The founder of Lovell Manufacturing was Melvin Newton Lovell, (1844-1895). A carpenter by trade, he established his home in Erie in 1865 where four years later, he secured patents on several household articles. The same year, he and Franklin F. Adams began a partnership F.F. Adams & Company to produce wood products such as stepladders and manual washing machines. Their small factory was at 14th and Cherry Streets, but the endeavor did not last long and his three stepbrothers created Lovell Manufacturing Company at 523 and 526 French Street. Initially, the company produced only spring beds but by 1882 the company expanded in incorporate, producing other types of wire and spring produces including their mouse and rattraps. As the same time they subsumed Lovell’s installment-loan company and embarked on the chain store business with installment loan payment, with locations in New York City, Chicago, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Boston and many others. By the last 1890, they had more stores than Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and Jewel Tea Company.

In 1883, the Lovell’s contracted the first segment of their factory at 13th and French Streets. The small building encompassed the wood and iron working operations, japanning, tempering, varnishing, and storage and shipping areas. New product lines included corn Sheller, dynamos, folding wood chairs and 65 employees manufactured hammocks.

There, years after Lovell’s death in 1895, the company filed a friendly bankruptcy with its creditors which was amicably resolved. The company emerged from financial difficulty, reincorporated and took charge of even more of its own productions to avoid supplier charges that had led to the crisis.

Over the following two decades, the company retrenched, closing its retail stores and concentrating on a more limited range of production with more vertical integration of operations. The physical plant expanded with a three story annex that cover a half block in length This increased the wire working storage, varnishing, and wringer operation and added a machine shop and dry kilns as well as expanded lumberyard storage. The company was not able to produce 300 wringers per day and was booming on domestic demand by World War I. After the war was the companies’ final construction surge in which the major portion of the existing facility was contructed. By 1921, the building more than doubled in size, filling the entire oblong block. The company had a rubber department for wringer rolls, and iron department and a large new facility for assembling their new line of power-operated wringers. Wringers would later be manufactured from cast iron then, later cast aluminum rather than wood. The wood-working department found new product lines in hockey sticks, other sport items and in clacks, the wood-soled sandal used by workers in coke ovens. The quality and character of Lovell products kept the company afloat during the depression despite two or three bad years.

World War II curtailed metal wringer production. Despite their small machine shop, Lovell nonetheless engaged in wartime production of unspecified parts. Employment escalated to 1,000 people and their productions soared to its highest levels. Immediately after the war, employment fell somewhat to 800 as they resumed wringer production. The company turned out 1 million units per year using 35-40 tons of sheet, strip and bar steel per day. In the roller department, Lovell consumed 8,000 pounds of rubber daily and 4,500 board feet of lumber. The company manufactured the chassis and working parts for winger as well. In 1948, they added electric dryers to their line (although not under the Lovell name) to hold Lovell’s place, as automatic agitator washers threatened to displace Lovell’s traditional line.

In August 1967, Lovell because a subsidiary of Patterson-Erie Company, a local investor-controlled holding company. Patterson-Erie planned a new production facility in Lake City, 18 miles west of Erie. The Company has ceased to be a consumer producer and instead was manufacturing capital components for other industrial concerns. Their largest division, metal fabricating and appliance, was fully integrated for precision work in forming, fabricating and all metal finishing processes. By the late 1960’s Lovell made metal cabinets for humidifiers and portable televisions, plus assemblies for computers, office copiers, and other office machines.

The Company continued operation at the 13th and French location until 1974, when as Patterson-Erie, it moved to its new headquarters. The original building remained vacant for six years until 1980 when a number of tenants began to occupy sections of the facility including a management corporation office, an electronics firm and a realtor. In 1990, a small revival of the building’s original purpose occurred when Quinn Machine & Tools became a tenant. In October of that same year, Steve McGarvey purchased the entire building and is currently leasing space to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which includes the Department of Public Welfare, Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, Office of Unemployment Compensation Referee’s Office, Blindness and Visual Services, Office of the Bureau of Workmen’s Compensation, St Martin’s Learning Center, Team Pennsylvania -Career Link, and the Erie Book Store, along with many residential tenants who call their state-of-the-art apartment at Lovell Place…“home”.

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