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Located in Rock Island, Illinois, the Blake Specialty Company started in the early 1900s, but went out of business somewhere between the 1950s and 60s.
W.L. Blake Company of Portland, Maine was the parent company of Blake Specialty Company, selling fittings and valves to commercial contractors, which they produced. They also sold various manufacturing products for plumbing industries.
Hy-Tech has documentation that states W.L. Blake Company had been doing business as early as 1857. However, in the mid-1900s, F.W. Webb Company bought W.L. Blake Company. To this day, the W.L. Blake Company is considered one of their divisions, but they do not make or sell anything under the “Blake” name.
See below for the only known catalogs for Blake Specialty Company. We still haven’t been able to date Edition “B” or “D” officially, though “B” appears to be from 1912-1914 and “D” appears to be from around 1918-1920.
Edition “G” is from 1925 and Edition “H” is from 1930.
W.L. Blake Company sold Josam and Holt (Barrett-Holt) drains in 1925, as seen in catalog “G”, but stopped selling them by 1930, as seen in catalog “H”.
These price catalogs are primarily for plumbing fittings—not drains. However, there’s a lot of information explaining the difference between different types of connections, fittings and valves.
It’s worth noting that in the 1920 Blake Price Catalog, one of the biggest advancements in the plumbing industry was color plumbing fixtures introduced by Kohler.
