Cincinnati Seating Company brochure (c1900)

Cover of a brochure from the Cincinnati Seating Company located on the northwest corner of Vine and Sixth Streets in Cincinnati. The following text is found on the cover: Factory: Washington, Indians. Manufacturers of Church, Opera, Lodge, Office, Bank and School Furniture. Pew Circular with only a few of our many designs of pew ends. Send for catalogue of pulpit furniture. Pews, pulpit furniture, altars, and confessionals. Seating plans and bids furnished without charge. Catalogue of chruch, school and hall furniture sent on application. Say what you need, and we can supply it. Good and Cheap. Pictures of pews are also found on the cover.
Interior image showing four examples of pew ends.

When John C. Brooke closed the Excelsior Furniture Company in 1889, he decided to form another furniture company specializing in “Church, Opera, Lodge, Office, Bank and School Furniture.” He named this company the Cincinnati Seating Company.  Over the next 20 years, the company produced catalogs and circulars to promote their products.  One brochure was the “Pew Circular” that featured “only a few of the many designs of pew ends” offered by the company.  The designs ranged from the ornate Pew End No. 76 (“…appropriate for the finest churches…”) to the modest Pew End No. 12 (“one of the most popular selling ends”).

This brochure can be found in the Tatum Family Business Records (M316) found in Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi.  The Tatum family owned businesses and land in and around Hattiesburg, Mississippi, beginning with the establishment of their first lumber mill in 1893.  The collection contains financial records, personal papers, photographs, blueprints, newspaper articles, maps and artifacts of the Tatum family’s business dealings as well as local Hattiesburg history, including W. S. F. Tatum’s mayoral term from 1922 to 1924 and again from 1928 to 1936.

This item can be viewed online here. To view the physical item, visit the 3rd floor of McCain Library and Archives.  The guide to the collection may be accessed here. 

If you have questions about this collection, please contact Special Collections at 601.266.4347 or Ask-a-Librarian. To see more Items of the Month, click here.
 
Sources

The History of West Virginia, Old and New. Chicago: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1923.

Cincinnati Seating Company Brochure, University of Southern Mississippi Digital Collections, Special Collections, University Libraries. 

 

Text by Jennifer Brannock, Curator of Rare Books & Mississippiana