One truck, one pipe threader.
Walter Kowalczyk came home from the Army, apprenticed with a South Side plumber, and opened his own shop in 1952. We still have the pipe threader.
Seventy-four years.
- 01
1952
Walter opens the shop in his garage on the South Side, with one truck and a hand pipe threader. Most of the work is coal-to-oil boiler conversions and new bathrooms in old houses.
- 02
1971
Stan takes over. The work shifts to gas boilers, copper repipes, and the first wave of basement bathrooms.
- 03
1990s
The steam boilers Walter installed start coming back for their second replacement. Stan starts keeping a notebook of every one.
- 04
2009
Mike takes over the license. The notebook becomes a spreadsheet, and it has more than three thousand Milwaukee boilers in it.
- 05
2024
Danny starts his apprenticeship. Four generations have now worked in the same garage.
What hasn’t changed
We still give you the bad news before the bill. We still tell you when something can be repaired rather than replaced. And the phone number is still answered by somebody named Kowalczyk.
Seventy-four years, same phone number.
Call the shop.
The old-house plumber’s site, built in seven days.
Sixteen pages: house types drawn by hand, three generations of the family, an honest hourly rate explained, and a lead service line page written for Milwaukee.