North Alabama Glass Co., Inc. has been in continuous
operation as a business in Decatur, Alabama since
1946. Founders were a trio of union
glaziers (glass installers), Sam Allen, Robert
Stewart and Sherman Harris, who had been working for
the large union firm of Pittsburgh Plate Glass out
of the Birmingham, Alabama office.
Sam Allen founded the Decatur office on Bank
Street in 1946. In 1947 Sherman Harris joined
Mr. Allen as a partner. Soon after, the
partners opened a branch office in
Huntsville and then another one in Sheffield, Alabama.
Robert Stewart, Sherman's brother-in-law, joined the
firm and operated the branch serving the tri-cities
of Sheffield, Florence and Tuscumbia (later
including Muscle Shoals). Sam Allen managed the
Huntsville office of North Alabama Glass and Sherman
was in charge of the Decatur
branch.
In
1958 the three entrepreneurs split the company into
three parts with each taking sole ownership of the
branch they ran - while still using the name North
Alabama Glass Company.
In 1961 North Alabama Glass Company, Inc. of Decatur
was incorporated in the State of Alabama. Soon
after, Sherman moved the business into the white three
story building at 153 NE Second Avenue. The
location was on the corner of Lee Street and
Second Avenue directly across the street from the
Morgan County Courthouse (famous as the site of the
Scottsboro Boys Trial). That building had
originally been built as Decatur's Model-T Ford dealership
in the 1910s.
In 1968, after 25 years in the U.S. Army, retired
Sgt. Bruce Gamble joined in a partnership with Bob
Stewart by opening a sister glass company in Scottsboro,
Alabama. The company was known as Scottsboro
Glass. Bruce was a nephew by marriage to both
Bob Stewart and Sherman Harris. Although he had no experience in the glass
industry, Bruce was able to "grow" the Scottsboro business into
profitability by 1970.
In
late 1970 Sherman Harris was in poor health due to a case
of glass falling on his leg. He offered to
give Bruce fifty percent of the Decatur business if
he would move to Decatur and take over the
day-to-day operations. Decatur was four times
larger in size than Scottsboro and represented a
chance for quicker financial success. Bruce
sold his interest in Scottsboro Glass to Bob Stewart's son, Sherman
Dick Stewart (an aerospace engineer), and moved to Decatur.
In 1973 urban renewal claimed North Alabama Glass'
building and Bruce and Sherman moved the business to
the opposite end of Second Avenue to the location at
the corner of Second Avenue and Prospect Drive where
it is housed today. The old building was
demolished and became a large parking lot for the
courthouse employees and customers.
The
new building was
originally built as a large cleaners in the 1920s.
Over the years it served a number of purposes
including hosting wrestling matches and a skating
rink in the lot to the north of the building that we
now refer to as the "contract yard". In the 1940s
the building served as a canteen factory during
World War II. It had been used a number of years
as the Thompson Tractor "CAT" dealership before
North Alabama Glass bought the building.
In the
mid-1980s after the death of founder, Sam Allen, the
office in Huntsville was closed by Sam's son - John
Allen, who chose to get out of the glass business.
Around the same time in the Sheffield office, Robert
Stewart retired and turned over the day-to-day
operations to his youngest son, Cliff Stewart.
And in Decatur, Ken Gamble had recently graduated
from the University of Alabama with his MBA and was
making plans to work on his PHD at the University of
North Carolina when Sherman died. Ken bought
out Sherman and took over 51% ownership
of the Decatur office to work with his father,
Bruce. By the early 1990s Bruce had retired and his youngest
son, Brian Gamble, became Ken's partner.
North
Alabama Glass of Decatur opened a Huntsville office
in the early 1990s on Jordan Lane. In the late
1990s Ken & Brian took ownership of Huntsville Glass
Company on Holmes Avenue; purchasing the business
from Stan Wells, who remained as manager, and the building from Mr. Turner,
who had originally founded Huntsville Glass in 1941 mainly to
serve Redstone Arsenal's need for laminated safety
glass.
After a combined 135 years in business,
North Alabama Glass (1946) and sister company
Huntsville Glass (est. 1941) remain as two of the oldest,
most reputable and financially sound glass companies
in the Southeastern United States.
North
Alabama Glass excels in installation of storefront
and curtainwall systems in new construction with
well over $100 million dollars in billings for
glass, storefront and curtainwall construction.
