In contrast to the numerous patents held by Mesker Brothers (Bernard and Frank), there were no patents found to have been issued to George L. Mesker & Co. But the iron works did apply for at least one. The company’s 1892 catalog featured an ingenious yet simple method of choosing facade designs. The pages showing multiple story designs (5 through 20) were perforated between the upper and lower stories. This allowed a customer to form various combinations by bringing different upper and lower halves of pages together. Hence, the upper stories and storefronts were numbered differently for ordering purposes (e.g., storefront #805 with upper story #631).
So how effective was the catalog in terms of presenting combinations and saving space? The various individual designs could be combined for a total of 320 different facade designs utilizing only 16 catalog pages to accomplish the feat. Otherwise, without the perforations and retaining the same rendering size it would have taken 192 pages to present the same number of possibilities. That’s a significant reduction in publication costs, without sacrificing presentation. An owner could begin the selection process by choosing the storefront design with the appropriate number of doors, location, etc., and combining it with the 16 possible upper stories (not all storefronts and upper stories are compatible – odd pages feature buildings of typical width while even pages have wider double-lot edifices). The choice would not have been easy and even so customization was frequent, as in the example from Lewistown, Illinois, at the bottom of the post.
According to the catalog, a patent was applied for this presentation method but its subsequent abandonment in later catalogs meant that the company most likely did not receive it. Or perhaps customers found this clever and space-saving technique cumbersome or confusing while on the other hand adding more predetermined combinations allowed for catalog heft and more substantial presentation on par with the competition. Regardless of its obscurity, this was nonetheless a clever device that illustrates the Meskers’ emphasis on the catalog as a design and ordering tool which placed them at the forefront of ornamental sheet-metal facade manufacture and distribution.
The catalog can be viewed in the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library’s digital archive here.





Such a great story of ingenuity and creative marketing, 1890’s style. Thanks for doing an entry on this!
Please, can you share more catalog pages! I am building 1/2″ scale models, and can use the reference material.
Thank you.
You can download the entire catalog from the Catalogs page of the blog. Enjoy!