W. D. Crooks and Sons: The Craftsmen of the Capitol's Doors

For most of a century, a family workshop in Williamsport produced some of the finest wood-veneer doors in the country. W. D. Crooks and Sons was the kind of firm that thrived by doing one thing extraordinarily well during an era when mass production was reshaping American industry.

The company's craftsmen worked with Pennsylvania hardwoods and imported varieties from around the world, creating specialty doors of a quality that reportedly earned them contracts for the United States Capitol, the White House, and public and private buildings across the nation. The firm later relocated from South Williamsport to this site, where it employed a sizable workforce. It was a testament to what small, skilled, family-run enterprises could accomplish in a century that also gave the world the assembly line.