Our History

Spend more than a century in schools, and you will learn a thing or two.

It all started with making learning environments more conducive to learning. Of course, back in 1905 the first need we met was on a very basic level: warmth. Our early heating systems provided a cleaner and more effective source of climate control for one-room schools and helped school kids concentrate on their lessons.

By 1920, we introduced sanitary water fountains and lavatory systems for rural schools. But that’s still a long way from today and manufacturing “furniture for inspired learning” for the daycare/pre-kindergarten, education and college markets. How did we get here?

For the answer, just look back at our roots. We’ve always maintained a close connection with educators. This has always allowed us to better understand the dynamic nature of education. More than 50 years ago, it was the reason we entered the field of student desking.

Since then, we’ve become even more active in our approach by watching for emerging curricula, devising the furniture needed to make a curriculum succeed and creating the products to do the job. We followed that process in the 1970s when introducing our pioneering line of computer furniture. Today, that line has grown one of the broadest available, giving educators more and better choices to meet their needs.

Listening to educators has prevented us from standing still. As with our computer furniture, our classroom and library furniture continue to improve. Our offerings in all these areas have both expanded and improved. In fact, we’re in our third generation of cooperative learning furniture.

We’re helping educators organize, store and distribute learning materials more effectively with our innovative Cascade™ Storage line.

And we’re more conscious than ever of the role that design plays in creating the most engaging, stimulating learning environments. As long as education continues to innovate, our commitment is to never stop learning.