Label
The Clerk Reports
Title
Declaring the intent to designate the building located at 4500 N. Detroit Avenue, Toledo, Ohio a historic landmark; and declaring an emergency.
Summary
SUMMARY & BACKGROUND:
The Dura Company, originally known as The Dura Mechanical Hardware Company, was founded as a subsidiary of Milburn Wagon Works in Toledo, Ohio, around 1910-1913. As Milburn expanded into the new automotive age, Dura focused on specialized mechanical hardware for vehicles, especially window regulators that allowed drivers to raise and lower car windows with ease.
By 1914, Dura had patented a window-lift mechanism that was featured in Milburn's electric automobiles and soon adopted by leading manufacturers such as Ford, Dodge, Willys-Overland, Packard, Studebaker, Nash, Hudson, Jordan, Moon, and Hupmobile.
Under Horace Suydam, Vice President from 1911, Dura grew into a supplier known for reliability and innovation. The 1919 Automobile Trade Journal described Dura's "window regulator" as a key accessory of the modern automobile. By 1923, the firm had been granted at least ten patents related to window regulators, locks, and lift mechanisms, early examples of what would become a portfolio of more than 300 patents between the 1920s and 1960s, registered not only in the United States but also in Canada, Great Britain, France, and Germany.
By the mid-1920s, Dura operated four Toledo manufacturing facilities. In 1928, the company consolidated operations into a new 137,256-square-foot facility at 4500 North Detroit Avenue, employing over 1,200 workers making window lifters and metal hardware. The site, covering 18 acres, was later listed as 262,302 square feet and would remain Dura's main plant for over fifty years.
A Toledo Blade report from June 4, 1927, noted Dura's rapid industrial growth as part of the city's expanding manufacturing base, which then included over 700 factories and more than 120,000 workers.
In the mid-1920s, Dura diversified its product ...
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