The B. F. Sturtevant Company was a Boston-based manufacturer of fans. It became a leader in the manufacture of industrial air cooling and ventilation systems.
The company was founded in 1860 in Boston by inventor Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant (born 1833 in Norridgewock, Maine–died 1890 in Boston); the plant was located near the present Government Center area. The company at first manufactured wooden pegs used in shoemaking. The process created much sawdust, and Sturtevant invented a mechanical fan that was effective at keeping the work area sawdust-free. By 1864 Sturtevant was manufacturing the first commercially successful blower, and by 1866 the company employed 50 workers and worked exclusively on making fans.
Sturtevant died in 1890 and his son-in-law, Eugene Foss, took over the business. After a 1901 fire, the plant was moved to Hyde Park in 1903, into a new ten-building, 20-acre (8.1 ha) facility designed by Lockwood, Greene & Co. It was now the world's largest manufacturer of electrical fans. The company had expanded into industrial ventilation, heating, air conditioning, dust and fume removal, power, drying and vacuum cleaning. In 1906, Sturtevant installed the first industrial air conditioning system at Walter Baker & Company in Dorchester, and, at a Chicago hotel in 1910, the first residential air conditioning system. They opened a factory in Galt, Ontario in 1913.
In 1945, near the end World War II, Sturtevant was taken over by Westinghouse. The new owners reconstructed and modernized the Hyde Park facilities in 1946, but in 1954 Westinghouse moved the air conditioning business to Virginia, and Sturtevant Boston returned to its roots as an industrial fan manufacturer. In 1985 Sturtevant was sold to the South Africa-based American-Davidson, who quickly sold the industrial fan line to Oklahoma-based Acme Engineering & Manufacturing. The international boycotts of South Africa affected American-Davidson, which closed what was left of Sturtevant in 1989.
