Founder of long-running Arlington Heights business dies
Ed Mayer, the founder of patio furniture and fireplace shop Northwest Metalcraft, one of the longest running family businesses in Arlington Heights, died Friday after a long illness. He was 89.
“He was always the ‘brawn’ and my mother was the ‘brains’ of the operation,” says daughter Dawn Selleck of Arlington Heights, who today runs the store with her brother Dan. “They ran it together; it was a great partnership and love story.”
Ed and Irene Mayer were newlyweds in 1945 when they moved to his family’s farm, just off Arlington Heights Road. In the barns behind the old house, Ed Mayer worked in the forge and ornamental iron shop his father had started in the 1920s.
“At first, he was doing welding to fix truck parts, but then he got into ornamental iron work,” Dan Mayer says. “I think he made columns and railings for half of the homes in Arlington Heights.”
They turned it into a business in 1947, calling it “Northwest Ornamental Iron,” and quickly expanded to more than just iron work.
As the story goes, when Irene Mayer decided she wanted to have a lawn furniture set, her husband bought her one in downtown Chicago. When a passing motorist asked if the set was for sale, the couple sold it and the next week took their truck and picked up four more sets. A patio furniture business was born.
In looking for something to do in the off-season, Ed Mayer turned his ornamental ironwork skills to designing fireplace grills.
A chance visit to their store in the late 1950s by George Stephens, who designed the Weber Grill and had it built in a factory in Arlington Heights, resulted in adding his now famous line of sphere-shaped grills to Northwest Metalcraft’s inventory.
The marriage of selling patio furniture and outdoor grills as well as custom fireplace equipment became a prototype for other suburban stores, including the Collins Fireplace Shops in Wheeling, Hanover Park and Waukegan.
Those stores were opened in the 1970s by JoAnne Mayer, Ed Mayer’s oldest daughter, and her husband, Jerry Collins, but in 1996, the couple was killed in a single-engine plane crash.
Northwest Metalcraft, driven by the couple who started it, and their children and grandchildren who joined them in the business, is preparing to celebrate its 65th anniversary this year.
“My dad’s friends were his customers,” Selleck says. “He’d been in all their homes installing fireplaces and he was available whenever they called.”
Dan Mayer says that while his mother kept the books and sold furniture on the sales floor, her husband managed installation and delivery, as well as continuing for years to make his ornamental ironwork.
“He liked to work and be out in the field,” Dan Mayer says of his father. “He liked working with his hands.”
Besides his daughter and son, Mayer is survived by eight grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.
A memorial service will take place at 6 p.m. May 21 at Northwest Metalcraft, 413 S. Arlington Heights Road in Arlington Heights.