Building Letterheads XIII

Beginning in 1901, the Schwing Lumber & Shingle Company operated along the Mississippi River at Bayou Plaquemine. The company's dominance of the Louisiana cypress shingle market was mentioned in W.E. Clement's Plantation Life on the Mississippi (1952). Schwing also operated a successful Spanish moss operation, supplying the cured "lagniappe product" for the upholstery trade.

By the late 1930s, Schwing was managing mineral rights related to speculative oil drilling operations across its vast land holdings. Company president Calvin Kendrick Schwing became a prominent politician, serving in the Louisiana state senate from 1928 to 1936. In December 1956, Dow Chemical Company purchased all the Schwing Lumber stock, and thus acquired 60,000 acres of land.

Image above: Detail, Calvin K. Schwing, letter to Mr. Bert Nadler, 15 November 1938, Building Letterheads, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.