Lowell Specialty Company

Lowell Specialty Company, Lowell Sprayer Co., Lowell Manufacturing Co., Root-Lowell Manufacturing Co.

Location:  West Main Street south side where Shell station and the city parking lot are now located.

C. W. Parks invented the original sprayer, the Parks Glass Tank sprayer, in 1899, in his shop over the Rouse blacksmith shop on N. Broadway Street. The following year, The Lowell Specialty Company was established to manufacture the sprayers and his other inventions. According to a newspaper article, “C. W. Parks furnishes the mechanical ideas and his fertile brain can be depended upon to spring something good about every full moon.”  Behind him are silent but active partners.  F. T. King made repairs on the Hunter blacksmith building on West Main Street to be used by the Lowell Specialty Company in 1902. In 1905, the company was incorporated with 9 stockholders and increased in 1908 to 46 stockholders. The additional purpose of adding new stockholders was to build an addition and manufacture new products.

In 1911, the Lowell Specialty Company began work on an annex building which was to be brick and two stories high (32’x150’). This was followed in 1916 by another two-story addition (46’X50’) at the east end of its large warehouse and along its Pere Marquette side track. The addition was to be used for factory purposes on the ground floor and storage above. In 1922, they erected a new brick building on the east to which they added a third story the following year.

The company continued to grow, especially with the advent of the Nu-Day Sprayer. The popularity of this new design, along with the market share it commanded, led the Lowell Specialty Company to be purchased by its largest competitor, the H.D. Hudson Mfg. Company in 1928. Now known as the Lowell Sprayer Company, the company continued to thrive. A publication of the late 1920s stated “the future of the Lowell Sprayer Company is unusually bright.” In 1946, they built a new office and stock room in the center part of the structure.

The company prospered and, in 1953, merged with the Root Manufacturing Company of Malta, Ohio. The new company was known as the Root-Lowell Manufacturing Company. The company in Lowell employed an average of 150 workers (1955) in Engineering, Tool and Die Makers, Administrative, Supervisory, Maintenance, Press Operators, Machine Operators, Assemblers and Laborers.
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The company moved from its Main Street location to a larger site on Foreman St. in 1968. It continues to this day, more than one hundred years since its humble founding right here in Lowell.