page_title: Ducommun
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ducommun / History
caption_attribution_description: Ducommun building, built in 1941. 4890 S. Alameda St, Los Angeles.
context_page_description: Ducommun Incorporated is a manufacturing company that supplies products, engineering and support services to the global aerospace and defense industry. Founded in 1849, Ducommun is recognized as the oldest business in California and today manufactures structural and electronic components and sub-assemblies for a wide range of commercial, military and space platforms including the Boeing 737 NG and 777 airliners, the C-17 heavy lift cargo jet, the Apache, Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters, the Space Shuttle, International Space Station and Mars Rover. For decades, Ducommun has designed and manufactured complex electronic systems and sub-assemblies for advanced missile programs and platforms, and provided engineering and program management services to the United States Military, the United States Department of Homeland Security, NASA and other government agencies. Ducommun's approximately 2,700 employees work at its 17 manufacturing centers located in California, Arkansas, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New York, Wisconsin, Thailand and Mexico. Its corporate headquarters is based in Santa Ana, California.
context_section_description: Ducommun was established in 1849 by Charles Louis Ducommun, a watchmaker by training, who emigrated to the United States from Switzerland in the early 1840s. The Company started as a general store, providing supplies and credit to gold prospectors and other pioneers who had settled in the burgeoning pueblo of Los Angeles. At the time, California was still a territory of the United States, just on the verge of statehood with the population of Los Angeles then standing at just about 1,600. The store had a public "circulating library", lending books if paid in full with a full refund upon return.
  In 1857 Charles Louis Ducommun married Bertha Rontex, of San Francisco, and they had a baby girl the next year. In 1873 he was an officer of the Royal Arch Masons, Los Angeles Chapter No. 33. They built a "mansion" at 527 Lazard Street, east of Alameda Street, south of Aliso Street, and about 1875 their street was renamed "Ducommun Street". In 1892 their vacant "mansion" was donated and converted into the "News' and Working Boys' Home", a woman-run charity, formerly on First Street, which charged $1.50 per week for room, board, and laundry. In 1900, the Boy's Home moved to San Pedro Street and the mansion was donated to the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles repurposed as a "men's boarding house", called the "Bethlehem Hotel" from the Bethlehem Institutes (nearby, corner of Vignes and Ducommun Streets) under the supervision of the Rev. Dr, Dana W. Bartlett. In 1902 a new Bethlehem Men's Hotel was built on Vignes Street, and this mansion became a "Japanese lodging house."
  In the 1890s he was a stockholder and member of the board of directors of Farmers and Merchants Bank of Los Angeles, of which Isaias W. Hellman was president. Ducommun kept pace with the growth of the southern California economy, and in 1907 incorporated as The Ducommun Hardware Company, evolving into a value added-distributor of metals provided by the Eastern mills. This coincided with the emergence of a defense-based industry, e.g., munitions and shipbuilding, as the country entered World War I, and during the 1920s the arrival of general aviation. Charles Albert Ducommun, one of Charles Louis Ducommun's four sons, decided early on to support an innovative aircraft designer named Donald Douglas, marking the beginning of the Company's longstanding partnership with what was to become the aerospace industry. Symbolic of this new relationship, Ducommun tubular steel flew in 1927 on the Ryan-designed Spirit of St. Louis during Charles Lindbergh's historic transatlantic flight from Long Island's Roosevelt Field to Paris.
  Ducommun became a more prominent distributor during World War II, inventorying large quantities of stainless steel, carbon steel, and alloys, mostly to support the production of bomber and fighter aircraft that were used in both the European and Pacific theaters. Following the war, the Company joined its customers in the aircraft industry's transition to making long-distance passenger aircraft such as the Lockheed Constellation and, just as importantly, their commitment to the Space Age. Under the leadership of Charles Emil Ducommun (the grandson of Charles Louis Ducommun, and son of Charles Albert), the Company went public in 1949 having become the leading metal materials distributor in the West, and Alcoa's largest distributor nationwide. Over the next 15 years, Ducommun diversified to support the needs of an aircraft industry that was rapidly incorporating more electronic components. With the acquisition of Kierulff Electronics in the early 1960s and the distribution business of Texas Instruments in 1981, Ducommun became a national force in the distribution of electronic components and subsystems. Charles Ducommun retired as the company's chairman in 1978.
  The 1980s were years of restructuring and change. Both the metals and electronics distribution businesses were sold as the Company retrenched having suffered punishing losses, coming very close to bankruptcy by 1987. It had reoriented itself to become a member of the aerospace industry sup
caption: Former Ducommun building in South Los Angeles, designed by A.C. Martin & Associates, built in 1941.
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