The streets in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, are dressed in their holiday best. Lampposts are decorated with greenery. Ornaments hang like sparkly earrings on the streets. Along 8th Street, the windows of certain businesses sparkle with a seasonal space age symbol, the Evergleam aluminum Christmas tree.
Do you remember Charlie Brown’s holiday special where the Peanuts gang asks Charlie Brown to go out and get an ‘aluminum’ tree? This is the kind of tree they were talking about. It’s a symbol of the time the special was made.
The artificial tree comes in shimmering colors of green and silver, pink and gold. It is a testament to the work of Space Age art. Created and manufactured 60 years ago by Aluminum Specialty Company, Inc. in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the tree is the jewel in the crown that was 1959. The factory sits on the shores of Lake Michigan, about 80 miles north of Milwaukee.
The Evergleam tree was not an overnight sensation, however. It was produced for 12 years before being relegated to basements and attics everywhere. Of course, with the move towards environmentalism, the tree has seen a bit of a resurgence within the past 15 years. Hundreds of models of the Evergleam tree are purchased each year on eBay during the holiday season.
The Aluminum Specialty Company, Inc. first became aware of the need for a tree like this in 1958. A member of the organization went to a holiday party where a tree covered in aluminum foil was featured. He thought it would be a great idea to bring a branch back to his employer to see if they could engineer something similar. He couldn’t bring the whole tree back because the box was just too large to fit in the average American car.
The company immediately saw an opportunity to create a new Christmas classic. Two engineers at Aluminum Specialty Company, Inc. (Richard Thomsen and Wes Martin) designed a tree that was easy to assemble and store. It consisted of a simple stand and a central ‘trunk’, or pole, with holes drilled in it to hold the removable branches, which were covered in sparkly, aluminum ‘needles’.
Employees immediately went to work manufacturing trees that filled the company’s warehouse. The trees rocketed off the shelves in stores like Montgomery Ward. In the years to come, the company would create trees in a variety of colors, devising accessories like color wheels that shined different hues on the boughs. The tree was so popular that Aluminum Specialty Company, Inc. sold more than a million of them and paved the way for about 40 imitators. It became a cultural sensation and nowadays is helpful to some who just don’t want to cut down a tree.
For more tree news, please peruse our blog. We wish you the happiest of holiday seasons and look forward to bringing you even more news in the New Year.
