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BOARDMAN COMPANY

John R. Boardman (1866-1940) moved to Oklahoma City from Kansas in 1908 and purchased the Wylie Company, which he renamed the Boardman Company in 1910. At first the company was advertised as manufacturing metal tanks, cisterns, grain bins, and galvanized roofing. Within a few years it was heavily involved in structural steel and bridge building. By 1920 Boardman was supplying concrete-making equipment, hoisting engines, and a variety of other products to road building contractors throughout the Midwest and the Southwest. The original plant, located at Maple and Hawk streets in Oklahoma City, was relocated to 1401-1409 Southwest Eleventh Street just prior to Boardman's death on June 3, 1940.

At that time the firm was a major supplier of cotton-drying machinery, metal tanks, and a variety of other metal fabricated products in twenty states and in several foreign countries. The company remained under the ownership of the Boardman family and continued to market metal tanks and other metal fabricated products until 1967, when it was sold to the Continental Boiler Works of St. Louis, Missouri. At the beginning of the twenty-first century Boardman Company still operated at 1401-1409 Southwest Eleventh Street in Oklahoma City, where its primary focus was fabricating steel pressure vessels for the petroleum industry.

SEE ALSO: MANUFACTURING, OKLAHOMA ECONOMY, PETROLEUM.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), 4 June 1940, 22 September 1940, and 21 September 1941. Oklahoma State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1911 12 (Detroit, Mich.: R. L. Polk and Co., 1911). Oklahoma State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1918 (Detroit, Mich.: R. L. Polk and Co., 1918).

Bobby Weaver

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