Says this St. Louis history page:
Cupples Company was begun in 1851 by 19-year old Samuel Cupples, who sold wooden buckets, churns and similar items that were manufactured in Ohio . . . The company was first incorporated in 1882 as Samuel Cupples Woodenware Company. It became a distribution giant that dominated its field. Thousands of items from over 200 major suppliers were distributed to wholesalers of household products internationally.
In 1890, Robert Brookings´ concept of a warehousing complex covering eight square blocks above the Terminal Railroad tracks was completed.
Eight blocks! But Household products wasn't all they did. Facades Confidential, a Spanish architecture blog, tells you more:
Do you know the relationship between these four behemoths of the 20th century architecture: the John Hancock Center in Chicago, the Twin Towers in NYC, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank headquarters in Honk Kong? The relationship is their skin. The curtain walls and external cladding elements of these four buidings were designed and fabricated in the same place: a factory in the plains near Saint Louis, Missouri.
That place had a name that was equivalent to glazed facades during the great decades of the sixties and seventies: Cupples Products Inc. To whom does that name recall anything? Well, ask Norman Foster or I.M. Pei (or Gordon Bunshaft from SOM or even Mies himself if they were alive). Of course, they would answer: Cupples was my curtain wall contractor of choice back then.
The company seemed to peter out, but the brand's been revived - with a new website for the company's third century.
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