Description
The Gladding, McBean & Company records span 2 linear feet and date from circa 1875 to circa 1970. The collection contains
oversize black-and-white photographs of church buildings in Mexico. The collection also contains a disbound large format scrapbook
filled with: an alphabetical list of projects and their corresponding year, as well as black-and-white photographs of building
exteriors with some pencil notations of building/project name.
Background
Gladding, McBean & Company is a ceramics company located in Lincoln, California. The company was founded by Charles Gladding,
Peter McGill McBean, and George Chambers in 1875. Gladding, McBean began by manufacturing clay sewage pipes and gradually
moved towards decorative tiles and architectural terra-cotta. By the early 1890s the company had expanded its products and
had begun manufacturing fire brick, roof tiles, chimney pipes, and ornamental garden pottery. Its first large scale architectural
project was for the tile roofs of Stanford University. Gladding, McBean & Company is still in operation today.