to work out original designs and keep well to the forefront of new ideas in the furniture world. The Wait Furniture Company is a strictly Portsmouth concern that has developed from small to large proportions and has won increasing recognition for itself in the national market. By December 1928, the Wait Furniture Company was closed.