History of National Gypsum Company Plant

The National Gypsum Company Plant in Lorain Ohio is a abandoned Drywall manufacturing plant that was opened in 1959. The company behind the plant was founded in 1925 by Melvin H. Baker, Joseph F. Haggerty, and Clarence E. Williams. Of the all the wallboard product produced in the world today, National Gypsum is 1 of 6 companies that hold a combined market of 81% in the field alongside (Georgia Pacific, Knauf, Continental Building Products, National Gypsum, Saint-Gobain, and Yoshino Gypsum Co., Ltd). Today it opeates 17 plants similar to the now abandoned Lorain Plant throughout the US. However in the 1990s the company filled for bankruptcy, and restructured as the New NGC INC. in 1993. This is not what killed the operations at the Lorain plant however, as the Lorain Plant would continue on until June 2008, when a poor construction market in 2008, lead by the great recession of a overall poor job market, caused the plant to close. Then President Candidate Obama delivered a campaign speech at the National Gypsum plant in February 2008 just 4 months before the plant closed, where he targeted his then rival Hillary Clinton for backing the North American Free Trade Agreement and advocated ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. In this speech he discussed his plan to invest in job creation particularly "green jobs" in the clean energy sector end tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas. Obama also stressed his opposition to unfair trade deals like NAFTA and vowed to fight for fair trade. In 2012 the now closed plant was used as a example by Mitt Romney as he carried his message of a poor job market caused by Obama, however this fact was not true due to the plant closing in June 2008 as mentioned before, during the George W. Bush Administration. Also in 2012 the plant was bought by a California developer IRG Henderson LLC, however nothing ever came of the plant from this purchase and today sits abandoned.