Richard Teller Crane I (May 15, 1832 – January 8, 1912) was the founder of R.T. Crane & Bro., a Chicago-based manufacturer, later Crane Co.

Richard T. Crane was born on May 15, 1832, in Paterson, New Jersey (on the Tottoway Road, near the Passaic Falls) to Timothy Botchford Crane and Maria Ryerson.^[1][2]

Crane was a nephew of Chicago lumber dealer Martin Ryerson. He moved to Chicago from New Jersey in 1855. Richard and his brother Charles soon formed R. T. Crane & Bro., which manufactured and sold brass goods and plumbing supplies. The new company soon won contracts to supply pipe and steam-heating equipment in large public buildings such as the Cook County courthouse and the state prison at Joliet. In 1865, R. T. Crane and Brother was incorporated and the name of the company was changed to the Northwestern Manufacturing Company. It began to manufacture a full line of industrial valves and fittings in cast iron, malleable iron and brass.^[3] By 1870, when it employed about 160 people, it was making elevators as well. After the Chicago Fire of 1871, the company decided to expand its operations. Just after the firm became Crane Bros. Manufacturing Co. in 1872, it employed as many as 700 men and boys and manufactured over $1 million worth of products per year.

In 1890, when it had sales branches in Omaha, Kansas City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, the company changed its name to Crane Co. By this time, Crane was supplying much of the pipe used for the large central heating systems in Chicago's new skyscrapers, and it was also selling the enameled cast-iron products that were soon found in bathrooms in residences across the country.

In 1910, when Crane had begun to manufacture in a plant at Bridgeport, Connecticut, its Chicago plants employed more than 5,000 people. A large new Chicago plant on South Kedzie Avenue was built in the 1910s. During the 1920s, when Crane expanded overseas, the company was the world's leading manufacturer of valves and fittings. During the next few decades, Crane continued to employ thousands of Chicago-area residents at its Kedzie Avenue plant, and the company's annual sales rose to over US$300 million by the mid-1950s.

In 1959, however, the company was acquired by Thomas Mellon Evans, its first owner who was not a member of the Crane family. Evans proceeded to turn Crane into a global conglomerate that made aerospace equipment as well as plumbing supplies; the headquarters eventually moved from Chicago to Bridgeport. By the mid-1970s, Crane employed only about 1,000 people in the Chicago area. By the end of the century, Crane was doing annual sales of about $2 billion, but it was no longer a leading company in the city in which it was born. The Crane Plumbing unit was sold off in 1990. Crane Plumbing is now a unit of American Standard Brands.

Crane was an advocate of new ways of educating children. In 1886, he was the vice president of the Chicago Manual Training School, which provided one of the first vocational education programs in the city. This was a private school serving high school students.^[4] By 1891, the Chicago public school system was offering vocational training at English High School. In that year, Crane sponsored demonstration programs in one of the city's public grade schools. One of these extended vocational training to the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.^[5] The other demonstration added a kindergarten program.^[6]

However, he did not support all forms of learning. In the final decade of his life, he was a vocal opponent of college, and higher learning in general. His views appeared in a series of pamphlets he published, as well as articles in the trade publication he owned, The Valve. He strongly criticized fellow industrialists, for example Andrew Carnegie, who were donating millions of dollars to support higher education.^[7]

The Chicago Board of Education eventually named its manual training high school after Crane, in recognition of Crane's support of the public schools.^[7] Ironically, that high school has since changed to a college preparatory program.

Crane grew up in Patterson, New Jersey. His father was a builder-architect. Richard T. only had two or three years of formal schooling before embarking on a series of factory jobs, first in Patterson, and then New York City. He lost his job in the Panic of 1854, and moved to Chicago at the suggestion of his uncle, Martin Ryerson.^[7]

Crane was married three times, the last at age 73 to 35-year-old Emily Hutchison. Crane was a member of the famous Jekyll Island Club (aka The Millionaires Club) on Jekyll Island, Georgia. Crane lost two nieces, Barbara and Mary Gartz, at the Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago in 1903. He hired fire insurance expert, engineer John Ripley Freeman to conduct a study to determine the various causes of the fire.

Crane died on January 8, 1912, in Chicago, Illinois,^[2] and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.^[8][9]

Philanthropist and diplomat Charles R. Crane was one of Richard T. Crane's sons.

Actor/comedian Chevy Chase is Crane's great-great-grandson (due to Richard T. Crane's grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane having adopted his step-daughter, Chevy Chase's mother, Cathalene). Crane also has numerous great great great grandchildren living in Georgia including Sarah Crane, Hunter Crane, Tanner Crane and Cierra Crane.

His children were: Charles Richard (b. 1858); Herbert Prentice (b. 1861); Katharine H. (Gartz) (b. 1865); May Ryerson (Russell) (b. 1866); Frances Williams (Lillie) (b. 1869); Emily Rockwell (Chadbourne) (b. 1871);^[10] Richard Teller Crane, Jr. (b. 1873). His grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane, was an explorer and philanthropist. His grandson, Richard Teller Crane II (b. 1882) was the first United States diplomat accredited to Czechoslovakia, under the Woodrow Wilson administration.

• Castle Hill
• Crane Beach
• Crane Co.

• Crane Co. Records at the Newberry Library
• Crane: 150 Years Together, 128-page PDF of a book celebrating the company's 150th anniversary. (2500 copies printed in Bloomfield, CT, 2005. See last page for authors, editors, printer, etc.)