Crowell Publishing Company

The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company Plant was located on West High Street, between Wittenberg and Lowry Avenues in Springfield, Ohio and was one of the largest publishing houses in the world. John Crowell (1850 – 1921), a printer from Louisville, Kentucky, came to Springfield, Ohio in 1878 to edit Farm and Fireside magazine. He founded the company Mast, Crowell & and Kirkpatrick. By 1902 the company was publishing a number of magazines and was incorporated as The Crowell Publishing Company in 1906. Peter Fenelon Collier (1849-1909) began publishing in 1873, beginning with Roman Catholic books, Bibles, and the magazine ‘Collier’s Once a Week’. In 1895, the name was changed to ‘Collier’s Weekly’, which was purchased by Crowell publishing in 1919. P.F. Collier & Sons was taken over by Robert Collier when his father Peter died in 1909. Though the two companies worked together since 1919, they didn’t become Crowell Collier Publishing Company until 1939, having merged in 1934. They printed four nationally known magazines: Collier’s, Woman’s Home Companion, American Magazine and Country Home. Though having begun 1877 in a tiny one-room establishment with a simple hand press and evolving into a massive factory complex incorporating 7 buildings, including an 8-story plant covering an entire city block, the company began going downhill. The plant began dissolving in 1956 and the Springfield plant was sold in 1957. Crowell-Collier merged with Macmillan of New York in 1960 and in 1965 the name Crowell Collier & MacMillian began being used, though the titled was eventually changed to MacMillian, Inc