Spring Tools Company
9718 Portage Road, Portage
(near Vicksburg)
The Viking Products Company, a wartime expansion plant, constructed this
industrial version of Art Deco in 1951 to house its engine manufacturing
division. It features a yellow concrete-block exterior, bold rounded
corners of multipaned windows and a strongly vertical entryway. On close
inspection, brick glass is visible at the sides of the entrance. The
rooms with the rounded corners are large and bright, perfect for some of
the more detailed work involved in machinery construction. In the back
rectangular part of the original building are three bays for the various
assembly lines. A two-ton crane installed by the Viking Co. for their
enormous parts and machinery was recently removed from the ceiling.
In 1957, this building was purchased for a thriving company called
Peterson Spring, originally founded in Ohio in the early 1900s. It has
been used for a variety of purposes by the company now known as Peterson
American over the years, and is since 1994 home to the Spring Tools
division. Few of the interior design elements remain, as each new manager
liked to put his stamp on the environment, but on the outside the building
has changed little.
