Celebrating 100 years - 39

Wallboard's
Movers and
Shakers
Modern wallboard owes its success to
the vision of Sewell Avery, the founder of
United States Gypsum Company . Credit
also goes to Augustine Sackett, an inventor,
Oscar Reum, CPIA president, and National
Gypsum Company's founding trio of Joseph
Haggerty, Clarence Williams and Melvin
Baker .
Augustine Sackett patented his
plasterboard in 1894 . Sackett's board was
made of laminated sheets of alternating
layers of straw paper and plaster of Paris .
But, it was U .S . Gypsum's Avery who saw
the invention's market potential . "The
steady increase in demand for fireproofing
in all classes of buildings promises well,"
Avery wrote in a 1907 company report .
Sackett Panel Board replaced flammable
wood lath and was an excellent base for
gypsum plasters . U .S . Gypsum purchased
the Sackett Plaster Board Company for
$500,000 in preferred stock and $350,000
in cash in 1909 .
Sackett Plaster Board changed over
time . In 1913, U .S . Gypsum settled on a
formulation using two plies of paper and a
solid gypsum core . The company renamed
the product Adamant Panel Board, but
the name didn't last . D .L . Hunter, a U .S .
Gypsum sales rep, especially loathed it . In
1917, Hunter proposed a new brand name,
writing it on a scrap of paper: "SHEETROCK
Non-warping, Non-burning Wall Covering ."
In time, SHEETROCK became a preferred
choice for government building projects .
Oscar Reum, president of CPIA, worried

about the spread of board products . In 1920,
Reum told a convention of lathers to be on
guard against "substitutes" aiming to replace
wood lath, saying these manufacturers
had large advertising budgets . However,
Reum also saw board products as game
changers . According to American Builder
magazine, Reum was the third stockholder
in the Celotex Corp ., a British wallboard
manufacturer, and shared in its founding .
A milestone in the development of the
wallboard market came in 1926 . A Chicago
plasterers strike in that year helped to propel
wallboard sales . In May 1926, about 2,500
Chicago journeyman plasterers went on
strike for a $2 a day wage increase . The
builders wouldn't accept cost increases and
looked to substitutes to plaster . "The names
of these substitutes are Celotex, Sheetrock,
Bestwall, Plastergone and Gypsolite," the
Chicago Daily Tribune reported .

National Gypsum Company introduced
Gold Bond gypsum board in 1926 . National
Gypsum's founders, Joseph Haggerty,
Clarence Williams and Melvin Baker, had
all worked at the Beaver Board Company .
Haggerty and Williams had helped to
form Universal Gypsum . National Gypsum,
incorporated in 1925, opened two plants
during the 1920s and ran full-page Gold
Bond ads in the Saturday Evening Post .
Sales of board products grew significantly
in the early 1920s . Celotex, which produced
12 million feet of wallboard for the United
States and Canada in 1921, reached 230
million feet by the end of 1926 . U .S . Gypsum
added three wallboard lines during the
1920s .
Despite worries, gypsum wallboard
became a bona fide alternative to lath and
plaster construction .

39
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Celebrating 100 years
