adminThe Old Mill of Iowa, located on the Diamond Vogel campus, honors the Orange City-based paint company’s Dutch culture and legacy. In 1967, the Old Mill was built by Diamond Vogel’s founder, Andrew Vogel, after his retirement. The old mill`s design is based on windmills that were found in Vogel’s birthplace, Friesland, Holland. Andrew Vogel worked in his dad’s paint shop in Friesland until moving to America in 1913, and settled in northwest Iowa. With two little paint grinding machines in 1926, Andrew launched what might become Diamond Vogel.
One of the organization’s number one pieces of history in The Old Mill is a 120 year old paint processor that utilizes wind power. The Vogel Old Mill stands 50 feet tall with 16-foot sharp edges, which consistently pivot a counterclockwise way. This mill could create up to 20 gallons of paint a time. All the things inside the Vogel Old Mill are original or in regular Dutch style recreated with a significant number of the artifacts on display brought over from the Netherlands or gave by Andrew Vogel.
Today, Diamond Vogel is a leader in the coatings business that serves an expansive cluster of clients and technologies. They produce paint and coatings for the mechanical, design, vaporized, modern wood, traffic, and auto business sectors while holding fast to Andrew’s simple mission of surpassing client’s expectation by conveying a quality solution. The Old Mill also known as Vogel Windmill of Orange City, Iowa from this replica of a Holland mill have know how utilizing wind power, paint pigments were ground. The inside of the “Dutch Miller’s Home” is outfitted with antiques imported from Holland.
At the time when Andrew “Pops” Vogel, the founder of Diamond Vogel Paints Co., resigned in the mid 1960s, “he required something to do,” said one of his grandsons, Doug Vogel, a co-owner and current Diamond Vogel leader. He added that “So he got to working and he built it very great.”This great mill is the 50-foot Dutch windmill finished in 1967 that overshadows the Diamond Vogel factory. It highlights 16-foot blades that turn counterclockwise on top of the mill to represent its purpose for grinding paint colors.
The burr stone grinder in the front part of the mill interior is 120 years old which was initially utilized in manufacturing paint. The joined one-room miller’s home gives guests a look into the past. It is furnished with antiques, some of which were imported from the Netherlands, similar to the walled-in beds and the cast iron pots that hang in the fireplace.
Some such antique is a desk with a perspective on organization headquarters. Pops used to sit at that work area and advise his grand-kids and anybody willing to listen about his life in Holland. Once in a while, Doug noted, he would share these stories on old seats outside the mill. He also said “During the Tulip Festival that is something that he mostly preferred to do. He’d sit at the mill and many people would come. A lot of individual actually come and visit the mill. He just enjoyed the moment”.
Born in 1896, by working in his dad’s paint shop in Friesland, Holland, Andrew Vogel learned the painting trade. In 1913, the family moved to America. He before long understood that a considerable lot of the paints accessible at the time were inferior compared to those his family had made in Holland. So he started to fabricate a red barn paint and white house paint in his garage. He wedded Jennie Reinders in 1919 and began Vogel Paint and Wax in 1926. At the point when Andrew’s children got back from service in World War II, they got more engaged with the business, and Pops acknowledged the time had come to turn over the reins, if not the paint brushes entirely.
The children were glad when Pops began the factory building project during the 1960s. In addition to the fact that it kept him occupied, it let the children make the business their own. The mill itself hasn’t changed a lot throughout the long term, though. It went through a significant repair this spring, with the addition of some great paint on it. “He was consistently out there in April preparing it finished up to go” Doug said of his grandpa. “Indeed, even in his 90s, he would be out on the rooftop finishing it up.”
A World War I veteran, Andrew Vogel died on March 6, 2000, at 103 years old. His wife Jennie, who regularly went along with him at the factory during the Tulip Festival, gone before him in 1990. At the point when Grandpa was building that factory, the grandchildren all contemplated whether he was utilizing new nails or old ones.
With these kind of history the Old Mill of Iowa is famous for it`s tourist destination as it represents their past. Have you at any point wished you could visit Holland and perceive how they live, the differences in their homes and how they make things? This is your chance to do precisely that without leaving the USA. Visit Orange City and see everything to appreciate in this more modest local area. Jewel Vogel Old Mill is open for self-guided tours during their regular business hours on Monday through Friday. Visit the Corporate Technical Center front work area and their staff will be glad to help you.
