Public Displays of Affection
Maybe the noble histories of suction cups, toilets, and kazoos don't sound intriguing to you, but for entrepreneurs who've built museums dedicated to the industries they've helped develop, rummaging around in the past yields great benefits.
Published August 2000
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEIn an era of "Internet time," the past seems only that much more, well, outdated. But for entrepreneurs who have built their own museums, rummaging through history yields everlasting benefits
Retirement has not dimmed Russ Manoog's love affair with toilets. In June, the 65-year-old Manoog surrendered the elegantly appointed office from which he has, for more than two decades, transacted the business of Charles Manoog Inc., a 25-employee distributor of plumbing supplies in Worcester, Mass.
Departing through a showroom awash in snowy porcelain, he crossed the parking lot, climbed a brace of stairs, and passed through the door of a drab, two-story brick building identified in large letters as the American Sanitary Plumbing Museum. This is where Manoog, having handed the management reins to his son, now spends much of his time, presiding over an Ali Baba-esque trove of pipes and pumps, faucets and fixtures, toilets, tubs, and basins.
Manoog's metamorphosis from chief executive -- he still keeps an office at the company -- to museum trustee is the logical culmination of a life devoted to plumbing's proud legacy. The CEO's bond with his industry runs deeper than mere habit or hobby: this is, after all, a man who has inflamed physicians by asserting their inferiority to plumbers as defenders of the public health. His idea of a vacation: taking a toilet tour of England or a bidet tour of France. "This is not a glamour industry; you don't get people leaving computer companies to work at a plumbing-supply house," says Manoog, a dapper fellow with forceful eyebrows. "But people have been using some form of toilet since the day man was put on this earth. I'm sure by the second day he had to do something."
The American Sanitary Plumbing Museum, which chronicles the history of American plumbing from outhouse to our house, was established 21 years ago when Russ's father, Charles Manoog, was himself facing retirement from the company he had founded. Charles Manoog launched his company in 1927 in a store so tiny that its entire inventory could be displayed in one window; for the next 50-plus years the business both defined and -- to Charles's mind -- ennobled its founder's existence. A future apart from plumbing, even one cosseted by the rewards of a lifetime's industry, seemed a future adrift. "For people in small companies, particularly the people who started those companies, it's difficult to distinguish between 'This is my business' and 'This is my life,' " says Russ Manoog. "I don't know if my father had a passion for toilets, but he had a passion for his business. The museum is an expression of that."
On that level, the American Sanitary Plumbing Museum is hardly unique. In an era when company builders boast of doing deals in "Internet time" and when anxiety about the future fuels nostalgia for the present, reverence for the past can seem, well, outdated. But entrepreneurs like the Manoogs -- who make a practice of seeking out, preserving, and displaying artifacts that commemorate the history of their companies or industries -- aren't merely sentimental fogies. Rather, they're people who recognize the past's ability to infuse the present with meaning. History bestows heft and context, enriching and clarifying the story of a company's growth through narrative. For employees as well as customers, that can be especially important.
"Companies spend so much on mission statements and retreats and all that touchy-feely stuff that's supposed to develop loyalty and a meaningful work environment," says Edward O'Donnell, director of Heritedge Historical Enterprises, a three-year-old company in New York City that does contract historical research, exhibit creation, and consulting. "But they've missed the boat when it comes to the foundations. There's a moment in [the Tom Wolfe novel] The Bonfire of the Vanities when a child asks her father -- who's this bond broker -- 'Daddy, what exactly do you do?' And he tries to explain it to her, and he can't. These museums explain what their owners do to their families and their employees and their communities. They're all about identifying with the work."
Then there's the sense of comfort and connection that a known lineage bestows on the entrepreneurs themselves. Like the swarms of people who flock to Web sites devoted to the study of genealogy, company owners who fall into their life's work through happenstance or inheritance may feel rootless, even disaffected. Discoveries made in the course of unearthing a product's past -- it won the war; it saved the town; it was Teddy Roosevelt's favorite snack food -- do much to endear that product to its contemporary purveyors. "It's love for us," proclaims David Berghash, president of the Original American Kazoo Co., in describing the museum-building project that served to unite him with the small community in which his company is based. And Arthur Barry, who succeeded his father as CEO of Presto Galaxy Suction Cups Inc., first began researching his product's history three years ago. His proudest discovery to date? An 1866 patent for a "photographic dipper" -- a suction cup attached to a stick that was used by photographers to dip glass plates into caustic cleaning fluids. "That patent showed me that suction cups have a greater connection to my family than I knew," says Barry, whose $1.5-million company is based in Brooklyn, N.Y. "My father's father cleaned photographic plates for a living, and he must have used one of those. My father would have been flabbergasted if he'd known."
