Date in History: 1898 to 1967
In 1898, the Creamery Package Manufacturing Company of Chicago came to Fort Atkinson, buying our city’s thriving creamery equipment manufacturer, Cornish Curtis & Greene located on North Main Street. Over the next few years the growing company continued to focus on the dairy industry, and by 1916 Creamery Package was the largest business in the world supplying complete equipment for creameries, cheese factories, dairies and ice cream plants. Over time they also branched out to produce equipment for the food, canning, chemical, beverage and pharmaceutical industries.
In 1920 Creamery Package built the large five-story building at the corner of North Main and Sherman Avenue to accommodate the growing demand for their products. By 1967, however, Creamery Package had decided to enlarge their site at Lake Mills, and they shut down their Fort Atkinson operation. The large Creamery Package building they left behind, the building that is now being renovated by the VyMac Corporation, still bears the Creamery Package name atop the south side of the building.
This historic document aired on the radio as an Historic Minute on 04/03/2006.