Andersen Corporation

Andersen Corporation was founded in 1903 as the Andersen Lumber Company by Danish immigrant Hans Jacob Andersen and his family at Hudson, Wisconsin. In 1929 the name of the firm was changed to Andersen Frame Company and in 1937 to Andersen Corporation.

The company began making window frames at its small Hudson plant in mid-1904. In 1905 Hans introduced an innovative two-bundle method of designing and shipping unassembled window frames. Eleven sets of horizontal parts were manufactured in different lengths and another eleven sets of vertical parts were made in different lengths, that in various combinations enabled the company to provide window frames in 121 sizes that (it was said) could be assembled by a carpenter in fewer than ten minutes. The company moved across the St. Croix River to South Stillwater, Minnesota in 1913, where land was available and a larger manufacturing plant was built on a site formerly occupied by a sawmill. South Stillwater's name was changed to Bayport in 1922.

The company initially manufactured only window frames, but in the 1930s it began to produce complete window units. Product lines that were later introduced included the Master Frame Casement Window (1930), the firm's basement window (1934), its Narroline Window (1938), Horizontal Gliding Window (1940), Pressure Seal Window (1946), Flexivent Window (1952), Beauty-Line Window (1957), Strutwall Window (1959), Perma-Shield Window (1966), High-Performance Glass (1983), and its Series 200 and Series 400 products (2000). Andersen's first gliding door was introduced in 1966, and its Frenchwood door went into production in 1989.

During the Second World War the company produced wooden ammunition boxes for the armed forces, earning two prestigious Army-Navy "E" awards in the process.

Andersen's frames were originally constructed of White Pine lumber. Other varieties of wood were later used as well. Fibrex, a new wood-vinyl composite material, began to be used by the company in the manufacture of its products in 1991.

Andersen Corporation initiated its popular profit-sharing plan in 1914. It began the ALCO Benefit Club in 1916, which provided sick leave for employees. It offered its first paid life insurance plan to its employees in 1919. Paid vacations were introduced in 1923. A company-paid pension plan was introduced in 1943, and a stock ownership plan for employees was introduced in 1975. The company has always been and remains a non-union shop.

Presidents of the corporation have included Hans Andersen (1903-1914); Fred Andersen (1914-1960); Earl Swanson (1960-1968); Bill Hulings (1968-1975); Arvid Wellman (1975-1981); Harold C. Meissner (1981-1991); Jerry Wulf (1991-1998); Don Garofalo (1998-2002); and James E. Humphrey (2002-).

Hans Jacob Andersen left his native Denmark in 1872. He arrived in Spring Valley, Minnesota, in 1874, where he started a construction business and owned a lumber yard. He moved to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, in 1887 when he purchased a wholesale lumber company there. In 1889 he moved again to St. Cloud, Minnesota, where he owned and operated a sawmill. Andersen relocated to Hudson, Wisconsin, in 1896, where he managed a sawmill and opened a retail lumber yard known as the Wisconsin Lumber and Building Company. Hans married Mary Kezia Cummings of Spring Valley, Minnesota in 1881. The couple had three children: Mary ("Mollie") (d.1947), Herbert (d.1921), and Fred (1886-1979). Mary Cummings Andersen died in childbirth in 1891. Hans married Sarah ("Sadie") McDonald in 1896. He died of a heart attack at Hudson in 1914. Upon Hans' death Fred Andersen was elected president of the corporation, and Herbert Andersen vice president and secretary-treasurer.