Standard Roofing

Standard Roofing Company was founded in Montgomery, Alabama in June, 1945 as a local, residential roofing contractor. The senior partner was H.W. Taylor. W.L. Taylor, brother of H.W. Taylor, joined the new company in 1947. The post-World War II economy was robust and the firm grew quickly, moving from Montgomery-area residential jobs, to commercial jobs, then to local government projects at Maxwell Air Force Base. W.R. Taylor, son of H.W. Taylor, joined the firm in 1948 following his service in the War and subsequent graduation from college. In the early 1950's, the Company became active in the Capehart Housing Program for the United States Military. The Capehart project involved Standard Roofing with jobs across the Southeast, as well as locations in California, Hawaii and other distant sites. Capehart was the foundation for the Company's growth from a local to a national roofing contractor. A key to Standard's future would be establishing a fully-operational New Orleans branch during that same period, in 1955. As the military housing projects and post-war building boom began to wind-down in the late 50's, Standard Roofing began to pursue work related to the 1960's "Space Race". From the New Orleans office, the Company launched its efforts to pursue work at nearby Michaud and Stennis Space Centers, as well as Johnson Space Center in Houston. In addition to the building boom triggered by NASA, the New Orleans office worked on the massive task of rebuilding the city after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Hurricane Camille in 1969. The Montgomery office took on other large NASA projects, such as the one at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, which involved roofing work on the Vertical Assembly Building - the largest building, by volume, in the world. The most interesting "60's experience" for the Company, however, was roofing the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Liberia, on the African Continent.