A spokesman for Requarth said the company’s East Monument Avenue location will remain open and the business name at that location will remain unchanged.
Requarth is famed locally for, among other reasons, having sold wood to the Wright brothers for their early airplanes.
Here is more about the company’s five-generation, 165-year history.
Frederick August Requarth
F.A. Requarth was born in Germany, Nov. 9, 1835.
He came to America with his father in 1848 and settled on a farm near Phillipsburg.
In 1860, he bought a small woodturning shop on Fourth Street at Wayne Avenue with a partner named Henry W. Meyer. The shop was mostly a stair-building and woodturning business.
Requarth changed partners and locations several times until incorporating the F.A. Requarth Co. in 1890. It moved to its present Monument Street location in 1895. The mill and warehouse followed in 1926.
Requarth died in 1910 at 74. His son, Henry W., succeeded him. When Henry died in 1933, at 68, his son Earl took over. Earl’s son Harold became president when Earl died in 1974. Later, Harold Requarth became CEO.
Wright brothers connection
After a strong gust of wind overturned the first Wright Flyer, the Wright brothers needed heavier material, so they turned to Requarth to get heavier supplies. They used the spruce they bought to build the second and third Wright Flyers.
The 1904 Wright Flyer was the one in which the famous brothers perfected their invention at Huffman Prairie, and the 1905 Flyer is considered the world’s first practical airplane.
Eventually the third Wright Flyer was modified to the specifications of the U.S. Army using lumber from Requarth, and it became the first plane to be purchased by the War Department.
During the years of 1904-1909, the Wright brothers bought approximately 2,500 feet of lumber from Requarth, for nearly $200.
Requarth Lumber also sold 1,000 board-feet of spruce to Orville Wright, which was milled in Dayton, then shipped to his brother Wilbur for their plane’s 1908 demonstration flights in LeMans, France, that enthralled Europe.
In 2007, a replica Wright B Flyer plane was being constructed. Requarth offered the lumber at the same price it charged the brothers nearly a century before: 7 cents per board foot. The total bill is 56 cents, for eight board-feet of white pine lumber.
Credit: JAN UNDERWOOD
Credit: JAN UNDERWOOD
The replica that volunteers with the Wright B. Flyer Inc. organization were constructing at Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport had a metal frame, rather than the Wright Brothers wooden frame, so considerably less lumber was needed.
Overcoming hardships
The company has survived fires and floods. Fire wiped out the company’s inventory in 1894. Arson consumed half of the company’s lumber yard in 1972.
Requarth was hit hard by the Great Flood of 1913. After the flood waters receded, there was significant damage to the lower floors and outer yard area, but the company cleaned up and continued operations. As it slowly recovered from the flood, the Great Depression hit.
The company recorded sales of $769,000 in 1930, but sales dropped in half in 1931 and kept falling after that.
Once World War II began, sales boomed again. Requarth started building huge crates for aircraft engines and made 12-foot ramrods for the loading and charging of the barrels of Army howitzer cannons.
Expansion attempts
By the 1920s, the company was shipping millwork all over the eastern part of the country.
The company expanded in 1926 and had up to 300 employees working there. Many were German immigrants.
After the war, sales dipped a bit, but recovered well. Soldiers returned home from the war and started building houses.
In 1959, Requarth opened its first lumber yard on Dorothy Lane. This store catered to the DIY crowd, builders, and contractors. Another yard was completed on Western Avenue in Madison in 1963. In 1966, it announced the opening of a third store in Troy.
However, the stores faced heavy competition from big chains. Requarth sold its retail business to Wolohan Lumber in the early 1970s.
In 2011, Requarth acquired Supply One, getting into the kitchen and cabinet business.
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