City’s link to auto parts dates back nearly a century

In recent years the city of Belle­vue has been at the fore­front of auto­mo­bile tech­nol­ogy with sev­eral local com­pa­nies con­tribut­ing to the indus­try — Tower Auto­mo­tive for their vehi­cle frames; A. Schul­man for their auto­mo­tive plas­tic com­pounds; Auto­plas and Pre­ci­sion Auto­mo­tive for their tail light assem­blies and other vehi­cle parts; and even MagReTech for their recy­cling of auto parts.

The cur­rent involve­ment in the auto indus­try is not new to the com­mu­nity. Nearly 100 years ago, the Belle­vue Man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pany was in the fore­front of man­u­fac­tur­ing auto­mo­bile accessories.

It all began in April 1907, when Bellevue’s sec­ond largest man­u­fac­tur­ing con­cern began oper­a­tion as the Con­way Steel Range Co. founded by John Con­way. At that time the auto­mo­bile was pop­u­larly known as the “horse­less car­riage.” It was cranked from the side to start the engine, usu­ally had a large buggy whip socket and col­lected a crowd wher­ever one was parked. At that time no one ever thought a stove fac­tory would even remotely have any­thing to do with the new fan­gled con­trap­tion that caused run­aways and the pop­u­lar slang expres­sion, “git a horse.”

The com­pany expe­ri­enced finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties dur­ing its first four years and was taken over by local cap­i­tal­ists. They hired John F. Mar­tin, then serv­ing as the Y.M.C.A. sec­re­tary. Mar­tin, along with Frank Knapp, pur­chased the con­trol­ling inter­est and the Con­way Steel Range became the Belle­vue Man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pany in 1913.

Mar­tin attended an auto­mo­bile show in Chicago in 1915. The result of Martin’s trip to that city led the com­pany into man­u­fac­tur­ing auto­mo­bile acces­sories as their main sta­ple. They had con­tracts with Lincoln-Zephyr, Stude­baker, Willys-Overland, Chrysler, Packard, Hud­son, Reo Gen­eral Motors, and many other com­pa­nies. In the mid-1930s, they began pro­duc­tion of oil fil­ters, a prod­uct that is still in pro­duc­tion by the company.

It may be no sur­prise that this local company’s auto parts were being man­u­fac­tured for designs cre­ated by a favorite son, Amos Earle Northup.

Northup was born in Belle­vue Feb­ru­ary 1889 to Hiram R. and Louise Ban­nis­ter Northup.

After grad­u­at­ing from Belle­vue High School with the Class of 1908, Northup attended Cleve­land Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute. He went to work as a fur­ni­ture and inte­rior designer, which really was a prac­tice not far removed from cre­at­ing lux­ury automobiles.

In 1918, he joined Pierce Arrow as the company’s truck designer. His tal­ents were observed and he was pro­moted to design­ing col­ors and inte­rior trim for auto­mo­biles. His newly found suc­cess led him to open a pri­vate stu­dio in Buf­falo, N.Y., but still did design work for Pierce Arrow.

He also did design work for Leon Rubay and Wills Sainte Claire. Rubay was a promi­nent auto body man­u­fac­turer who had a pro­found effect on the white vehi­cles cre­at­ing supe­rior styling for the white pas­sen­ger cars. Wills was an auto brand by C.H. Wills Co. Wills was a per­fec­tion­ist and focused on very high qual­ity cars.

Northup’s flair in his design work began to be under the watch­ful eye of man­u­fac­tur­ers and auto design­ers. In 1927, he was hired as chief designer by the Mur­ray Corp. of Amer­ica, Detroit’s sec­ond largest inde­pen­dent auto body man­u­fac­turer and had a hand in design­ing the 1928 Hupmobile.

In 1928, he joined Willys-Overland in Toledo. He designed the 1930 Willys “Plaid­side Road­ster” and restyled the Willys low-priced 1930 Whip­pet line.

In 1929, he returned to Mur­ray where he designed the 1930 Hud­son, sev­eral Hup­mo­biles, 1933 Willys, and the entire Willys-Overland line through 1938.

(To be continued)

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Belle­vue His­to­rian Bill Oddo writes a weekly col­umn for The Belle­vue Gazette.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Oct 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.