Hi and welcome to our Show and Tell. We are showing off some of our fun items that we collected throughout the years. If you see something of interest and are in the USA please contact us. Then we can possibly list and reserve the item you’re interested in at our Etsy store for purchase. For pickup only items we can list and reserve the item at our Ebay store. We are not selling items through this website, it is for Show and Tell purposes only. Thank You!
The Zahner Mfg Co is an industrial manufacturer providing highly crafted architectural metalwork Products and a whole lot more. Plate looks brass or bronze and nonmagnetic.
The Zahner Mfg Co Builders Plate Tag Sign Plaque with address 12 West 10th ST Kansas City MO. Plate corners have slight bends. Surprisingly bold lettering on the antique plaque. Fun info at bottom on this great company from their own cool website.
Plaque measures 6″ wide, 3 1/2″ tall and 3/16″ thick, nice weight at little over 3/4 pound. Antique plate has its scratches, scuffs, dings/ bends shown in pictures, stains, nice Patina showing good age, far from perfect and still looks great!
Guessing made early 1900’s. Cool Old Vintage The Zahner Mfg Co Plate Plaque Tag!! Shipping prices for lower 48 states.
Please check pictures for description and condition…
Since 1897 and across four generations, the family-owned business of A. Zahner Company produced highly crafted architectural metalwork for artists and architects around the globe. Throughout the company’s history, employees at Zahner have developed advanced metal surfaces and systems for both functional and ornamental architectural forms.
FOUNDING OF THE COMPANY
The company was founded in 1897 by Andrew Zahner. The grandson of Swiss-German ancestry, his family emigrated to America in the late 1850s. They arrived in New Orleans and traveled north to Louisville, Kentucky and eventually purchased a small farmstead in southern Indiana. Andrew Zahner was born here in 1871. A few years later, his father Maximillian purchased a farm in Shawnee, Kansas and moved his family again to the Kansas City greater area.
As a young man, Andrew Zahner would begin his career in the late 1880s by traveling south to the industrial city of Joplin, Missouri. At the time, Joplin was a boom town, experiencing significant growth from the zinc and lead mines in the area. For many years during the late 19th century, Joplin was considered the zinc and lead capital of the world.
It was there that Andrew started his first company, Eagle Cornice Works. He began working on metal cornices on significant buildings in the booming towns of western Missouri and eastern Kansas. Metal was the ‘new’ material of choice for prestigious buildings of these small towns. Cornices were the decorative features clad in metal, usually tin coated steel, hot dipped galvanized steel or copper.
In 1897, he brought this expertise back up to Kansas City and it was here that he established the A. Zahner Sheet Metal Company. The firm produced and installed tin and copper roofing, decorative cornices, and metal skylights for various buildings around the Kansas City region. Over the years, the firm would transform in many ways, working with new metals, developing new technologies, and exploring the unknown.
Note: Andrew’s brother, William, also had a very successful metal company called Zahner Metal Sash and Door Company. Located in the Kansas City area, for a time it would become one of the largest manufacturers of kitchen hardware in America.
A HISTORY OF RESPECT AND DIGNITY
Andrew Zahner was instrumental in promoting the Sheet Metal Industry. His firm was a union employer from the beginning and understood the importance of a trained workforce. Thousands of union employees, as well as their sons and daughters, have worked for the company over the past century. Andrew Zahner was a founding member of the Sheet Metal Association and added his knowledge of metal work to the development of instruction on the use of metals in architecture.
