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Monday, June 23, 2014

American Mineral Spirits / Sherwood Chemical Company


Updated with additional information.

Industry Review continues with a look at spots #340/340B, the American Mineral Spirits Company that until 1964 was known as the Sherwood Chemical Company.  Both company names are listed on the 1972 map which made initial research difficult, but the connection was made with this July 1964 Kansas City Times article that announced the buyout (reproduced here to correct a few OCR defects):
Chemical Firm Sold SHERWOOD & CO.. local marketer and distributor of chemicals and petroleum-based products, yesterday was sold to Pure Oil company for an undisclosed sum. Sherwood will become an affiliate of American Mineral Spirits, a subsidiary of Pure Oil. Sherwood, which was incorporated here in 1946 after a takeover of the Bertram Naphtha company by Arnold A. Sherwood, has assets in excess of a million dollars and does annual business of over 5 million dollars. The company has a tank farm here handling 750,000 gallons of liquids, one in Wichita and one in Denver with a storage of 500,000 gallons each. Sherwood sells alcohol, naphtha, resins, ketones and fiberglass materials in a 6-state area. It had a chemical blending operation for industrial concerns.
According to Boating Magazine in 1960 & 1961, Sherwood & Co. at 3333 Roanoke Rd was a distributor for Hess & Goldsmith fiberglass fabrics and tapes.

Since possibly 1981 or 1984, the 3333 Roanoke Rd site has been used by a combination of:

  • a sign and lighting company named Odegard Sign & Lighting; Pitchbook makes the link between Hayben Corp and Odegard, with the latter merged up into Worldwide Energy in 2013
  • a metal sign manufacturer named Metallogos

Sherwood Chemical's extensive site spanned both sides of 34th Street with various warehouses (blue and green highlight), docks (orange highlight) and tank storage (red highlight).  The ones outlined in blue hadn't been constructed as of a 1950 Sanborn Map and in the present day, all of the tanks (red highlight, plus others that were scattered on site) have been removed from the site.

The 1972 map also shows tank spots on the east side of Terrace St. (purple highlight).  According to Historic Aerials, in 1959 the extra Sherwod tank site was a concrete block manufacturer (named Concrete Building Units).  This industry is also found on the 1950 Sanborn Map.  By the 1969, though, some buildings are gone and replaced with the Sherwood tanks.  I'd surmise that this expansion was coincident with the aforementioned 1964 merge.  Additional detail can be seen in the 2006 view and I captured the following ground level views to focus on some of the detail for the concrete containment area.










While I was on location in November 2013, I took several additional detailed shots of the Sherwood buildings that remain.











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