Ingram-Richardson, the Porcelain Enamel Giant

For most of the twentieth century, a company called Ingram-Richardson, known locally as Ing-Rich, made Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania one of the porcelain enamel capitals of the world. Louis Ingram and Ernest Richardson founded the firm here in nineteen oh one. They discovered that baked-on porcelain enamel was nearly indestructible, and they put it everywhere: outdoor advertising signs that still dot roadsides, sleek panel facades on mid-century buildings, refrigerator linings, stove parts, and tabletops.

At its peak the company employed more than one thousand workers here, with additional plants in other states. For sixty-four years Ing-Rich supplied the look of modern American commercial life, a look so durable that surviving signs from the nineteen twenties still show their colors. The company closed in the nineteen sixties, but its enameled surfaces outlasted it by generations.