Austin Engineering Co. history

The Austin story began with a young English carpenter who came to America in 1872 to find work rebuilding Chicago after that city's great fire.

In 1895 Austin won the contract to build Cleveland's first electric lamp factory; a series of contracts from the National Electric Lamp Association soon followed.

In 1904, Samuel’s son, Wilbert joined his father’s company and conceived the groundbreaking idea of combining engineering and construction in one firm to offer a complete facility service.

In 1907 Samuel Austin & Son built the first reinforced concrete structure in Cleveland for the H. Black Company.

In 1911 Samuel Austin & Son engineered and constructed the first campus-type, industrial research facility for the National Electric Lamp Association.

In 1914 Samuel's son, WILBERT J. AUSTIN, conceived of the standardization of factory design.

In 1916, then, Austin & Son introduced standard building designs for the quick delivery of prefabricated packaged industrial building concepts.

Many of the plants that had been designed and built earlier by Austin were producing arms for the Allies during World War I. When the United States entered the war in 1917, an enormous demand emerged virtually overnight for additional war materiel.

Austin's experience in newspaper publishing dated back to 1921, when it created the Warren Tribune's newspaper production plant.

In 1927 the company erected what was then the world's largest building, a manufacturing plant for the Oakland Motor Car Company in Pontiac, Michigan.

In 1928 The Austin Company designed and constructed at its own expense the Upper Carnegie Building using arc welding technology developed by the Lincoln Electric Company.

1929, for instance, marked the beginning of research that led to the design of the world's first "controlled-conditions" building, for the Simmonds Saw and Steel Company at Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

In 1930 a historically significant international contract called for a $60 million integrated automobile manufacturing complex and workers' city located in the former Soviet town of Gorki (now known as Nizhny Novgorod, Russia). The project incorporated infrastructure to accommodate 50,000 people.

Austin's research achievements are diverse and numerous. It established a division in 1933 devoted to the design and construction of insulated steel structures.

By the end of 1940, both Samuel Austin and Wilbert J. Austin had died.

Since these two contracts were the two largest that Samuel Austin & Son had worked on to date, the Company moved its offices closer to the sites, specifically to Euclid and Noble Roads, where the company's headquarters remained until 1960.

Beginning in 1980, Austin also gained considerable experience in building computer-controlled logistics facilities such as automated distribution centers.

In 1984 the National Gypsum Company, a gypsum wallboard manufacturer, acquired Austin.

Incorporated in Junagadh on 27 Jul.'78 Austin Engineering Company went public in 1985.

National Gypsum filed for voluntary bankruptcy in 1990.

More recently, Austin designed and constructed a 180,000-square-foot computer center in Cleveland in 1991 for Society Corporation, parent of Society National Bank.

In 1992–93, Austin constructed the Asia and Pacific Trade Center in Osaka, Japan, one of the world's largest international exhibition facilities.

In September 1997 J. William Meslop, president and CEO of Austin, and 21 other members of senior management purchased the company for an undisclosed sum, which was said to be the same price the second buyer would have paid had the earlier deal gone through.

In 2005, The Austin Company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Kajima USA Group and is a proud member of the Kajima Corporation family of companies worldwide.

Kajima ranks as one of the largest and most admired construction firms in the world, with annual consolidated sales around $16.4 billion (United States, 2018), and is a Top 250 Global Contractor as recognized by Engineering News Record.